The first Godzilla film was released back in 1954. Now 60 years later, director Gareth Edwards has brought the infamous monster back to life in a reboot of the same name. The film made $93.2 million in its first weekend and stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe and Elizabeth Olsen.
*SPOILER FREE*
While the film is titled Godzilla, my biggest gripe with the film is that the film spends a decent amount of its 123 minute screen time on the human perspective of the emergence of Godzilla and the M.U.T.O.’s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). Because of his great acting abilities, Cranston injects a ton of emotion in to his character and actually makes you care about the people in the film. Cranston is easily involved in the most memorable human scenes in the film. Unfortunately, Cranston isn’t the (human) star of the film. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who plays Cranston’s son, has that role and his story (or acting) are not nearly as engaging as it should be. What ends up happening is that the viewer will see a couple quick scenes of the M.U.T.O.’s or Godzilla and then go back to the boring human perspective. While not going in to too much detail, the reason why I found the human perspective so boring was that the film showed exactly what anyone would expect to happen if they were put in to that situation. Having Taylor-Johnson and Olsen playing husband and wife did nothing to increase the emotional bond between them during the film which in turn did nothing to make the viewer care what happened to them in their current situations. The character development in the film had a great start with Cranston’s role but my investment in the character’s quickly declined as the film went on.
If the human perspective of the film was taken out entirely, Godzilla easily could have been a 30 minute movie since the last half hour of the film was easily the most entertaining. Of course a film’s best moments tend to reside in the film’s climax but what separates Godzilla from another summer film such as X-Men: Days of Future Past is that everything before the climactic Godzilla battle was simply unnecessary. I did say that Cranston’s scenes were really good but there was very little payoff from his scenes and because of that they could be dismissed entirely. The film purposely teases the viewer with glimpses of Godzilla throughout the first half of the film but these quick looks at Godzilla feel like breaths of fresh air when juxtaposed with the human scenes. Speaking of looks, Godzilla and the M.U.T.O.’s look amazing.
Other than the film’s final battle, there is not that much to like in Godzilla. If a film is going to dedicate a large amount of time on how the humans are reacting to the monsters, it’s imperative that the film makes the viewer want to care about what happens to these characters. The film does a great job of that at the start but the emotional investment with the characters quickly deteriorates and the viewer is left wanting to see more of the monsters and much much less of the humans. Viewers will get what they asked for in the film’s final scenes but after waiting 90 minutes for that to happen, even the climactic battle may feel underwhelming. In my opinion, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim did a great job blending character development and monster fighting within a 132 minute time frame and I would easily prefer that film over Godzilla any day. With its extremely successful opening weekend, a sequel to Godzilla has already been announced. Here’s hoping that there will be much more Godzilla action and a lot less Taylor-Johnson.
