"Godzilla" review

The King of the Monsters, Godzilla, is celebrating his 60th birthday this year, and seeing how he's been absent from the screen for a decade (his last movie was 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars, itself an anniversary celebration), it's about time he's made a return to theaters. His new film is crafted by the American studio Legendary and the British director Gareth Edwards rather than his native Toho, but thankfully, it's turned out a hell of a lot better than the last time foreigners got ahold of Japan's beloved beast.

In 1954, a secret nuclear test in the Pacific goes horribly, unimaginably awry: it inadvertently awakens a 1,000-year-old monster named Godzilla. An organization called MONARCH is hastily formed and spends the better part of 45 years trying to kill

Fast-forward to 1999. Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) has been called to investigate a mine in the Philippines, where an unprecedented discovery has been made inside: An impossibly huge skeleton, buried underground, alongside two giant eggs. One of the eggs is intact- but one of them has hatched. As Serizawa exits the mine, he suddenly notices a huge trail leading from the egg and emptying out into the ocean. Meanwhile, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche), two researchers at the Janjira nuclear power plant, are on duty the day that a tremendous earthquake suddenly strikes without warning. The earthquake destroys the plant, killing Sandra and sending Janjira into ruin, leading it to be quarantined.

Fifteen years later, Joe's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now an adult, a Navy officer living in San Francisco with his wife Elle and son Sam, but Joe is still living in Japan, searching desperately for an answer to the Janjira incident- which he is convinced was not an earthquake. After his latest attempt to break into the fenced-off plant gets him thrown in jail, Ford travels to Tokyo to bail him out, and to try and convince him to come home- but instead, his father ropes him into another break-in attempt, where they are once again caught and taken to a secret location inside the plant. There, they meet Serizawa, who has been working with MONARCH to study a mysterious chrysalis that has appeared in Janjira's ruins. Practically the moment they arrive, the chrysalis hatches, revealing a monster known as MUTO (Massive Unindentified Terrestrial Organism). The MUTO destroys the facility and flies off in the direction of San Francisco, where it will meet its mate (which has broken out of a facility in Nevada) and reproduce, populating the world with hundreds of gigantic beasts that will surely crush all of civilization. The US Navy plans to destroy San Francisco with a nuclear bomb, killing millions but hopefully killing the beasts along with them, but Serizawa says the plan is doomed. He believes that only one thing can save the Earth: Godzilla.

In light of the much-loathed 1998 film, which had absolutely nothing in common with Godzilla beyond having a large lizard monster that attacks a city, it seems as though the team at Legendary went through some kind of checklist of everything a real Godzilla movie has to have, and followed it to the letter- for better, and for worse. Godzilla has nearly every time-honored tradition for the series: a multinational scale, political tensions, family conflict, all-knowing scientists clashing with the bullheaded military, a humanity that's helpless and defenseless at the feet of the kaiju, and that awesome moment when our heroes realize that the world's only hope rests on the King. Classic Godzilla moments make their return: the MUTOs lay siege to San Fran's Chinatown just so we can get the requisite pagoda-smashing shot, Godzilla's iconic atomic breath returns (the scene where he uses it is probably the best part of the whole movie), and once Godzilla [spoiler!] emerges victorious, he triumphantly dives back into his home in the sea, to lie in wait until he's needed again. Just about the only thing that's missing is Akira Ifukube's iconic theme music, but the new score by Alexandre Desplat is so stirring, intense, and unsettling - and so unlike the bombastic feel of the classic score - that it's hardly missed.

Unfortunately, in holding onto all of the good, Legendary has also inadvertently clung onto the bad. Godzilla keeps with the series' common flaws of having too many characters, hokey dialogue, poorly-done drama, subplots that go nowhere, scenes that drag on, and pretentious fauxlosophical talk.. The subplot with Ford's family, for one, rings entirely hollow. He's only seen together with them for about two minutes before he's called to bail Joe out, and following this, their further appearances are sporadic, add nothing to the plot, and seem to be put in just to make sure we don't forget they exist. Neither Elle nor Sam are ever put in any real danger - even when Godzilla and the MUTOs descend upon San Fran, they're always far away and out of trouble - and it's especially aggravating how the film constantly feels the need to interrupt an awesome monster fight to show us their bland reactions to it. I've heard some other critics lodge similar complaints of blandness against Ford, but personally, I like him well enough- he's a good enough example of your standard "all-American soldier", and he performs enough cool and heroic acts to stay in our good graces. It's true, however, that he's not the most interesting character in the film, and he indeed hogs the spotlight from Ken Watanabe's much cooler Dr. Serizawa. Serizawa is introduced at the film's very beginning, before Ford even makes his first appearance, as someone with a mysterious personal interest in Godzilla (which certainly fits a character with that name: "Ishiro"= Ishiro Honda, Godzilla's creator, and "Serizawa" = Daisuke Serizawa, hero of the original 1954 movie), and he's later established to be the son of a Hiroshima victim, but none of his depths are ever explored. We continue to see his obsession with Godzilla - whenever Big G shows up, he's more interested in catching a glimpse of his than in saving himself, and he's always braying about how only Godzilla can take down the MUTOs - but it's never explained why he's so fixated. Certainly, his boring partner Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) doesn't seem to find him quite so compelling.

I'm not even getting into all of the other characters that are underused, but frankly, I think I've said enough. Because, like all the other Godzilla movies, compelling character drama is not what you came here to see, is it? No. I know what you want to know. You want to know: does Godzilla look cool?

Well, he does, friends. Oh my god, does he look freaking cool.

The film takes the Jaws route of not showing Big G until the timing is just right. (Sure, we've already seen his face on all of the posters and trailers, not to mention the last 28 movies, but that's another matter.) The buildup is amazing: for the first 45 minutes or so, only his presence is felt, as we witness the destruction he brings, but never do we see him (in contrast with the MUTOs, who we see clearly and often). Then, as Serizawa is brought in to brief Ford on the monster, we finally learn his name and history, and watch his giant spines break through the waters off the coast of Honolulu. Cut to Honolulu on land, where the male MUTO has a helpless airport under his power, smashing planes left and right and creating a huge fireball- but then the flames clear, and an enormous foot, dwarfing the entire airport, lands on the ground. A slow panning shot follows up his body until we finally see his face, and at long last, he lets out that immortal roar. (I have to admit, this part got me so excited that I actually roared right along with him in the theater.)

Now, the big monster fights we want to see unfortunately take a long while to get going (Godzilla's awesome reveal is immediately followed by - ugh - a scene of Elle and Sam watching the fight on TV), but once they do, they're astonishing. The MUTOs are merely decent monsters - scary enough, but rather generic, and it'd have been nice to see some familiar foes like Rodan or Anguirus instead - but their fight with Godzilla leaves all sins forgiven, for it is the stuff of dreams. There's more destruction, punching, explosions, decimation, and devastation in this one final battle scene than there's been in several past Goji movies, combined. Perhaps it goes without saying, since this film has the limitless possibilities of CGI at its disposal while previous films had to make do with guys in big suits, but it's easily the best giant monster fight of all time.

At the end of the day, the new Godzilla is essentially the ultimate Godzilla flick- the paper-thin characters, lopsided human-to-monster ratio, and goofy script all still remain, but when it comes to big, boisterous, battling behemoths, it's unparalleled. If you want to see cities get wrecked by huge monsters fighting each other - and who doesn't? - no movie's ever done it better than this.