Is its name Godzilla or Gojira?

This Memorial Day I spent my day being suckered into watching Godzilla, along with the other nine million losers who went to see it on its opening weekend.  On another note, I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past… Or is it X Men: Days of Future Past?  Anyway, I went to see the new X-Men movie just two days earlier, but suffice it to say that that showing was not sold out, but I’m told it still made more than ninety million dollars as well.  I went with a buddy when I saw it.  He wasn’t nearly as cynical as I was and was thoroughly enamored with the CGI destruction extravaganza.  He did finally show some cynicism when Godzilla started projectile vomiting blue fire.  But I’ll get back to that later after I give an obligatory synopsis of the movie.  Shouldn’t take too long; not much plot to the movie.

Godzilla opens when two scientists find the skeletal remains of some huge, long dead animal that had apparently been killed by parasites that had laid some eggs in the process.  Of course, one of the eggs had already hatched, spawning the evil Godzilla-esque, winged monster, which conveniently makes its way to the protagonist’s work place; a nuclear power-plant.  45 minutes of exposition reveal that the beast wants to mate with another of its kind, which there conveniently is, kills off the protagonist’s father, tells us that the bad beasties feed on radioactivity (they’re radioactive, radioactive) and gives us a lot of build-up to the Godzilla reveal.  The two MUTO (the bad beasties) converge at San Francisco, which conveniently happens to be the protagonist’s home, destroying Las Vegas in the process for no other reason than to destroy Vegas and crashing through a lot of jungle and leveling Honolulu.  The two MUTO get to San Francisco, lay their eggs and get their butts handed to them by Godzilla, all while the protagonist looks on, conveniently not getting hit by any rubble.

Godzilla really is more of a disaster film than anything else.  While the monsters are obviously much more impressive than anything else in the film, the people in charge decided to focus instead on the characters, revolving the plot around ex-military lieutenant Ford Brody, his wife Elle, and Godzilla scientist Ishiro Serizawa, cutting to some random military squad when some “creature violence” is needed.  The writers bring in plot devices like a kid who gets stuck on a train, separated from his parents when the MUTO attacks.  There also several scenes of Elle working at the hospital, (she’s a nurse) bringing in more disaster film themes.  That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have its fair share of monsters.  The audience gets its eyeful of mayhem and destruction between the annihilation of a forest, the destruction of Honolulu, the destruction of Las Vegas and the leveling of San Francisco.

Unfortunately, Godzilla falls short of any plausibility.  It’s not just that there are giant monsters running around demolishing huge cities; I can get over that if I’m watching a movie where giant monsters are supposed to be running around destroying our favorite (or least favorite) cities.  I can even get over the fact the Godzilla is a nice monster while the MUTOs are evil monsters.  However, I can’t abide such implausibility as:

- Ford surviving a five-hundred foot jump off of a bridge into a fast-flowing river without so much as a scratch on his person.

- Ford surviving the explosive train crash caused by the angry MUTO.

- The scientists who found the MUTO eggs not destroying them on sight but rather experimenting on them.

- The military being stupid enough to think that they could nuke a monster that feeds off of radioactivity alone.

- The military being stupid enough to launch missiles at Godzilla while he’s right next to the golden gate bridge and there are still civilians on it.

- The military being stupid enough to close and blockade the Golden Gate Bridge while there are still civilians on it, most of whom are children

- The winged MUTO being impaled by a large metal beam sticking out of a building but not being affected by the hundreds of other building it had flown into headfirst.

- The main characters not once being hit by rubble in the entirety of the film, even though whole cities had been leveled.

- Godzilla suddenly having the spontaneous ability to projectile vomit a stream of blue fire at his enemy.

- Godzilla surviving being crushed underneath a falling skyscraper-esque building.

- The flammable liquid that Ford dumps on the ground by the MUTO egg sac suddenly exploding into a giant ball of fire.

- The people in Honolulu being able to outrun the colossal tsunami caused by Godzilla getting out of the water.

- Ford living in the exact same cities the two MUTOs are traveling toward and having a father who happens to have worked at the power plant when the first MUTO settled there and who happened to be the only one who realized that the two MUTOs were communicating.

- Why aren’t the streets of these cities covered in corpses and dead bodies?  Surely there were some people who died during the MUTO attacks.  I’m pretty sure the only official deaths in the movie are Ford’s father and the two MUTOs.

I have to commend Godzilla for its visual design.  It often sets a scene in dim lighting with a dark background while also incorporating highlights of color (usually red) through red flares or Chinatown red balloon thingies or red overhead lights, etc.  The MUTOs fell a little short of my expectations, looking like they had just stepped out of Pacific Rim.  Godzilla himself looks great: gigantic, menacing, and intimidating.  That is, he looks gigantic, menacing, and intimidating until he stands up and starts fighting another monster.  Godzilla's fighting style pretty much consists of pushing the enemy down and then stepping on them.  It’s not nearly as interesting as robots slugging and stabbing monsters in Pacific Rim.  The CGI chaos is appropriately vivid and exceeds expectations, worthy of comparison to the Transformers films and Avengers. 

The audio design was extremely well done too.  Everything from the roars to pounding music  perfectly compliments the visuals.  The soundtrack, composed and conducted by Alexandre Desplat, pairs beautifully with the rest of the sounds of the film bringing in deep drums and loud horns to pair with the calls and roars of the giant beasts the story revolves around.  It plays off the suspense, peril, or action as the occasion calls for, bringing in different tempos or instruments to fit in with the scene.  The sound, projected all about you in the theater, really immerses you in the movie, no 3D glasses required.  Each scene, the combination of lighting, visual effects, sound and music all build up to great design and execution, quite possibly being the highlight of the whole movie.

All in all, Godzilla was an entertaining movie and a good way to spend an afternoon free of school.  Honestly I’m torn between recommending this movie and not recommending it.  I would say it’s not worth the $10.50 to see in theatres, but if I were to recommend it at all, I would tell you to go ahead and see it on the big screen with loud music and big special effects.  I suppose if you’re a big monster movie fan you should go see it, anyone else I would recommend buy a giant TV from the Costco and then return ten days later, after you’ve seen it.  What?  That’s what everyone does for the Superbowl!!! 

Godzilla, as seen projectile vomiting a stream of blue flame