So, I got talked in to see the latest update of Godzilla Saturday. My littler bro has been a huge Godzilla fan since he was... 6? 24 year a fan of the big green guy, stuck through it even with the horrid 1998 version. He been talking about it since the first trailer aired in 2012.
Anyway, I tagged along and here's my thoughts on how the big guys up date was.
HERE BE MONST...... er... SPOILERS.
HERE BE MONST...... er... SPOILERS.
I haven't followed anything about this new movie, didn't look anything up, really knew nothing about the this movie. So I went in with no exspection. That may have been a mistake.
First, I really loved the opening credits. We get a nice intro into Godzilla and the Monarch organization and the tie in with the atomic bomb "tests". Then we jump to about 15 year in the past, to the Philippines. Here we get introduced to Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his assistant, Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins). These two are here to examine a collapsed uranium mine.... The head of the mine informs them that they had thought they had a huge uranium mine,but when the moved in to dig everything collapsed in to a huge cavern. So everyone gears up and crawls in.... Huh. Guess these guys don't watch too many horrors.
What they find is a skeleton big enough to hold a barn dance in, a dead "cocoon" and a tunnel dug out of the side of with a trail of wreaked jungle leading to the ocean.
Cut to Japan. We get introduced to the Brody family. There is dad, Joe(Bryan Cranston), mom Sandy (Juliette Binoche), and son Ford (CJ Adams). Nice, typical workaholic dad, shy kid, and loving mom. I will give them credit, this is the only scene where we get the whole family together, and it really works. I liked em anyway. Hard to pull that off when you get 5 min of them interacting as a family and that it. Now, the trailers on TV did give a major hint that mom dies horrible, and boy does she. See, its not a typical day... Mom and dad work at a nuclear power plant, and something's going wrong... Really, really wrong. There are unexplained tremors, and Joe is incredibly worried about what it could mean. AS soon as he get to work he send his wife to check on the core, and he tries to figure out what the hell is going on. What going on is hell in a handbasket. Not 15 min in to it and there is a core melt down? Earthquake? all of the above? Oh hey, it's also Joes birthday. Sandy cashes out in a cloud of radioactive steam while Joe watches helpless, and poor son Ford get to see the three cooling towers collapsed from the school. Needless to say therapy is probably in both these guy futcher.
Flash to now. Ford (now played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is all grown up and in the Army, and he's returning home to his family who he hasn't seen in 14 month. He's got an adorable son Sam (Carson Bolde),and a hot wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen)... Now, I gotta qwible... I didn't connect with his family the way I did with Joe and Sandy. I don't know why. But it just wasn't there.
Anyway, before we get to lovey dovey Ford gets a call that he has to go bail out dad for trying to enter the old quarantine zone in Japan.. again. Yeah, dad never recovered, and for 15 years he been spouting crazy theories and trying to prove it was a cover up. Fords pissed that he has to leave home so soon, and he pissed at dad for not letting go. I''l cut to the cashes here... Dad covision his son to go to the old site with him... He want to get some old floppies he made the day of the accident that he is convinced have proof that the earthquakes weren't normal. WHile sneaking around the old abandoned city Joe discovers that the radiation is completely gone. The city should light up like a glow stick.
While sneaking out they get caught and hauled off to a complex that was build over the site of the old reactor..... in the center is a another of those cocoon we saw earlier, but is is clearly not dead. it glowing and pulsing and just being very alive and scary. and we run in to are old friends Dr. Serizawa and Vivienne. See the runaway mine wreak was what caused the reactor to collapse....Apparently these guys eat radiation for food, hence why the radiation is gone. and now it appears to be hatching? They decide that 15 years of just watching it is enough, and now is a good time to fry the sucker. So they pump a huge burst of electric though the thing, and is appressed to die. Ok. ok, it doesn't. It just get really pissed and trashes the place.
Lots of people get stomped, and Joe get hurt bad. The next day, Dr. Serizawa is met by the military, who are taking over trying to find the monster, now called M.U.T.O. They really need him to come along and help them find the critter, but he can take anyone one eh want to help him.... He looks around at all the dead people and then spots Joe and Ford and point to them (I should back up as say he;s aware of Joe theories, and apparently is really interested in what else he has to say). Unfortunately Joe isn't doing to good, and after saying goodbye, crokes......
WHAT.
Ok, maybe I sould have seen that coming, but I gotta be honest. I was kinda pissed. I've never seen Bryan Cranston in anything before that I know of, but I've heard of what a really good actor he is, so I was looking forward to watching him evolve though the movie.
At this point I gotta be honest... I got a little bored. Ford wasn't really connecting with me. We send the next 30 mins or so explaining the science on Muto, but it lost me. Normally I love that stuff, the back story, the legend, but here. Meh. It really didn't pick up for me till we got back to the monsters in Hawaii... Oh yes, it's monsters now. See, When you have Muto, you have the thing that hunts Muto.... Godzilla. Godzilla only does one thing apparently. Hunts Mutos. maybe this movie should have been called Godzilla doesn't care. Dad just died? Godzilla doesn't care. Building full of people in the way? Godzilla doesn't care. Happened to be too close to the beach when the tsunami hits that Godzilla created coming on shore? Godzilla doesn't care.
It's here we have our first epic battle with the two monster. And they do a very good job of wrecking the place.
Of course the cat is out of the bag now, and the whole world know that there be monsters. Of course the Muto gets away, and Godzilla give chase. Where is Muto going? WHy, to find a date, of course. See, remeber that other cocoon that was dead back in the Philippines? Seems it was so radioactive that they stashed it with all our other radioactive junk in the Yucca Mountain.... Yeah.
It hatches, and starts out to find the other (male) Muto. Of course Fords family is in the path of the monster. I gotta say, this kid really has some shitty luck.
Well, the military has a really great idea. See, Mutos are attracted to radiation, right? and Godzilla is attracted to Muto? Lets lure them all out to sea with a big nuke, and blow em to hell! Anyone else see a problem with this plan?
Again things don't go as planed, and the male Muto ends up snatching the now armed and ticking nuke..... And carrying it to the female it what can only be called the most dynamite gift a bug critter has ever given his mate. Now they have to defuse the bomb.
Which involves that HALO jump. Surprisingly that really worked. I was worried form what I saw of it in the trailer that it would be silly, but it really worked.
Of course the bomb can't be defused, so the back up plan it to put it on a boat and send it out to the ocean to blow up. It won't be too much of a stretch at this point to say Godzilla kicks ass and saves the day, would it?
OK, ok, I really am starting to sound like I hate this movie, aren't I? No... I jsut... didn't connect.
There were some beautiful moments. You could also tell how much the last 20 years of disaster weighed heavily on the makers minds. Chernobyl. The tsunami and the nuclear meltdown that followed.
The great thing was though, that wasn't the overriding theme. We fuck up. Guess what. Something worse is out there, and it will eat your lunch. They really could have gone overboard with the we're evil, were destroying everything. But they didn't. These thing have been fight since before we were here, and fuck if they are gonna let us get in the way.
Hosetley.... I'm kinda looking forward to the sequel. No intro, no back story, just bring on the legends.
Because, what's a good story without the monsters?
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