My Thoughts on Godzilla
Entry posted by believe victims
665 views
Obvious warning for spoilers.
Okay, I’m going to start with what I liked. The graphics were incredible; sometimes it was easy to get lost in the incredible war going on between these beautifully-animated creatures. The only time I truly was jarred from my suspension of disbelief was the smallest CGI use; in the uranium mine scene, the workers on the walls looked incredibly fake. I didn’t expect them to actually cover the walls with workers, but they could have at least done a better job of making them look real.
The music was also incredible. Music is a big determining factor for movies, and while none of the music was memorable enough for me to be humming on my way out of the theatre, it was still enough to set a good tone.
The creature designs were excellent. I have my complaints about Godzilla but I’ll save those for my complaints, because otherwise, I loved the designs. Godzilla’s scales and spines and overall look was pretty excellent, and the MOTUs were excellent fresh kaiju. (At least I think they’re fresh; I’m not familiar with my Godzilla lore.)
Now, complaints. First of all: Andi can say all she wants, it annoys me that Godzilla still stands like a man in a lizard suit. I’m not asking for a complete redesign. I just want a slightly more horizontal orientation, because it looks ridiculous to me to have Godzilla putting the effort to keep his tail off the ground when honestly it’s not helping him any to keep it aloft, since it’s definitely not balancing. (Izaak’s probably going to call me out for complaining Godzilla is unrealistic, and I guess that’s fair. I freely admit that on these things I can be a bit overanalytical.)
Next, there’s the plot. The first half is fairly consistent and cohesive, but honestly? I feel like they lost a lot of momentum when they pulled a gimmicky move: killing Bryan Cranston’s character off. The trailers and the first half of the movie set us up for him as the protagonist. We focus on him, and even when they start to shift over to his son, I was still caught up on him, because he was there, he knew something was up, and he was interesting, god ######. When he died, it felt like the plot started to unravel as they tried their hardest to pin the rest of the plot to the son but they had so much in the air it was hard to focus on him and his journey, so in the end I couldn’t even feel him as a character. When he stays back to explode the eggs, I had no idea what his motivations were. I couldn’t feel what he felt besides just a general disgust for the situation. Any character could easily have done it, and it would have worked, because it did nothing for his character.
Godzilla himself gets a bad hand as well. He only gets about 20 minutes of screen time besides just swimming through the water, and at least 90% is just the action packed stuff. That’s fine in and of itself, but the other ~10% is trying to set up some heavy-handed god metaphor or something, but for all its lack of subtlety, it was inscrutable at the same time. I had no idea what Godzilla’s deep, soulful stare at Bryan Cranston’s son was about. I have no idea what Godzilla’s collapse and revival meant. I have no idea what the film is trying to tell us about this creature beyond some generic Protector from Evil schtick.
My biggest gripe I saved for last, and it’s huge: the role of humans is considerably undermined from the original. The original Godzilla is very much about the consequences of human actions; Godzilla HIMSELF was the result of nuclear bomb testing and stuff. But in this movie, that entire origin story is revoked in favor of both Godzilla and the MOTUs being creatures from the distant past when the Earth was “more radioactive” and stuff. What this means is humans have now become side characters with little impact on the main battle between Godzilla and the MOTUs. They try hamfisting some stuff in there, like the watch from Hiroshima and the repeated failure of nuclear devices, but in the end, humans are not at fault besides the part where they contained the MOTUs in the first place, and instead act as innocent victims of the rampage. By neutering the primary source of anti-nuclear messages in the movie, it all falls rather flat and it doesn’t feel like any sort of satisfying theme is given.
So yeah, that’s my thoughts on Godzilla. A gorgeous spectacle that unfortunately falls flat because it doesn’t know its characters, its theme, or even the second half of its plot.
2 Comments
Recommended Comments