movie reelist poster placeholder

Godzilla

Coming Soon

[hero heading=”GODZILLA” tagline=”Gareth Edwards proves what a reboot can accomplish with a clear vision and respect for canon. Godzilla is in theaters May 15th, 2014.”]It becomes clear from the moment Godzilla belts out his first iconic roar in the pre-credit roll ~ this is an experience unlike any that have preceded. Godzilla sets a new bar for sensory nirvana and technical prowess, but sometimes stumbles at the feet of bloated storytelling.

He is a god, a monster having survived since before the dinosaurs. He is an enormous and elusive beast that has escaped the wrath of secret government agencies, to hibernate deep within the sea. He is Godzilla, and he brings balance on Earth.

However, mankind seeks to destroy Godzilla and that ignorance could have grave consequences.

Society’s cavalier use of nuclear energy plays a significant role in waking a kaiju called MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism); it thrives on radioactive matter, and it seeks to destroy. This MUTO first wreaks havoc in Japan, upon a large nuclear facility. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), had been studying seismic anomalies that lead to the incident, but his calls for alarm went ignored. He lost his wife, and nearly his son, in the aftermath of a putative meltdown.

Brody’s son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), now a naval officer, has to put his young family aside to bail out his crackpot dad, who’s been snooping around the quarantine zone in Japan. A reluctant son joins a father to recover his long lost data, in hopes of learning the truth about what really occurred 15 years earlier. What they discover, is a top-secret entity operating on a large cocoon, which has erected itself in the facility crater.

Meanwhile, Godzilla has intercepted signals emanating from the cocoon, and he’s emerging. Those same signals cause a second MUTO to surface near Las Vegas, an event with catastrophic results on the Sin City.

We learn the two MUTO seek to reproduce, so plans are formulated to eliminate all known threats (including Godzilla) as they ascend on one another, using a massive nuclear blast. When will we learn? It’s a massive comedy of errors on mankind’s part…while Godzilla goes nuclear on his natural enemies, playing savior to our arrogance.

Framed mostly from the perspective of its human pawns, Gareth Edwards successfully achieves a horrifying tonality severely devoid from the Roland Emmerich-directed Godzilla. Those memories of shoddy jokes and velociraptors vanish quickly under Edward’s rubble.

He’s working from a script penned by Max Borenstein, which is where the flaws come to surface. The human element isn’t intriguing, made worse that 80% of the film is character interactions, backstory explanations and Elizabeth Olsen looking concerned/scared. Pitted against malevolent monsters and our hero-in-disguise, I found it difficult to care about the journey from point A to point B.

Godzilla’s unveiling occurs following an agonizing tease, but very enthralling in its eventual execution. With a price tag coming in at $160 million, the computer-generated content is spectacularly clean; impressive considering Edwards’ previous film Monsters, was basically created out of his garage on a shoestring budget. Alexandre Desplat lends his composer expertise in tracks that will absolutely move audiences, figuratively and physically. Very well done.

Godzilla succeeds on a culmination of technical achievement and regard for history. Audiences can expect to exit theaters satiated, cathartic and absolutely wanting more.


Chris


[/hero]


Godzilla is streaming now on the following services:
Movie Reelist Contributor: Chris Giroux
Chris Giroux is founder and editor-in-charge at Movie Reelist, an entertainment news and review blog serving the most fanatic moviegoers. Chris started his publication in Detroit in 2010 and has since reviewed hundreds of films and interviewed numerous talent across the country. He is an avid film festival attendee and red carpet photographer, having shot the likes of Steven Spielberg, Bill Murray, Mark Hamill, and more. Chris grew up in New Mexico, where he studied mass media writing while working in post-production and multimedia authoring. It is also where he discovered Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York, resulting in an unhealthy Kurt Russell obsession.

Comments

  1. As with most movies that are hyped up I went into this thinking there wouldn’t be much beyond the flash. I was pleasantly surprised as I was impressed and entertained throughout. I was taken back to my days of being a kid and felt the same excitement as I did back then. Announce a sequel already because I want more.

  2. I went in with average expectations when I saw this movie in IMAX 3D yesterday at our little Friday Afternoon Film Festival at the AMC Forum 30 and came out with an average entertainment value after overlooking many potholes peppered throughout this film. The IMAX 3D experience definitely helped my opinion. I was glad to see the big guy back on big screen again. 🙂

Leave a comment...