So first off I need to say that there is a
line down below where you should stop reading if you have not already seen the
new Godzilla. There are spoilers, but it is more than that. I really want you
to go see it, and after many years I have come to the conclusion that most
reviews, even if they do not contain spoilers of actual plot points, really
ruin movies for me. What I want out of a pre-viewing review is some eye witness
testimony as to whether or not the movie is worth my time and money. Often I
get instead intelligent deconstructions of what makes the movie tick which
ultimately colors my own viewing experience.
After I have seen a movie
and I am looking back on the experience, I want criticism; intelligent input
from others that I can agree or disagree with and help expand my understanding
of what I have seen. Most of this blog is formulated in this way because I am
mostly reviewing old movies. The tension between these two points, however, is
implicit in most pop cultural reviews, and has influenced how I am now
structuring my music blog.
So here is my
un-intelligent, pre-viewing review: Go see it. It is very good. If you are the
kind of person who likes monster movies you will at least have a good time. If
you are a fan of the Godzilla series you will likely wet yourself. Fair notice:
I am a fan of Godzilla movies so take that into account.
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Intelligent
commentary follows. There are also spoilers.
Jesus fuck Godzilla is a
nearly perfect movie. I think I nearly creamed my pants when he ripped the
monster’s head off. He did a fucking mic-drop with a severed head. That is
metal.
What is odd is that the
reviews are pretty middle of the road, between 75% and 80% positive on most of
the sites I have seen. Some reviews are particularly harsh, one saying that the
movie was the only thing that could make the 1998 Godzilla look good by
comparison. I think that guy works for The Economist so I guess anything that
isn’t douche guys playing golf is going to be bad to him.
Ok Ben focus.
It is tough to find a concise
way to review a Godzilla movie. The franchise has such a rich history, touching
on so many key aspects of the history of cinema and the globalization of
culture. I think the key thing here is that this movie not only takes its
subject matter seriously, it does it in a way that is respectful to the
Godzilla mythos while simultaneously being the most satisfying modern example
of a monster movie I have seen in the modern era.
Monster movies began, as
a genre, as an offshoot of horror: humanity forced to confront its helplessness
in the world. Very Lovecraftian, in plot if not in prose, but 60 years on there
are a lot of reasons to expect failure. The most obvious reason is that, in the
modern era of cheap CGI, getting audiences to be seriously disturbed by a big
monster is nearly quite difficult. Everyone has big monsters now. Lord of the
Rings had one of the scariest monsters of the century (so far) and it was seen
off by what we were visually convinced was a person the size of a child. More
to the point, with the sci fi channel cranking out a shitty monster movie a
week and even their monsters don’t look half bad, you know we are suffering
from an over-abundance of monster riches.
Audience ennui at CGI
monsters is a real problem for a monster movie. I guess this is obvious but it
goes to such a deep level that I think it bears some elaboration. No matter how
you want to spin your monster movie (sci fi epic, adventure story, classic
horror) the key emotional punch is going to come from the mortal dread we are
supposed to feel at having an animal that is bigger than us that cannot be
controlled. This tension is the fuel that makes any of these plots work. In
your basic action movie it is not enough to have dudes with guns. They need to
be convincingly bad and convincingly threatening. Blue Collar Everyman is not
going to try and stop people who are just holding up a bank. They need to kill
someone and then threaten his family or he will be too cool to care, and the
entire movie falls apart.
By definition, forces of
nature cannot be intentionally cruel, so making them terrifying requires us as
the audience to feel that they represent something so completely out of control
that their undirected energy could realistically kill us and people we love
completely by accident, that such a death is a bad thing, and that their very
existence is sinister and threatens our way of life. Over exposure to giant
monster CGI makes this dread exceptionally difficult to manufacture, meaning no
amount of punchy one liners and shirtless posing by big name stars will
guarantee your typical studio flick profitability.
Nonetheless, we seem to be
in the midst of a monster movie silver age. We are no longer as impressed by
the special effects, but a generation of directors and writers have come a long
that have the desire and know-how to make a good monster movie. It is hard to
set a solid start date, but since 2000 we have seen Sector 9, Super 8,
Cloverfield, and several others that have definitely impressed. I think
Cloverfield was the first concerted attempt to get back to the Frankenstein roots
of the genre. Even if it wasn’t the greatest movie in terms of the plot, it was
a huge improvement on the post Spielberg world of 90s monster flicks.
To delve into what
Cloverfield did, it basically said “Look. Even when you are making ‘Scream 37:
The One Where No One Cares’ you don’t just have a guy in a mask walk in and be
like ‘I’ma kill you I guess.’ We have this whole bang of trick we can use to
build tension. Why are we just having the monster just walking around?” In
other words, reduce monster screen time, bring action to the human and the
individual level, and for god’s sake keep the action going, none of this is new
or revolutionary, but the density of the pacing was amped way up. Sure, this
serves to cover for a lack of true character development, but in this kind of
movie that isn’t necessary. Remember when you learned not all stories need a
moral? Not all stories need character development. What they need is emotional
impact and progression. They have to draw the audience into the world of the
movie, suspend disbelief, and care about what happens. Is this cheap emotional
manipulation? Yes but not everything is Citizen Kane. Sometimes you just need
Mac N Cheese, and sometimes you just need resolution. This is not to say these
movies can’t have wider social implications, but it can’t detract from the
momentum.
The ideal, of course, is
to balance the momentum against the delivery of a good story. I think Super 8 is
probably the best example of such a blissful state, and I am going to return to
it, but I think Pacific Rim is the most interesting in terms of a discussion of
Godzilla. Pacific Rim did not shy away from camp. To the contrary, camp and a
modern approach to pacing in what separates Pacific Rim from Transformers. Both
have shitty, poorly developed non-characters that are tangential to watching
big things punch each other. Transformers dwells on its failing. It invites you
in, makes a big pot of shitty tea that you get to sip and contemplate as the
movie shows you what a terrible person everyone involved in it truly is.
Pacific Rim starts with big things punching things and moves on to more big
things punching things, takes a break for big dudes with big moustaches, there’s
is some gross stuff, and then we are back to robots fighting monsters.
Obviously I would rather watch a good movie, but the movie is competent. It
uses its strengths to hide its weaknesses while you are in the theater, and the
weaknesses only become clear later.
This is more or less what
I expected from the new Godzilla. There is a lot of background to pay homage to
and I expected any modern movie maker who could get money from the studios to
more of less fail in the emotional impact side but cover it up with a big dose
of camp, punching, and Easter eggs for fans. As a Fan I am resignedly ok with
this.
Actually this is not
true. The above was what I was hoping for. The thing that gave me hope. I don’t
want to spend time here discussing the entire history of the Godzilla
franchise, but there are a lot of low points, and the lowest of those low
points came when American studios got involved. Son of Godzilla may be nearly unwatchably
dumb, but it at least is a Godzilla movie, unlike the 1998 movie staring an iguana
on crack, and at least it is not actively racist like the 1956 American reshoot
starring Raymond Burr. When I heard an American studio was taking another stab
at Godzilla I was actually pretty angry. Hadn’t they learned their lesson? But,
one thing led to another, the trailer was good and I learned that the team that
had rebooted Batman was in charge of this one. So I went in with moderate
expectations.
Instead, as the credits rolled,
I turned to my wife and said “that movie was perfect.”
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t
actually think it was perfect, and I should say that there was a fair amount of
fan service, but the movie was a thrill and the Easter eggs were so subtle a
non fan would probably not notice them.
I always feel the need to
moderate expectations and claims in my reviews. We live in a cynical age and I
have cynical friends. I will say that the characters here don’t have a ton of
emotional depth and are obvious archetypes. It is super convenient that the
American bomb squad soldier lead grew up in Japan and manages to luck his way
into being at every important place over the course of the movie’s plot. And
his continual efforts to get home being sidetracked by events might get old,
given the sheer number of times it happens over the course of the movie. But
these weaknesses are usually addressed or covered in a way that makes the in
theater experience seamless.
For example. The protagonist
(whose name I never cared to learn) has an emotionally evocative story arc despite
having the personality of cardboard. Sure, you know he loves Wife because they
tell you he does in a few short scenes involving them trying to have sex, only
to be interrupted by the phone, but the actress (an Olsen apparently. The other
one though.) is convincing and you are never put in a position of going “why
does he care?” Instead it is built into his main personality train and
emotional arc: He is torn between a desire to stay home and be there for his family,
and the duties and responsibilities that will allow him to create a real life
and future for his family. This emotional focus of the movie is created
quickly, quietly, and often while also forwarding the main plot.
In any Kaiju movie the
high point is the monster fights, and this is true here as well, though I think
in a way you might not expect. Though the climactic battle is an intensely
satisfying slugfest, the focus is, as much as possible, on the human scale:
lots of shots of feet and glimpses of the fight in the distance, between
buildings. In the foreground are humans caught up in this event and their attempts
to survive. Though they move around and through debris and rubble thrown off by
the monsters, they do not do so with a grin and sunglasses and a cool soundtrack.
They are actually obstructed by the obstructions, often injured or killed, and
the result is a situation that is confusing and convincing.
Overarching everything is
a vice-like cling to the horror story at the root of the entire plot. Though children
are saved and families reunited, ultimately Godzilla is what saves humanity.
Our efforts at changing events only create situations that the protagonists
ultimately have to work twice as hard to undo. They beat you over the head with
the point, but I think it is refreshing to have an American movie that has such
an overarching theme.
Others may disagree with
my high estimate of this movie, given some of its weaker elements, but
ultimately I have to say that this movie left me quite literally on the front
left edge of my seat. As the credits rolled I realized that I felt the way
people must have felt when they first saw monster movies. I actually felt
scared by a movie about a gigantic monster. Even Super 8 did not deliver that
kind of thrill. Sure, Godzilla is not as good in terms of writing and
characters. The movie delivered on the visual side in a way I have not experienced
in a long time, and I do not mean that they had killer CGI. I mean, they did,
if you care about that kind of thing. I mean that they used the entire length
and breadth of the cinematographic toolset to keep the viewer completely
enmeshed in the things on screen. Every piece of manipulation they could throw
at you, they did. If you think this sounds boring or cliché, I will agree. But it
is meta cliché. They pound the audience with constant manipulation. Its not
like the old days where you would get a beat to appreciate running people, a
beat to see a foot coming down, a beat to see one guy crushed. In this movie
you get a small girl being dragged through a mob of people away from an oncoming
tidal wave while machine gun fire and monster screams go by in the background
all in one beat. They fight tooth and nail, they lie cheat and steal to keep
you completely absorbed in their movie and I think we owe them some credit for
putting in the effort.
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