(If anything, when the film introduces a plot-thread about absent fathers, the Spielberg-homaging start to feel a touch schematic. But hey: these are legitimate ways to build empathy into a special-effects film. Let’s not be picky.)
At the story’s heart is Bryan Cranston as Joe Brody, a man who could give Close Encounters’ Roy Neary a run for his paranoia. Brody works at the Janjira nuclear plant near Tokyo – more than shades of Fukushima, here – where strange, seismic activity causes a tragic accident.
Brody’s hunch is that the Japanese government are covering something up, and he turns amateur sleuth; years pass and he’s eventually arrested for trespassing on the sealed site. His half-estranged son Ford, a young soldier played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is summoned by the U.S. Embassy to set him straight. Instead, Brody convinces him to come on a second trip to the restricted zone. Surprise! Crazy Pop was right.
Godzilla himself, who arrives on the scene soon after, is a respectful updating of the original Toho beast: sleek and crocodilian in the water, but a terrifying klutz on land, with a slump-shouldered waddle that may suggest, to anyone who has seen Disney’s animated version of The Jungle Book, a 350-foot-tall and poisonously hungover Baloo.
Besides, the secret is now more or less out that this is not a one-monster show. The arrival of further creatures – M.U.T.O.s, as the film calls them, which stands for massive, unidentified, terrestrial objects – affords Edwards and his special effects artists the chance to wreak apocalyptic havoc on multiple fronts.
In a scene at Honolulu Airport, as Ford races home to be with his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and four-year-old son, there is a single panning shot of the runway, filmed from within the terminal’s fish-tank-like observation lounge, that contains more chaos than it seems possible could fit on a single screen – and in a stroke of mischief, Edwards cuts away just as you’ve begun to soak it in.
The film indulges in this kind of foreplay throughout, teasing out carnage like candy-floss – at least until the sustained sugar-rush of a final act, when Godzilla and friends converge on San Francisco for a grand showdown under a sky of gold and coal, and by the end of which, in a careless oversight on the monsters’ part, the odd low wall appears to have been left standing.
The action, while tense and vivid, lacks the casual malice of the Transformers series, and there are moments to make fans of the Fifties and Sixties-vintage films chirp for joy. As for the film’s star, the future now seems hopeful enough: emboldened by the success of this one-off comeback gig, might Godzilla now ring up Gamera and Mothra, reminisce about the good times, maybe suggest meeting up for a jamming session – knock over a skyscraper or two, see if the magic’s still there? After two exhilarating hours of this, you hope so. Godzilla: the Credible Franchise restarts here.
(If anything, when the film introduces a plot-thread about absent fathers, the Spielberg-homaging start to feel a touch schematic. But hey: these are legitimate ways to build empathy into a special-effects film. Let’s not be picky.)
At the story’s heart is Bryan Cranston as Joe Brody, a man who could give Close Encounters’ Roy Neary a run for his paranoia. Brody works at the Janjira nuclear plant near Tokyo – more than shades of Fukushima, here – where strange, seismic activity causes a tragic accident.
Brody’s hunch is that the Japanese government are covering something up, and he turns amateur sleuth; years pass and he’s eventually arrested for trespassing on the sealed site. His half-estranged son Ford, a young soldier played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is summoned by the U.S. Embassy to set him straight. Instead, Brody convinces him to come on a second trip to the restricted zone. Surprise! Crazy Pop was right.
Godzilla himself, who arrives on the scene soon after, is a respectful updating of the original Toho beast: sleek and crocodilian in the water, but a terrifying klutz on land, with a slump-shouldered waddle that may suggest, to anyone who has seen Disney’s animated version of The Jungle Book, a 350-foot-tall and poisonously hungover Baloo.
Besides, the secret is now more or less out that this is not a one-monster show. The arrival of further creatures – M.U.T.O.s, as the film calls them, which stands for massive, unidentified, terrestrial objects – affords Edwards and his special effects artists the chance to wreak apocalyptic havoc on multiple fronts.
In a scene at Honolulu Airport, as Ford races home to be with his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and four-year-old son, there is a single panning shot of the runway, filmed from within the terminal’s fish-tank-like observation lounge, that contains more chaos than it seems possible could fit on a single screen – and in a stroke of mischief, Edwards cuts away just as you’ve begun to soak it in.
The film indulges in this kind of foreplay throughout, teasing out carnage like candy-floss – at least until the sustained sugar-rush of a final act, when Godzilla and friends converge on San Francisco for a grand showdown under a sky of gold and coal, and by the end of which, in a careless oversight on the monsters’ part, the odd low wall appears to have been left standing.
The action, while tense and vivid, lacks the casual malice of the Transformers series, and there are moments to make fans of the Fifties and Sixties-vintage films chirp for joy. As for the film’s star, the future now seems hopeful enough: emboldened by the success of this one-off comeback gig, might Godzilla now ring up Gamera and Mothra, reminisce about the good times, maybe suggest meeting up for a jamming session – knock over a skyscraper or two, see if the magic’s still there? After two exhilarating hours of this, you hope so. Godzilla: the Credible Franchise restarts here.
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