Godzilla 2014

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.