Having never been a fan of the original Japanese monster movie series, I didn't bring any fanboy expectations or anticipation into Gareth Edwards 2014 big budget summer flick GODZILLA.
I had probably been more excited to see the mega budget 1998 version with Matthew Broderick, which turned out to be an ill-conceived disappointment.
Director Edwards makes a ton of smart moves here. By casting superior actors like Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche, he creates characters you have a stake in well before our mega monsters make their appearance.
Cranston is Joe Brody, who loses his wife Sandra (Binoche) early in the film in a flashback to 1999 and a Nuclear reactor disaster on Japan's coast.
Moving quickly to present day, Joe is obsessive about finding the truth of what happened that day. His son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) a Naval officer, must travel quickly to Japan to bail his father out of trouble.
With father and son at the site of the disaster years before, a series of huge seismic events heralds the emergence of prehistoric creatures bent on the destruction of the planet.
When the biggest of the creatures (Good God its Godzilla!!) arrives on land, Joe & Ford begin to realize that the creature may be the only thing that can save them.
The special effects are fantastic.
We are a very long way from a dude in a rubber suit smashing cardboard buildings, which seemed to be the sole focus of the original films.
Hilarious as those scenes were, they carried none of the gravitas of the 2014 scenes, which are so well executed, you will believe everything you are seeing.
There are tsunamis, massive earthquakes and destruction on a grand scale, all set to a beautiful action score by Alexandre Desplat.
Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco all have some serious rebuilding to do.
One thing that raises GODZILLA above many other films of the genre is its insistence in strong acting from the entire cast. Ken Watanabe is very good as a scientist trying to convince people that Godzilla may be on our side, David Strathairn is excellent as the war mongering Admiral with a whole lot of fire power and Elizabeth Olsen is very good as Ford's young wife.
The creatures are excellent and believable and Godzilla is the best among them, breathing some serious firepower out of those massive jaws.
It says something about the creativity behind the film that my favorite scene is a dialogue-free sequence in which the military does a high altitude free fall jump into the middle of San Francisco where Godzilla is battling massive creatures. The camera goes inside the helmet of Ford as he dives. All you hear is his breathing, all you see is what he sees as he falls toward the city from incredible heights.
As he passes the battling creatures on his way down, you feel their scale and the danger of what he is falling into, first hand. Red smoke tracers off the divers heels create some amazing imagery.
The entire Halo jump is set to the haunting strains of Gyorgy Ligeti's "Requiem". Film buffs may remember the same piece being used effectively in Kubrick's 1968 landmark sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey". It's effect here is a perfect blend of visuals and sound.
Like the rest of GODZILLA, it's much smarter than I expected going in.
This big old monster gets an A.
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