Mark Keresman, Bad Movie, June 2014

Godzilla

    The King of Monsters surely deserves a better movie than this.

    After Frankenstein, the mostly likely best-known and loved movie monster is Godzilla. A gigantic holdover from prehistoric times, this giant, building-dwarfing dragon starred in a series of lovable cheesy Japanese horror/monster films, and like almost every well-worn character, he’s apt to get spruced-up/revamped for Our Times. Godzilla is a chance for the likable lizard to get his own feature with state-of-the-art CGI and established Western-hemisphere actors (that need not be dubbed into English).

    The lowdown: In the Pacific in the 1950s, the era wherein nuclear bomb-testing was commonplace. An accident—or was it an accident?—at a Japanese nuclear facility claims the life of a scientist’s wife. Scientist: Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad); wife: Juliette Binoche. As movie scientists are wont to do, he becomes obsessed with the accident—something happened, and he’s going to get to the bottom of it, by gum. Flash-forward to our present: Scientist’s son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his loving wife (Elizabeth Olson) get dragged into the father’s conspiracy hunt…and the “conspiracy” (such as it is) is unveiled…blah, blah, blah.

    But whereas the original Japanese movies are silly-in-retrospect low-budget fun, much of this new Godzilla is just dumb, especially considering this is supposed to be a “serious” rendering of the Godzilla mythos. Why, for example, is there NO presence by the Japanese military? How does the American military claim jurisdiction within Japan’s borders? Why do U.S. soldiers use both flashlights and night vision goggles during their monster hunt? Why does a soldier EVEN BOTHER to pull a handgun on a gigantic-titanic monster that crushes buildings and rips apart bridges with ease? [slight spoilers] Why does a nuclear bomb explode near a major American city and it’s seemingly no big deal? Why are people working business-as-usual in an office building while monsters literally shred the city two blocks away? Loving families get separated, but find each other in massive, chaotic settings in a few minutes? Why does Concerned Wife turn off her cell phone’s ringer? Why does The U.S. Admiral keep some scientists (played by Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) close at hand for Vital Counsel while ignoring everything they say?

    Even worse, the titular character isn’t even onscreen all that much—he (or is it a she?) is in the movie for maybe 20 minutes. The acting by our loving couple—Taylor-Johnson, Olson—is mostly lame: He looks as if he’s posing for a GQ spread; she is bland and sobs excessively, as if sobbing was her ticket to a Golden Globe. I’ve seen open-faced pastrami sandwiches more expressive than Taylor-Johnson—his acting makes Steven Seagal look like Channing Tatum. The usually excellent Watanabe basically stands around looking concerned and constipated. Cranston was smart—his character got killed off after the first half-hour. Hawkins looks as though she’s thinking, “Jeez, I worked with Woody Allen and look at me now. Pay’s good, though.”

    I have no problem with a movie being dumb fun—I really hate when a movie is dumb in the guise of being serious. At least the look of our monster is fine—but that’s about all this movie has going for it.

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In addition to ICON, Mark Keresman is a contributing writer for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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