Godzilla
At 60 years ancient, Godzilla been around for roughly half of cinema’s history. Perhaps the best thing about Gareth Edwards’ reboot (America’s second; the fifth overall) is that it excellent wishes the big lizard’s footprints.
“This is not going to be some silly, cheesy Hollywood movie,” Edwards promises on main featurette, Godzilla: Force Of Nature. Instead, awed that “there’s not a better monster, ever,” Edwards nods to Gojira’s heritage via character names, Japanese settings, that iconic roar and even the way that the monster moves, as though there’s still an uncomfortable crease in its rubber-suit skin.
The result is a commendable attempt to grapple with the thematic roots rather than do again Roland Emmerich’s Americanization. The report remains grounded in the original 1954 film’s allegory of nuclear holocaust (the striking credit sequence recasts the Bikini Atoll tests as a Godzilla hunt), but the details are updated to include a Fukushima-style meltdown and a tsunami sequence to rival The Impossible.
His shooting style, too, updates the docu-feel of Ishirô Honda’s classic. There, the aesthetic was faux-newsreel; here, Edwards deploys 24-hour rolling news to add an ironic commentary on events. “I don’t like getting footage of the creatures in a way that would be impossible,” he clarification, forever placing small-scale human drama against a wider context. As in his micro-budget debut Monsters, mankind is merely witness – and hopefully survivor – to the apocalypse.
That’s a smart go; with the monster as the star, this franchise has always struggled to make a worthy human protagonist. The plot struggles to justify the top billing of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s bomb expert, whose John McClane-esque capacity for getting into distress risks the dreaded cheesiness. Yet Edwards shares the tension with a revolving door of art-household heavyweights: Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche make an impact, albeit briefly; Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins stand and gawp; Elizabeth Olsen has even less to do. Often, though, the main character happens to be whoever is standing in harm’s way.
Really, it’s all about Godzilla. Initially, Edwards teases us with one of the slyest pieces of misdirection in years, and some have criticised the film for essentially making the lizard a bit-part player in his own film. Yet it allows the film to build towards the battle royale that the fans have been waiting for. It’s here that he justifies his crown as King of the Monsters, in all his tail-swishing, jaw-breaking, atomic-breathing glory.
It’s a shame, though, that the disc lacks a definitive doc on the creature. Alongside behind the scenes featurettes, the only extra is MONARCH: Declassified, a collection of lovingly pastiched shorts that slightly extend the film’s backstory.
