Godzilla (2014)

Unlike this movie, I will keep my review short and sweet.


I did not like Godzilla (2014).

To be honest, my hopes were not that high to begin with. When I first saw that trailer where they jump out of the plane, I thought they were holding back on the themes of the movie and only showing us a spectacle.
The more I watched and read though, the more excited did I become and this morning I was actually really looking forward to this movie.

Now, an hour after the movie ended, I regret spending all that money and time on such a boring movie.

So, why didn't I like it? Well, to begin with, Godzilla barely appears for the first 90 minutes. Instead we have to look at this weird M.U.T.O (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) thing that looks like the lovechild of Clover and one of those spider monsters from Starship troopers.

But, any good creature feature is never actually about the creatures, it's about the humans trying to survive. Too bad that all the characters were portrayed as bland, faceless clichés that had basicly no redeeming qualities. The only good actors were Juliet Binoche and Bryan Cranston, but they only get about 20 minutes of screentime...combined.

Well, so they failed with the human aspect, there is at least a lot of monster fightscenes to enjoy. Sorry, not really.
There is of course one big epic fight that takes place in a burning San Fransisco, but the camera constantly cuts away from the action and continues to focus on the stonefaced humans. It's like they are trying to make the movie out to be this epic drama about love and undying loyalty and therefore only using the monsters as some kind of deus ex machina to drive the story forward. That leaves us with a monster movie with very little monster action, and no human protagonist that we care about.

So what was good then?
The scope and scale of the movie was good. One of the first scenes show this massive quarry where thousands of little people scurry about and you get the feeling, right away, that this film is going to be big.
The monsters are also gigantic, and when they slam each other into buildings, it looks really cool. The sound however doesn't...sound at all.

When you think of Godzilla, the first thing that pops into your mind is booming footsteps and deafening roars. For a 300 feet lizard, Godzilla is an excelent sneaker. Rarely do the ground shake from his footsteps and when he roars you are not really blown away by the awesone force. Not even when all three monsters tear each other apart do we get a cacophany of screams and explosions. I don't know if the director was trying to go the realistic way and make all the sounds very distant, because there are scenes where Godzilla is right behind our hero and you can't hear a thing. It's almost as if they forgot to add the sound effects in some scenes.

I promised I would keep this short and sweet, and I am a man of my word.

All in all, Godzilla was a gigantic failiure on almost every point. To watch this movie is a waste of your time and money. You would get a lot better bang for your buck if you watch the original Godzilla or Cloverfield instead.


Godzilla? More like Borezilla.

Cloverfield

New York must be one of the most disaster stricken cities ever. King Kong, Several alien invasions, The green goblin, Magneto, warriors, Godzilla, Cosmo Kramer and of course the monster known only as Clover.

To say that Cloverfield is a better monstermovie than Godzilla (1954) is tantamount to blasphemy, but if I have to be honest, I have to say that I like Cloverfield more.

It is not because of the special effects or some age thing. Cloverfield wins purely pn pacing. Where Godzilla gets stuck for long periods of time in some kind of Story vacuum. The relationships between the characters becomes its own little movie within the monstermovie.

In Cloverfield, the relationship between the protagonist and the damsel in distress becomes the catalyst that keeps the movie going. The monster becomes this unbeatable force wich our hero is willing to cross paths With to save the one he loves.

Where Monsters was basicly a tragic love story with monsters in it, and Godzilla was a monstermovie with a love triangle in it, Cloverfield trancends genre perfectly and uses the monster to further the human story.

I also love the direction, specifically in the first act where they are all at the party. It is not often that a movie manages to involve the extras and make them feel like integral characters in the universe of these four main characters. The way our leads casually interacts with a core group of extras and how they are impemented into the procedings of the party makes it seem as though these people are more than just background.

If there is one thing I initially did not like, it eas the fact that the movie is a "found footage" movie. That medium had, at the time, been over saturated with bad movies and it felt like an easy way to lure in the crowd by saying "yeah, come see Cloverfield. We are just as cool as all those other movies". It felt loke they drank to much of the Hollywood Kool-aid, but in the end They use it to their advantage and it becomes one of the better "found footage movies" to date.

Cloverfield wasn't just a good movie though, it was a intriguing concept. The way they used viral marketing to build upon the mystery sorrounding the monster, months before the movie premiered.
There were the fictional company Tugrauto, who were suspected of awakening the monster with their deep sea exploration. Videoblogs, articles and rumors all created to build upon the mystery and made it almost as fleshed out as some world building fantasy novels.

All this, with the movie as its centerpiece, made Cloverfield become so much more than just 90 minutes of explosive fun. It became one of my favourite multimedia experiences ever.

Godzilla (1998)

14 years ago, a bolt of lightning cuts through the sky and we see a Japanese fishing vessel powering through the stormy sea. Something bleeps on the radar, the captain takes one look and sounds the alarm. Gojira is here.


The 1998 re-make/re-boot was the first Godzilla movie to be produced by an American studio. In fact, it was the first Godzilla to be produced by a non Japamese company ever, and the initial hype pointed towards something awesome.
Thus was the first Godzilla I ever saw and so I tend to get a little biased when talking about it, but I think we can all agree that this is not a good movie. Even I can say that after watching it yesterday for the first time in over 10 years.

Bad as it may be, it isn't the worst Godzilla movie I've ever seen, that prize goes to Godzilla vs Megalon.

The story actually have a few great points. Like the fact that Godzilla is not in New York to destroy it, he is looking for a good place to nest and we just happened to be in the way.
If the original Godzilla was natures way of getting back at humanity, this godzilla was a product of our arrogance against nature. That almost works better in some ways. He is a generally not aggeessive against humans unless we provoke him and the only reason we see him as a threat is because he is bigger than us.

In that way it plays better on our innate fear of what we cannot control than the original, but...

That is all it does well. The rest of the movie is more or less a disaster. Very fitting since it is the master of disaster himself who both wrote and directed it. None other than Roland Emerich.

The acting is flat and stiff from almost every major actor/actress, the only real exception is Doug Savant as the stuttering Sgt. O'neil and Hank Azaria as news camera man "Animal"

But the worst part of re-watching this debaucle was, except having your childhood beliefs smashed by your own adult sense of critisism, is seeing how badly it has aged. Where the effects in the original still had some dramatic impact, the 1998 version did not wow me at all. The monster looked downright horrible in some scenes.

It only makes it worse when you look at The lost world, a movie that came out the year before and still looks convincing today.

Godzilla 1998 was by all means a failiure, but it doesn't deserve all the hate it recieved. It wasn't the worst Godzilla ever and the franchise had by that time already started to fade away. There aren't that many good Godzilla movies at all if we're going to be brutally honest. The American just had the misfortune to give us false hope and therefore become a scape goat for past sins.

Monsters

Gareth Edwards. The man responsible for the rebirth of the king of monsters, has actually already made a monster movie. The aptly named "Monster".

It is based solely on that movie (since it was his directorial debut) that they placed their full trust in his hands, concerning the re-boot of this much beloved franchise. So, was this "Monsters" any good?


The short version. Naaaah...

The long version. In a movie called Monsters you would expect some monsters, but for the very brief 89 minutes this movie goes on, you get to see four monsters. What the hell man?

The title is a bit misleading though. It isn't reffering solely to monstrous creatures from space, it is trying to ask the question "who are the real monsters?"

The idea is a classic zombie movie idea, you know. In a zombie invasion, your worst enemy is not the zombies, but the humans around you. It is a very good premise for a monster movie but very little is ever said about either human or monster in this. There are a few short scenes where the humans are depicted as kind of bossy and empirical, but not more than in real life. And the monsters are barely in the movie, so, building an opinion as to wether or not they are the bad guys becomes impossible.

Something tells me that this was a short film from the beginning. The script simply doesn't stretch far enough to keep you watching for 90 minutes and that is very sad, because Monsters show so much potential. It has a well thought out backstory and some very beautiful photography. The script, however, focuses on the lovestory between the two protagonists. It is always to get the focus of the main plot for a while and develop the characters, but in this one, focus is completely taken of the plot and placed on the character for the entire movie. The few times they actually discuss the monsters, and the governments way of controlling the situation, it becomes slightly askew. Since either person doesn't seem interested in the politics sorrounding the monsters it gets a little unnatural to hear the talk about it.

The love story is good though. A woman who is not sure if she is still in love with the man she is about to marry. The man who has a son but he can't tell him he is his father, these two character travel through the jungle and get to know each other and digs deeper into their on soul as the journey takes them deeper into "the quarantine zone".

The monsters, what monsters? Oh yeah, there are som creatures in the quarantine zone, but they aren't important.

Like I said in the beginning, a movie called Monsters should have a lot more monsters in it. This could might have been a story of two people traveling through a war torn Irak. The creatures become deriviative, and the charaters become derivative as well, since all you do is wait for that monster to appear.

Godzilla (1954)

Godzilla is a prehistoric monster Asleep on the bottom of the sea, he/she is awakened by mans desire for power and infuriated by our love for pyrotechnics.

Re-watching the Japanese original, this isn't just the explanation as to where Godzilla comes from, but also a perfect metaphor for the excsistence of the entire franchise.

Now that a new Godzilla movie is here, I Take a look at the movies that led to this moment and What we can learn from the past.


The sea is stirring. A fishingboat Cuts theough the waves. On deck, the mood is good, the sailors play games and sings. Then, something happens. A bbright light appeares beneath the surface and in a matter of seconds, the boat is engulfed in flames.

More and more boats get attacked and soon it becomes clear that this is not something natural. Then, something happens on the island of Odo. A giant monster appears, the elders call it Godzilla...

To watch the original Godzilla today is kind of bittersweet. It is a wonderful movie that tackles the issue of nuclear weapons with little to no discretion, much like the original Scarface went after organised crime.
While the message and moral of the story is still pretty easy to re-shape and attach to any major issue to day, the same can't be said about the pacing of the movie. It takes the better part of an hour before we even get to glimpse the monster, and then it is ever so slightly that if you blink you will miss it. The first proper "Godzilla walks in and fucks everything up" Scene happens when there is less than 30 minutes left. In todays movies we are used to a slow burn, because the movies of today are almoat always over two hours long. There are however limits to the exposition, Lone Ranger for instance. Two hours of practicly nothing and then a finale with less excitement than a funeral. But I'm getting sidetracked here, what I'm saying is that the tempo of 1950:s cinema was completely different than it is today and that is Godzillas one major drawback.

The same cannot be said about the special effects. Sure, they look very aged and a guy in a rubber suit feels more comedic than terrifying, but at the same time I found my self saying Things like "wow" and "damn". The scenes of a burning Tokyo with Godzillas sillhouette against the flames is very effective and still looks awesome.

When re-watching any old movie it always comes down to how well it has aged. Some movies are timeless and never age, like The Evil dead and A shot in the dark, that probably never will grow old, and then there are movies that are almost unwhatchable. The original The hills have eyes is a perfect example of a movie that hasn't aged well at all.
Godzilla falls somewhere in between, the story is still some what relevant and the special effects work, more on the symbolistic plane than on the technical one, but the pacing and directing falls shprt and the movie gets bogged down by lengthy scenes of people looking at monitors and talking into radios. Plus the love triangle sidestory does not transfer into modern times, not because we don't have those today but because is slows down an already slow movie. But just like the titular Kaiju, Godzilla is an immortal force that we will never be able to destroy, and 60 years from now, Godzilla will still be the king of monsters.