GODZILLA

GODZILLA (2014)

Review by Matthew Lengyel

SPOILER ALERT: I may ruin this movie for you. Or it may ruin you.

This is my review/synopsis of the new movie, Godzilla. If you haven't seen Godzilla, read this if you want to save more than two hours of your life. If you have, read this so you can understand why you suffered.

            The movie chronicles the slow-build-up to a showdown between two super monsters, the legendary Godzilla (who has a lot less show time then you’d think) and the MUTO’s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms), and the characters caught up in their wake (or visa versa?). At the end of Act 2, Admiral Stenz (David Strathairn, the lawyer from Jurassic Park) asks Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe, the only substantial Asian actor in the entire film) a question. "This alpha predator of yours, doctor, do you really think he has a chance?" And the Asian man replies with the most important line and repetitive concepts of the film: "The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way around. Let them fight."

The irony. For the arrogance of the plot is thinking that we even care about the people OR the monsters of the film, and that the people have any control over whether the monsters fight or not (except for the convenience of the non-existing plot).

Nearly everything about the film is convenience after convenience, continuous "what the fuck" moments, yet it still finds a way to have some epic moments and be horribly written all at the same time. The first part of the movie starts out strong and slowly has a nuclear fallout.

So let’s begin with the beginning. Act 1, which is by far the best and most intriguing part of the movie, as the mystery of it is the greatest part of the plot. The title sequence shows cool archive footage of nuclear tests in the 1950’s, with slight glimpses of Godzilla. In the next scene, in 1999’s the Philippines, Ken Watanabe and his British assistant, actress Sally Hawkins, are brought to an uranium excavation site where instead the enormous labor force have discovered an underground cavern, aka the skeletal remains of a giant creature with two cocoons inside. The flat female character (get used to them) turns and asks the doctor "Is it him?" "No." For aside from this cryptic statement, this will be the only time you’ll actually even see or hear about the title character/force-of-nature in Act 1, more than 40 minutes into the movie. Honestly though, this is the only big flaw of Act 1.

For steps in Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), an American living in Japan, heading up a nuclear power plant (irony bombs again). He’s worried about seismic activity, and you should be too, for you’ll be fooled into thinking he is the main character of the film (and frankly he should be). Bryan Cranston is by far the best part of this movie, and his acting breaks the bad out of it (until the bad breaks him). With the cathartic Catalyst of the film (the odd seismic activity causes the nuclear power plant to collapse) comes the only time you’ll truly deeply feel for the next several hours. Bryan Cranston's wife, actress Juliette Binoche, also working there, tries to escape from the breach of radiation, but Bryan Cranston is forced to seal the vault and watch his wife die to prevent the fallout, which he still is unable to stop. 

This was the most compelling scene, but is suddenly interrupted by a jarring 15 year jump to Bryan Cranston's son, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as a Lt. returning home from the US Navy to his wife, Elizabeth Olsen, and their kid, Carson Bolde. And this is when the first signs of the failure in the weak plot start to peak their head up. For it is Aaron Taylor-Johnson that is the protagonist, and not Bryan Cranston, even though for the remainder of Act 1 we will care far more about Bryan's character. He will really be the one advancing the plot while the son just tags along, until the discovery of the base hidden in the quarantine zone where the radiation is drained into the cocoon of MUTO, the original cause of the nuclear meltdown. And this is when the plot begins to truly degrade with convenience after convenience, for just as the father and son arrive there, MUTO finally decides to awake from it's slumber after 15 years, today of all days. Bryan Cranston dies in the chaos, leaving us with a son that we have no emotional connection to without him to carry the protagonist baton of the story, which will just be tossed around between characters.

        Now we fall into Act 2, which honestly could have just been cut out. For the next hour plus, we'll be wasting our time thinking the characters are really doing anything relevant, but really anything they do is just dicking around, making things worse.

Suddenly the US Military steps in, taking over the Japan-based operation. Not only is this another Caucasian-ruled movie, but an American ruled one as well. Once again we Americans have stolen a foreign story and made it our own. When they go to Hawaii and MUTO attacks, Aaron Taylor-Johnson had just boarded a tram to his plane flight back to San Francisco so he could "protect his family". This is the protagonist's Goal/Need (I couldn't figure out which but I assume the latter) given to him by his Father just as he died, but really he won't ever be reunited with them until the threat of the movie is defeated. So, meanwhile, he is given a little Asian boy. The boy gets separated from his parents on the tram, and Aaron steps up to the plate to be the good guy/protector figure. This feels forced, cause it is just a convenient ploy of the plot to give Aaron something to do while MUTO attacks, to make him seem heroic, even though he really isn't doing anything. Thanks for more flat characters. But at least the boy is Asian. Right? It's a nice little nod to the fact that Godzilla is...wait...a Japanese legend. Not any more. But I digress.

So MUTO causes destruction on the island, the military tries to defend the citizens of Hawaii, poorly and foolishly getting too close (did they forget that MUTO emits EMP waves?), but don't worry, Godzilla shows up to help destroy civilization and save the day, and earlier there is a suggestion that Godzilla is the natural force that will restore balance. I'm sure all the people that died in Hawaii will agree.

The US Military spends the rest of Act 2 following Godzilla as he swims towards San Francisco, as he and the Navy race to attack the MUTO's (Yes, there are two now: I'll get to that soon), but the oddity is the battleships and air craft carriers are literally mere yards above Godzilla, who's skimming the top of the ocean.

What? This raises many "what the fucks!?" and makes me wonder is the US military just plain retarded.

So, why are their two MUTO's ravaging across the West Coast? The US Military is too stupid to realize that it isn't a good idea to put a giant cocoon of a MUTO in a vault with the entire nuclear waste of the United States of America, the country with the most nuclear weapons in the world. So, did they have no knowledge whatsoever of the intel the Japan-based testing facility got from their 15 years of experimenting on the other MUTO? Oh, don't worry about that. The plot doesn't care.

Also, what the fuck happens if Godzilla gets a god damn itch on his back? 'Ah shit, there goes the USS Iowa.' The fleet isn't smart enough to follow Godzilla at a distance, cause you never know, Godzilla might get hungry and a humpback whale might not be nearby to satisfy his cravings.

This leads me to my next point: Godzilla showed up to fight MUTO, and now the military decides to stop attacking. They couldn't possibly use their submarines to attack him from a distance. That'd be too easy. Is it because the enemy of my enemy is now my friend? No, um, I'm sorry. When Godzilla surfaced on Honolulu, his wake unfolded a tidal wave that destroyed the capital city, not to mention the US Military has been trying to nuke him since the 1950's! And beside, it isn't till the end of Act 2/beginning of Act 3 that the Military decides to "let" Godzilla fight MUTO, so why are they acting like they already made the decision? That's just bad writing. We could have just cut out the entire Act 2, a waste of an hour plus, and just skipped to Act 3.

But unfortunately, we have to deal with a main character who is barely that. Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is still trying to get home to San Francisco to protect his family. So he decides to do this by helping the military deliver one of their nuclear bombs to offshore of San Francisco, hoping that the MUTO's will follow it, with Godzilla following them, and the force of the explosion will kill them all. "Three birds, one stone." But at this point, we should know that their plans will only get in their own way, and they will have to adopt a counter-goal to stop the consequences of their actions. I won't list all of the ridiculous conveniences surrounding Aaron's 'progression' through the plot, but I'll note a few.

One) Of course Aaron is the only person in the area with the qualifications to activate the bomb (there's a gear-activation device since the EMP of the MUTO's would cause any other ignition device to short), so he is allowed to join the mission to deliver the bomb to the bay by train.

Two) MUTO attacks the train. Like always in this movie, the military some how loses track of these ginormous monsters (there's fog this time. That shit is hard to see through), and MUTO kills all of the crew, save Aaron. It eats one of the bombs, but leaves the other. How convenient. So Aaron has to deliver the bomb not just to the bay, but be involved in the final mission.

There's so many more, but let's get this over with.

        So Act 3. As soon as the Doctor (Ken Watanabe) tells the Admiral (David Strathairn) to "Let them fight," Godzilla and MUTO finally begin to fight.

What!!?! The entire movie, the military was never doing anything to stop them from fighting anyways. But as soon as a character says let them fight, they fight. The arrogance of the Americans/Military is to think they had any control over what Godzilla or the MUTO's would do, because the only time the Military has done anything, they've only made things worse. There would literally be no movie if these people weren't doing the things they'd be doing, because the MUTO's would never have woken up, and Godzilla would have never had a reason to surface. But maybe that's the point. Actually, that Is the point. It is a commentary of the absurdity of nuclear/radiation usage, but the problem is it becomes radiated by the commentary and the plot dies because of it.

The nuclear bomb is delivered to a boat in the bay, but of course, MUTOs' EMP disables the boat. Wait. You didn't think of this before, dear US Military? Now all of San Francisco is at risk, once again giving our main character something to do. Why in the world did you put the Nuke in the middle of the Bay? Was this so that the MUTO's would 'sense' it, and be lured out to sea? I'm pretty sure these MUTO's have been able to sense the nuclear weapons from across the globe earlier in this movie, so why would it be any different now?
But anyways, what unfolds next is real awkward, making you hope you left your kids at home.

One of the MUTO's get's a hold of the nuke, and delivers it to the other MUTO as they meet for the first time. Love at first sight. What unfolds is an awkward moment as one MUTO gives the other MUTO the nuke, which it rubs against it's genitals. I guess they are getting hot. I think the Editor of the movie must have just been sitting in the editing bay staring at the screen as he watched the raw footage the director shot, a full-on Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Orgasms, and been like "what the fuck is this?" We quickly are graced with a cut away as the MUTO's stomp it out and get it on. So if you were hoping for some monster porn, this won't be your movie. But it's a nice tease.

There's continuos fighting between Godzilla and the MUTO's, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a special forces team HALO jump into the city, to defuse the bomb and/or get it out to sea. The intercutting of the fighting is undoubtably epic, but we are continuously reminded of how little we care about any of these character. Every time the monsters fight, there is a cut away to Aaron's wife, Elizabeth Olsen, somewhere in the city running from the destruction, diligently waiting for her husband to come save her. Dumb. For several reasons.

One) We never were really given any reason to care about any of these characters. There's no emotional connection between audience and character, for there is nothing unique about them except the convenient circumstances they've been written into. Cool by association? I think not. The moment they took away Bryan Cranston's character, we no longer have a reason to care about his son, let alone his son's wife, or their son. They are all flat; mere tools for the plot.

Two) The intercutting between the monsters fighting and the wife running is supposed to invoke emotional tension and connection. We care about animals in movies because they are connected to people. But if you don't care about the people, then the writing device is pointless.

Three) The wife is just dumb. A typical flat, female character, solely existing in the plot for the purpose of the main male character. Standard sexism in Hollywood at such a low. IF the wife was smart (and if the writing was), she would have tried to escape the city with her son despite her husband telling her to wait there for him to get there. Aaron is a dumb husband for telling her this, especially since he knows how dangerous San Francisco is going to be, seeing it is the ultimate ground-zero for the monsters' showdown. But no, instead she diligently obeys her husband, and instead let's her son go on a bus that is leaving the city with characters that are mere strangers to us. Very very luckily for her, the African-American bus driver is the only crazy mo-fo to break through traffic on the golden gate bridge just before Godzilla smashes through it. So, now the son is safe, and we can stop thinking about another pointless cardboard-cutout character.

Four) If the writer wanted emotional tension, the main character should have had to go through a similar emotional choice as his father had to in Act 1. The son's goal literally involves a nuclear bomb, and it was his father that had to seal the vault on his own wife, killing her in radiation. It would have been incredibly emotional and jarring if Aaron Taylor-Johnson was faced with a similar challenge. But nope. No emotions here.

In conclusion, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and military team get the nuke, but are unable to deactivate the countdown, so they move it to a nearby boat. Aaron sets fire to the eggs of the MUTO's, then runs to the boat as one of the MUTO's kills off the soldiers. It is up to Aaron to get the nuke away from the city before it detonates, but as the boat pushes off, MUTO approaches and he is helpless in the wake of the EMP, the boat shutting off. This is one of many moments in the movie as he or other characters are cornered by a threat, but you know they're counting the seconds, waiting to be saved by the next line of the script. Godzilla, who appeared to have fallen after killing one of the MUTO's, emerges and victoriously kills the last MUTO. Then Godzilla falls, once again appearing to be dead. And the main character falls too, as he pushes the boat off to sea, the bomb ticking down. But we know there's too much convenience in this movie, so neither could be dead. A helicopter gets him off of the boat, and the bomb detonates at a safe distance away from the Bay. Family reunites, Doctor gets to see his precious Godzilla up close in-person, just as Godzilla awakens. A stadium of people watch Godzilla return back to the sea on the big screens, and they applaud. The end. Thank Godzilla.

Everything is clockwork, just like the bomb's trigger, but it all feels so stale. There's plenty of explosions, but there is no big payoff. The characters are flat, the plot happens simply for its own sake, and the final Act of the movie doesn't hark back to the excellence of the first Act.

Here's something godly about the movie though. The soundtrack, written by Alexandre Desplat, is freaking awesome, and the CGI and fight sequences are mindlessly sick, but otherwise, this isn't anything to call home about. I don't regret paying to see this though, because I've learned some valuable lessons on what not to do when making an epic monster/natural-disaster film. The moral of the story. Don't be arrogant enough to think that just because you have a Japanese legend at your disposal that you can get away with writing a plot and characters that are weak. Make us care. Or let us fight. Either or.

　

Say Something

        Have you ever had those moments where you find something someone else writes or says that literally reflects something you've been thinking or experiencing? As if they are speaking on behalf of you, without them ever knowing it?

This is what I'm talking about: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearwithoutgod/2014/04/12/giving-up/

For me, it has literally been the same song, months before he ever made his post. Just, for me, it is this cover version. (women always seem to do it better ;)

http://www.last.fm/music/Gale+Franklin/_/Say+Something+I'm+Giving+up+on+You


But the strange part for me, on an almost destiny-like level of creepiness, is that I heard of Ryan Bell and his blog just before this New Year. It was his blog, his brave decision to go public about his "Year Without God" that made me to start consciously thinking about how far I had drifted from 'the faith'. Ultimately, as New Years Day of 2014 came and went, I made a similar decision.

        Unlike Ryan, I didn't decide upon a set time. Why? The year of 2012 had been the year that I had dedicated myself to a journey to discover if the Holy Spirit was real, or if it was just a dead star.

We look upon the night sky and see countless lights of stars flickering back at us. And yet, as I would often stare up, feeling so small beneath the infinite dark curtain of the universe, an endless back drop of the limited stage of our lives, I would wonder how many of those stars were really alive. For though we see the burning trails of their light, we are seeing the light of the past. Potentially millions of years old. These stars could already all have the life snuffed out of them, and we would never know. When we stare upon the night sky, we stare upon yesterdays. Yet we do not see tomorrow (as we might hope), or even today.

At the end of 2012, as I left the city of Saint Louis, I felt that I had received my answer. The Spirit was Alive. But when I returned to Northridge, I was not the same. Maybe I didn't have it in me.

        I do not know what this means. I saw such great beauty in Christianity, and the potential for a God that can live and work through us, restoring a broken world. It was a beautiful vision. But it was an ideal. I want reality. But what is real?

When I made this decision in January of this year, I decided to do away with countdowns. The looming due dates of tomorrow. For I have always been a planner, penciling in my calendar and set my eyes on the future with grand hopes, but always intimidated by the overwhelming potential and terrified of the potential lack of my own.

Instead, now I have decided to live day by day. I don't know where I will be tomorrow, or who I will be. I don't know if years from now I will be a believer and follower of God, or an agnostic, or whatever label we can think of. I'm not making those decisions. I've decided simply to be okay with how I feel now and what I think now and what I want now.

        I am sure I am not the only one that can say that Ryan's decision (and his blog) has inspired others to be honest with themselves and others and to wrestle with these deep questions that haunt our souls.

Over the last several months, I have listened over and over to the song "Say Something", and in a way it has also been my 'break up' song. When you dedicate your entire life to a person, to an ideal, how do you ever truly walk away? That person, those ideals, will always be with you, like a tattoo, stained even deeper than the skin.

        I often find myself missing the 'relationship' I had with 'God'. I would beg God to say something, anything. Because I was giving up on him, but I didn't want to. I wanted him to fight for me. To prove why I shouldn't leave. There was something so beautiful about the concept of an intimate relationship with the Creator. My Abba. I often am filled with incredible sadness. And I want to go running back to him. To be told by an unseen comforting force that everything is going to be okay. That everything happens for a reason. But sometimes, no matter how good a person was for you, it is more harmful to go running back. Especially if it's just because you miss what they gave you. It is wiser, more mature to struggle with the void. This is how we grow. How we learn to stand on our own two feet. How we learn to truly wrestle with the darkness within us that holds us back from truly being ourselves.


Sometimes, you just have to walk away.

And sometimes, when you cry out into the night, nothing speaks back. But the echo of your own voice.



As much as I love these somber blog posts. Here's something to uplift all of our spirits (Trust me, it relates): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

The profound, so-true words of my favorite comedian. Thank you. That is all.