Godzilla is probably one of the most famous monsters film franchise in both eastern and western industry. Even now I still remember bits and parts from the 1998 Godzilla movie, the one with Matthew Broderick, where Godzilla destroyed New York city.
Because of that, and also because the trailer for this movie, first I thought the new Godzilla movie would have a pretty much similar plot, human finds monster, monster destroys human, city ruined, human kills monster, end of story. I was wrong.
--- SPOILER ALERT ---
This movie opened with a b/w classic 1950s footage of the military attacking some kind of monster with nuclear bomb. After the footage + opening credits, pretty cool, the story moved to a mining area in the Philippines, where the miners and some scientists, namely Dr Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his partner whose name I didn't catch (Sally Hawkins), found a huge fossil and a mysterious thing like a dormant spore.
Meanwhile, there was an intense seismic activity, like an earthquake but not (?? geology stuff, idk) in a nuclear reactor in Japan, where Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra worked. The quake caused a leak in the reactor, so the whole plant must be closed to avoid radiation. Sandra didn't make it out of the place, but Joe did.
15 years later, Joe and Sandra's son, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) was now a navy lieutenant, some sort of a specialist on bomb de-activator. He lived in San Francisco with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and their son Sam. Ford got a call from Japan, informing him that his dad got arrested so Ford flew there to bail his dad out.
Once there, Ford discovered that Joe was still obsessed with the disaster that killed his wife. Joe was sure that it was not a natural disaster, but something else that got covered up. He studied everything about that day, the signals, the patterns, everything. Up to the point where Ford thought that he was crazy.
Joe's obsession lead him and Ford to the quarantined area, where they then got arrested and they found out that the reactor had been reactivated. Turned out, the people at the reactor (Dr Serizawa was there too!!) were keeping a huge unidentified creature there, and apparently the strange activity that occurred 15 years ago was happening once again there. Joe tried to warn everyone there about the electromagnetic pulse pattern he discovered that was somehow similar to the present event.
After a few minutes of Joe screaming and the scientists looking confused, they finally reached the conclusion that the creature was actually feeding off the radiation energy emitted from the reactor. Soon after that, the creature woke up and started destroying everything. Is that the Godzilla?? Nope. This monster looked more like a grasshopper with flat head, and it could fly. Double trouble.
That monster, later called MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), caused a destruction at the reactor, and Joe got killed there. The MUTO flew away, btw. Ford, now sad because he realized his dad was not so crazy after all, then tried to fly back to San Francisco. But he was taken into custody, and sailed to Hawaii along with some military people and also Dr Serizawa's team. Why Hawaii? Because the MUTO was tracked heading there.
On the way to Hawaii, we got everything explained, about the MUTO, about Godzilla, which was actually a larger monster that lived somewhere in deep ocean. Humans had been trying to kill Godzilla for years, covering it with "nuclear testing", but it never worked. Dr Serizawa believed that Godzilla was actually some sort of a force of nature that kept the balance of life. Weird guy this Dr Serizawa. He believed that Godzilla would hunt and stop this MUTO. And surprisingly, it turned out to be true. WHAT?!?!?
After that, another chaos, this time a battle of monster vs monster, and Honolulu was left in ruins. Once again the MUTO flew away, and Godzilla chased after it. It was soon discovered that there was another MUTO, much much much bigger, this time it's a female (again Dr Serizawa called it before anyone else, how???) and this one could not fly. Apparently, MUTO #1 was going to meet up with MUTO #2 to breed. Things escalated quickly, yeah?
Also MUTO #2 was actually from the spore Dr Serizawa found in the Philippines at the beginning of the movie.
The military created a plan to lure all the monsters to the ocean, (which happened to be located near San Francisco, where Ford's family was, cliché) and blast them with this nuclear bomb. Long story short, the plan didn't work, MUTO #2 stole the bomb and created a nest in the middle of SF instead, where she stored her eggs, and let the eggs feed off the energy from the bomb. Clever.
The Military now no longer had the weapon, so they let Godzilla fight the MUTOs, instead of shooting at the monsters. YES. Godzilla is the good guy of this movie, the anti-hero. I didn't expect this at all.
Btw, the bomb stolen by MUTO #2 was still active, so the army must take it back before it exploded and destroyed the whole city. Here, Ford became our hero. He also managed to destroy the nest along the way. Well, typical but okay.
Long story short, finally Godzilla managed to kill both the MUTOs. MUTO #1 was killed by crushing him on a building, and MUTO #2 was killed by Godzilla's atomic breath (??? where does this come from? Why don't you use it earlier and make everything simpler, Zilla???). And then Godzilla went down on the ground as well, looking dead.
At the end, Ford was safe, happily reunited with his family, the city's saved from nuclear destruction, the monsters were dead, humans were alive and all those happy stuffs. One little surprise came after that. Apparently, Godzilla didn't die, just tired. It got back up, and walking slowly to the ocean. And the news were calling him the "savior" of the city. YAY!
--- SPOILER ENDS --
A few things I noticed and liked, from this movie.
- Godzilla being the "good guy" was a really good twist to me. As I said, I expected this movie to be kinds similar to the 1998 vers where Godzilla was the monster, the bad guy. Plus, recently Pacific Rim with all the Kaiju vs Human reaffirming my prediction. Boy, I was wrong. It's a nice difference in Hollywood's monster movie genre, I think. Maybe it's just me, but it's kinda weird but it's impressive how the creators make viewers actually root for the Godzilla even more than for the human heroes. Seriously, during the battles, I was wayyy more concerned when the Godzilla got hurt, then when the humans got hurt haha.
- Also I like how the monsters attacked not only The US, or only the New York city, like typical "battle till destruction" movie (like in The Avengers, aliens wanted to rule the earth but only focused on NYC, lol).
- I like the cinematography of this movie. It had a lot of scenes where viewers were put into the position of the people under attack. The cameras didn't just focus on the hero's (Ford's) point of view. Like, viewers can see the destruction going on through the glass at the Honolulu's airport as if we're in there, or from within the bus on the Golden Gate Bridge, or from within the train that was attacked by MUTO. We did not just get the "eagle" view, and I think it gave a slightly deeper thrilling sensation.
- Special effects and digital animation were cool. I like that the Godzilla looked more like a lizard monster, compared to the 1998 one that looked more like a Dinosaur, imo. The ocean movement, the ruins and debris after the chaos, I think, were even better than Pacific Rim's.
A few things I noticed and don't like, from this movie.
- Characterization. Somehow, even though with all the back stories, it felt like I couldn't actually connect with Ford or Joe or any other characters. Usually, for me at least, viewers should easily "fall" for the main characters in a movie. But this, idk mannn, it feels like all the humans were so shallow, just a "storyteller" that served only to tell viewers about Godzilla and MUTOs. Wasted potentials, I say. Ken Watanabe was usually great, but he spent most of this movie looking off, Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing stone-faced Navy guy, and Bryan Cranston got killed so early. Also no character development.
- Some things were delivered in a weird way, some with no explanation whatsoever. Like, Dr Serizawa, yes he told us about Godzilla being the force of nature that will restore its balance, but how did he know?? Also some of the whole seismic activity connected with electromagnetic pulse, and the whole radiation thing was confusing at first.
- So many clichés. Godzilla's atomic bright blue breath, for those who are familiar with Japanese Godzilla series might have known about this but as someone who's not, that part was a surprise but felt a bit cliché, like saving the best weapon for the last critical moment, how very Japanese's superhero typical. Also the fact that of course the worst part of the battle took place where our hero's family lived. Duh.
Overall, I give Godzilla (2014) 3/5 noise. Enjoyable to see, but not amazing. Good twist, but lack of depth and a bit boring at some parts. The Godzilla itself was cool tho, kudos to the effects dept.
