(spoilers abound)
ONE I think a large part of the reason it is being so praised is that visually, the movie is absolutely stunning on any number of levels. This is not only with respect to shot framing – certainly Gareth Edwards’ shot choice in this movie is staggeringly good, and on a visual level this is easily the most cunningly-directed blockbuster since probably Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies (which it surpasses). But everything is masterful: the visual pacing and storytelling is on a whole other level, going beyond the reliable competence one hopes to get out of a blockbuster and heading into the realm of art.
TWO From a storytelling standpoint the choice to not really go full-bore with the Major Godzilla Fight Sequence until the very end of the movie is wise for multiple reasons. Firstly, there is the whole building-up-of-anticipation thing, which is always fun and it’s nice to see a movie that’s willing to deny the audience satisfaction until the movie’s actual climax for once. But secondly, here is the truth: after about ten minutes, giant monster fights are boring because there’s only so many things you can do with giant monster fights; one of the reasons Pacific Rim drags at times (and it does drag) is because there are too many giant monster fights in that movie.
THREE Similarly, the script also makes the gutsy choice of killing off Bryan Cranston’s character in the first third of the movie. Post-Breaking Bad this is particularly ballsy; I mean, between the Cranston-heavy trailer and nerds on the internet being all “it’s WALTER WHITE VERSUS GODZILLA” like that would be something anybody would want to see I was expecting plot awfulness. We did not get that, and this was good.
FOUR Of course, all of this is just asking if the movie is well-crafted, which was evident. But now we must ask the question of whether or not it was artistically coherent. Firstly, it is worth noting that my previous suspicions re: the movie’s shifting allegory are partially correct. Although nuclear energy is in part responsible for giant monsters (they feed on radioactivity? Okay whatever), the movie’s central thesis is indeed “man cannot hope to control nature.” Which: okay, fine, it’s not a terrible analogy to use for Godzilla movie purposes, there’s still some nice notes about the hubris of mankind in that, fine and dandy.
FIVE But the problem is that underlying the plot of “man cannot hope to control nature, so here are giant monsters fighting to the death” is a certain lack of anything making sense. Godzilla shows up to kill the other giant monsters why exactly? I mean, you can have Ken Watanabe mutter profound nothings about “restoring the balance” all you like but in the end, Godzilla becomes a giant deus ex machina whose presence is not really satisfactorily explained, and the absence of a coherent reason for Godzilla to exist in a movie where the craft is so evidently thought out in most other respects is… jarring, to say the least.
SIX And then you have the fact that the movie contradicts itself by the Sergeant Kick-Ass On The Ground plotline, because the movie literally says about a dozen times that Man Cannot Hope To Control Nature but then Sergeant Kick-Ass destroys all of the giant monster eggs and provides the crucial distraction needed to draw away one of the giant monsters so Godzilla can kill them one at a time, and this is frankly as annoying as all get out because either Man Cannot Hope To Control Nature or He Can and you kinda have to pick one of them ahead of time and make your movie on that basis, because Man Cannot Hope To Control Nature Except When Needed To For Plot Purposes is dumb.
SEVEN Still, complaints about coherency aside, it’s a fine movie, easily heads (and tails) above most summer blockbusters. And that counts.
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I don’t know why but the quick pocket watch It’s Hiroshima, Bitches! bit cracked me up. It was so delightfully portentous and empty at the same time. But considering I was hoping the movie would suck in a fun way at the very most, I am overall 100% pleased that it was in fact legitimately pretty awesome. It does make the Navy look like idiots, though. How many times is that well-advertised EMP effect going to surprise you guys? The Marines would’ve probably figured that out by now.
At first I was skeptical that Man Cannot Hope To Control Nature could actually result in a satisfying movie, but then I realized that the sequel to that movie is people living in a post-kaiju-apocalypse world, and I can 100% get behind that.
I think the idea is, there are forces in the world beyond our control, but it’s possible to make a difference if we’re willing to sacrifice.
There’s that great bit where Godzilla is looking at Ford while he’s lying on the ground, like there’s a little parallel between the two.
Also great: that the monsters do not give a single damn about humans in any way (aside from all of their delicious radiation-bearing goods, of course) until Ford torches the eggs.
I thought it would have been great if they had done an ensemble cast, rather than one plucky sergeant. Then again, I don’t really understand character “development”. But show humans coping as best as they can with what they got.
Also, even apart from nuclear and “man can’t control nature”, play up the “man is really dependent on electricity and communication and it’s damn scary when that goes away”. Stuff just powering back up is facile and annoying.
MGK, did you ever see ASM2? What did you think of it, if so?
I thought they showed the main character having a bit of an impact, but ultimately he’s just lucky to survive the clash of the titans.
The only real issue I had with the movie is that Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a technically proficient but boring actor (which was reinforced when I rewatched Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” last night). I think a lot of people’s complaints about the human element would have been dealt with if there had been a more compelling actor in that part.
Overall, I really loved it, even while noticing multiple flaws.
Ultimately, for all it’s flaws, the final act works PEFECTLY for me, and The King of the Monsters was fucking back and fucking in charge and what the fuck else do I need?
It isn’t as good as the best Godzilla films (the original, Mothra vs. Godzilla from 64, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, vs. Destroyah, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: All Out Monster Attack) or the best daikaiju eiga in general (those above, the original King Kong, Rodan, the 90’s Gamera trilogy) but it was better than the vast majority of Godzilla/Giant Monster Movies, and what more can you honestly ask for?
It also just felt plain different from most current summer blockbusters, which has become damnably rare. I feel most of them we only judge in degrees, based on how well they do basically the same things. This one side-stepped some of those things, and put emphasis on things that aren’t usually their, and for that I was thankful.
But, mostly… GODZILLA MOTHERFUCKERS!
I did enjoy it tremendously, for most of the reasons provided. However, I really liked the almost Lovecraftian “Things Beyond Humanity’s Control or Comprehension” theme.
… people actually liked this?
You can talk about how it was “ballsy” to kill Bryan Cranston in the first third all you like. I felt lied to and jerked around. Every single fucking trailer was structured around him. Not Ken Watanabe. Not Bland Soldier Boy. Him. Only it wasn’t, because they kill him very fast. I mean, Christ. If you couldn’t afford Cranston for the full two hours, how about making Watanabe the lead. A Godzilla movie where the human star is a Japanese scientist! What an idea.
And speaking of people dying early, can we talk about the gender politics a little bit? Cranston’s wife exists only to die and provide him and Bland Soldier Boy with MAN PAIN. Bland Soldier Boy’s wife exists only to stand around being very, very concerned and worried about him, and then to be in danger from the kaiju. English Scientist Lady exists to give Ken Watanabe someone to occasionally talk to.
Godzilla has much of the same problem Michael Bay’s Transformer movies do; namely, it thinks that we really, truly, passionately signed on to watch soldiers fall off of things for half the movie, instead of giant monster fights. If I want to watch soldiers fall off of things I can watch any one of a number of other movies.
And while I understand that the job of the military in any kaiju flick is to job for the monsters, the US military is just… mind-numbingly incompetent here. Hmmm, there’s a monster rampaging through a populated area with a known propensity for emitting EMP pulses. I know! Let’s send in a Combat Air Patrol! Because what that city really needs in addition to Mothras ripping through it is F-22s full of fuel and warheads falling out of the sky, am I right guys? Oh, and those nukes we need to transport to the coast? Sure. We could airlift them around the danger zone no problem. But instead we’re going to put them on a train and move them real real close to the monsters. And we’re gonna do it while they’re armed. This is a wonderful idea!
And lets talk about the fights some. They were well-constructed and well-choreographed. They were also really fucking dull to watch a lot of the time, because they involved really slow-moving gray-and-black monsters against a gray-and-black background at night in the rain and smoke. This is the same goddamn dodge every movie made after the Avengers but without its budget (and I’m looking in your direction as well, Pacific Rim) has used; it doesn’t actually have the money to make a well-lit fight we can see clearly in the daytime look awesome, so it disguises its inadequacy by using the setting to obscure things. Yeah, Godzilla breathing down Mothras neck and then ripping it off to hurl victoriously into the ocean looked amazing. It’s too bad all the preliminaries didn’t. At least Pacific Rim made everything shiny and brightly colored for contrast, rather than just a dark palette punching another dark palette.
The movie had decent bits in it, but it was far from a good movie. Pacific Rim surpasses it in nearly every regard and Pacific Rim had some severe structural issues and insane plot ones.
I didn’t see it because the trailers gave me eye-cancer.
I do feel the movie needed to give Watanabe more to do than spout exposition. Only other problem was that they switched from the airport fight from in-live-OMG-WTF potential butt-stomping to a third-person-watching-it-half-fail-on-someone’s-TV. Also, not enough Mothra. But then again, they’re saving her for the sequel…
You didn’t miss a whole lot. It’s not bad. It’s maybe the most aggressively workmanlike Marvel movie I’ve ever seen. And, well, Jamie Foxx. The scenes where they interact without fighting, well, Foxx just completely overshadows Andrew Garfield as an actor.
They did kill Gwen again, of course. I suppose it was inevitable, but god. Gwen has been dying to make Peter feel bad about his life for half a century or something now, hasn’t she? Maybe sometime she could live? That would be cool.
Also too: note to the writers. Stalking your ex is not cute or endearing. Women, I am told, do not find it adorable; they find it creepy.
What I found interesting / semi-amusing is that the entire film, from Godzilla’s perspective is essentially that of the Super who has to spray for cockroaches in apartment 113 *again* only to find that they’ve also gone across the hall to apartment 116.
Gets up, straps on his toolbelt, chases the fuckers across the hall, finishes them off, sits down for a second and then heads back to his apartment for a beer.
The humans are generally the yappy tenants that he really can give less of a fuck about along the way.
For all of Ken Watanabe’s character’s ‘restoring the balance’ thing. I think he’s mostly the Warden of Monster Island. You wander off, he comes to get you, you make it clear you’re not coming back… and he collects your fucking head.
re: Bryan Cranston. He lasts longer in this movie than Steven Seagal did in ‘Executive Decision’.
Personally, I think it goes a long way to reinforce the ‘humans have no place in this tussle’, when your biggest human star in the film gets squished by monster wreckage.
I think the idea is that man can’t hope to control nature can’t possibly mean that man can’t ever control any small part of nature or have any effect on the outcome whatsoever because then we wouldn’t have these big buildings and ships and whatnot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLMtiELWRQE
For no better reason than that it amuses me.
This is a complete derailment of the Godzilla conversation, and I apologize.
I think it was better than the first Spiderman 2 movie, personally. I think Garfield/Webb capture the essence of Peter Parker better than McGuire/Rami did. In particular, they capture the pre-Iron Age angst-ridden era of Spirderman very well. For any flaws in the movie, and I concede there are definitely flaws, the scenes where Spiderman is interacting with ordinary citizens of New York are real gems.
Compare and contrast ASM2 Spiderman doing the day-to-day hero stuff like standing up to a group of bullies about to beat up a young nerd to the overwrought SM2 Spiderman being passed hand over hand in the subway while in crucifixion pose. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two movies.
All in all, it felt like someone took 5 or 10 comics covering a seasonal arc, and made a movie, complete with the little scenes where Spiderman stops a mugging or whatever in the first couple of pages. There were several little scenes like that interwoven into the movie that I think helped to capture the feeling of reading a Spiderman comic as a kid. Now, whether you think that’s something that you should do in a major summer blockbuster, that’s a different story. And the entire Richard Parker plotline could have been excised or cut back.
As far as Gwen’s death, if you’re going to include that as central a part of Spiderman’s story as Ben’s death (and I think it is), then I think they handled it as well as they could. Ben’s death drives Spiderman to be a hero, Gwen’s drives him to sacrifice his happiness to be that hero. Those are two pretty fundamental parts of the Peter Parker Spider-man character.
There were certainly lots of plot problems. The insanely fast progression of Harry’s disease compared to Norman’s for example, that gave him that whole “I have to have a cure NOW!” drive didn’t make any sense. They certainly could have made Jamie Foxx’s role better. Basically, he went from idolizing Spiderman to wanting to kill him because…Spiderman showed up on more screens than him in Times Square for a half second? That could have been handled better by playing up the “He feels so invisible” bit, and writing something to react that when when attention is, again, diverted from him to someone deemed more interesting. Richard Parker, Norman Osborn, and good God do we need more father-issue subtext?
In short, it wasn’t Winter Soldier, but it certainly wasn’t the Green Lantern either, and I think if this movie (and ASM) were released 5 or 10 years later than they were, they’d be received much better.
It was not better than Spider-Man 2, but it not being as good as the best superhero movie ever doesn’t really tell you much about it’s quality.
Since we’re talking about ASM 2, I’d just like to point out that while some parts of that film were really nicely directed (Spider Man attempting to talk down Electro being one of the best) the rest of the film felt incredibly uneven just from the standpoint of cinematography. It didn’t feel to me as if Marc Webb really had control over his material–he was really good with the interpersonal interactions, but those were shot very, very differently from the superhero shenanigans, and it ended up resulting in a film that felt cobbled together.
That being said, though, I think you’re right about it mimicking the feel of reading a couple of trade paperbacks in an afternoon. But it felt that way at the expense of being a movie, and that kind of soured me on it.
I found Lt. Ford Brody to be incredibly realistic to my experience of soldiers.
http://wineandsavages.blogspot.com/2014/05/godzilla-2014-brody-and-hero.html
I thought the same thing, actually, Sean. If my career-Army brother ever got to be the star of a major motion picture, that is how he would behave. Only he would have a sweet-ass moustache.
Ha!
Let me just pipe in here, on the off chance anyone is still paying attention . . .
I don’t think the decision to kill Cranston 1/3 of the way into the movie was a ballsy decision. This movie was written and contracts were signed long before the last season of BREAKING BAD aired. They thought they were hiring a respected character actor for a supporting role, they had no idea how the last season of the show would take an already famous actor and catapult him into the biggest thing since sliced bread. You know if they could have done so without reshooting the entire film they would probably have LOVED to go back and undo his death, and make him a bigger player overall.
His disproportional prominence in the trailers admits as much – if they had known at the time how huge he’d be in 2014, they’d almost certainly have given him a much bigger role.