Remember Jaws? The 70s were simpler, purer times for fans of the monster film genre.
Back then, creature features had a singular monster, tantalisingly teased at in the opening scenes—only for the audience to spend the rest of the film perched in anticipation of the full horror (and pleasure!) of the monster’s complete unveiling.
Suspense, fear, the ability to let the horrors of the mind pre-empt that of the creature itself. No more, with the contemporary shape of our spectacle-driven blockbusters.
Flash-forward to 2014, when not only have we seen the monster in all its enormity (some have even shared their concern at Godzilla’s apparent obesity, be it all in jest) on the film’s poster, but now our monster films are fraught with a collective conscience.
Is it right to depict nature’s creatures as soulless murderers? They have their place in nature, too, right? Their own role to play in balancing the eco-system or maintaining order in the animal kingdom… Even as a vegetarian I find this vapid. This is fiction, and it’s ok for a monster to be, well, monstrous!
The great Godzilla, it would seem, is now a hero of the creature world. At least, this is what the latest incarnation of Japan’s famed beast would have us believe.
The film begins with the discovery of an enormous fossil in the Philippines. No dinosaur, this fossil reveals the existence of something greater, larger. At a nuclear plant in Japan, a disaster occurs—but was it natural?
Billed as an earthquake of epic proportions, a scientist named Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) believes the government is hiding something. His scientific mind tells him to be sceptical, and having lost his wife (a far too fleeting performance by the lovely Juliette Binoche) in the disaster, his life’s purpose is now defined by a relentless search for the truth. And the truth is monstrous.
15 years later, Brody’s son returns to Japan (leaving his young family in San Francisco), to finally bring his father home to both the States and a normal reality. He humours his dad with one final visit to the disaster site, but of course they are not the only ones to return. The pair soon find themselves faced with a monster (billed as a MUTO: a Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), and are recruited by a special team hunting these creatures to capture and kill them.
Enter Godzilla. What follows is a magnificent visual feast that shows off the best of today’s special effects and 3D mastery, in an epic battle that is more monster vs. monster than monster vs. man.
This is an action film, not a horror film—sadly. And as an action film it succeeds in its task. It has left this reviewer wondering: what happened to the kind of suspense that made you jump with fright? Maybe at 60 years of age, Godzilla himself wanted to try something new, but I didn’t.
Once, a Godzilla film would leave us feeling a little uneasy as we tucked up in our beds—now he makes us feel the world is a safer place to be. This just doesn’t sit right with me, but perhaps I too am becoming a bit of a fossil.
As an action film it excels, with a fantastic climax that sees beast vs. beast in all its explosive glory. The sound, the editing, the action, all get top marks. Godzilla has evolved, and so too the genre he lives in.
It’s nothing if not spectacular, so why not judge for yourself?
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn
Rating: M
Runtime: 123mins
Release Date: May 15
Reviewer rating: 3/5