The Case for Nuclear Nightmares

Godzilla can be done badly.  Hollywood has proved it before.  A film about a giant mutated sea monster that comes to save humanity from its radioactive hubris should be about big beasties battling it out and destroying skyscrapers whilst puny humans look on in shock and awe.  Kind of like Man of Steel, except with bigger creatures battling it out, and with a lot less yawning as the battle wages on… and on… and on…

It starts off small, Juliette Binoche lighting up the screen all too briefly, and the Bryan Cranston goes all Walter White as a nuclear power plant manager forced to deal with life altering events.  He doesn’t cope by making crystal meth though; he goes slightly nuts trying to figure out what really happened the day the Japanese nuclear power plant under his care collapsed.

His son, Ford Brody, the older version played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is… well, I suppose a typical Godzilla “main human” (not sure if he can be called a hero) in that he happens to be everything and everywhere that the plot requires.  This time around, he is a bomb disposal expert for the US Army (or was it Navy?), married to a beautiful woman (Elizabeth Olsen) and with an adorable son and living in San Francisco.  He goes to visit his father in Japan, but soon finds himself in the path of (well, he actually tends to lead) a giant flying monster that eats radiation and excretes electro magnetic pulses.

Joining the US Navy on a (presumably) nuclear powered aircraft carrier that (for some reason) is completely unnoticed by the radioactively ravenous Mothra (okay, it is not called that, but that is who “it” is), they set off in pursuit, following its trail of destruction, as it in turn is following Ford as he tries to make his way back to San Francisco… which of course, ends up as the ultimate destination for Mothra, and where the showdown between Mothra and its only “natural” predator, Godzilla, takes place.

Now, while the film looks amazing, the 3D is utterly pointless (the time worked out best) and the storyline itself is incredibly convenient (at best) and stupid (at worst).  The human plans to try and deal with the multiple threats are ridiculous, no one notices anything from the air even though these creatures are hundreds of metres tall and cannot be considered thin, and electronics have very peculiar and inconsistent ways of reacting to EMPs.  And I am pretty sure that a GPS on a boat does not usually give a boat auto pilot options, nor that a slowly moving boat carrying a large nuclear warhead can really get far enough away from the shore to stop the explosion vaporising at least part of the city, much less getting far away to avoid radioactive fallout contamination.

But you know what?  It doesn’t really matter, because Godzilla looks like a man in a rubber suit (great idea!  No Jurassic Park inspired dinosaur like creature here!) and most puny humans just don’t understand natures balance, whereas Godzilla, he does.  The action is easy to follow, well done, awesome even, whilst the military (including a commander with a seriously bizarre haircut) loses all sense of professionalism and experience when faced with the giant creatures before them.

I can’t say that I didn’t find the running time a little on the excessive time, as I did.  Ford’s family are a nice way to see what is going on around the world, but really, I didn’t care whether they lived or died, and was impatient for the credits to start rolling once it looked like the monster battles were at and end. 

But overall, I was quite impressed and quite enjoyed this latest version of Godzilla.  Not quite sure how a sequel would go, but I am curious to find out.

Verdict: Godzilla may be a load of cobblers, but its well done cobblers.  Great special effects, amazing sound, pointless 3D, mostly unengaging humans, destruction (if not necessary death) on a monumental scale.  All good elements, all brought together very well indeed.  7 creatures from our strange radioactive past out of 10.