Metaphor monster rises again from the depths
Where do monsters come from? Where else but inside the radioactive core of the subconscious, where in the blink of an eye, we can fabricate beasts more fearsome than any pixel pusher could dream of creating in a decade.
Gareth Edwards understands the importance of digging into the deepest recesses of the viewer’s imagination, which he proved in his 2010 film Monsters, where he delayed the beast’s big reveal until the final act.
In that auspicious debut, most of the suspense came through mood and Edwards’s uncanny ability to pull us through the wormhole of our own mind through a sense of isolation.
Alone with our fears, we imagined the very worst and were ecstatically terrified.
Edwards tries the same in this rebirthing of Godzilla, but for all his best efforts to give it weight, the movie floats to the surface.
Part of the buoyancy is the result of the franchise’s bulk containerload of plastic toys and B-movie camp: It’s a giant Japanese lizard, after all. The rest is the result of a lightweight characters — at least on the human side.
Despite a truly inspired opening 30 minutes, which includes an evocative nuclear-era montage overlaid with redacted 3D credits, promptly followed by Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche on the big screen to give us confidence for the journey, Edwards fails to keep his eye on character.
He creates a wonderful emotional cliff for our central hero, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but he never pushes him to the edge.
At the top of the Vancouver-shot film, Ford is just a little boy living in Japan with his parents, both nuclear technicians at the local reactor.
When his dad Joe (Cranston) notices strange pulses emerging at predictable intervals, he knows something isn’t right and wants to shut down the reactor. His profitminded bosses do not listen. Tragedy ensues.
Fifteen years later, Ford is a grown man fighting for the U.S. military as a bomb-disposal specialist when the same signals reappear.
Everyone thought the first pulses came from an earthquake, but they were wrong. The pulses were electro-magnetic gongs emitted by ancient scaly lizards looking to communicate.
As survivors of the socalled earthquake years earlier, the remaining members of Ford’s family may be able to help authorities with information.
The format of these films essentially forbids anyone from doing the sensible thing because the Godzilla story is a cautionary tale about consequences.
In Ishiro Honda’s 1954 original, the big lizard was the product of atomic testing — the modern Frankenstein result of science and technology gone awry. Edwards makes a few nods to tradition. He gives us science types desperately trying to warn stubborn idiots about imminent dangers, but then he has no choice but to uncork his monsters.
Yes: Monsters, plural, because Max Borenstein’s screenplay digs into Godzilla history to unearth an old nemesis — a giant radiation-sucking mosquito-like parasite eager to mate.
The beasts want our nuclear arsenal to feast on, the humans want to survive, and soon, the movie races toward a grand battle finale in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
Edwards has a tough time pulling it all together in the final scenes because our emotional connection to the material is upstaged by the monsters, and monsters will never be able to be as sympathetic as a human.
The movie never lays a giant lizard egg, but the emotional side remains unhatched.