Chris Knipp
05-25-2014, 06:41 PM
Gareth Edwards: GODZILLA (2014)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/godzilla.jpg
EDWARDS INTEGRATES CHINESE LANTERNS WITH MONSTERS BETTER THAN PEOPLE.
THIS MAY BE GODZILLA'S BEST IMAGE.
A lot is good about the new Godzilla movie, yet as human drama it still fizzles
This is the first English-language Godzilla, that originally Japanese post-Hiroshima creation, since Roland Emmerich's 1998 dud. And -- two cheers -- this time it's not a dud. Alas, it's no masterpiece either. It's plenty loud and eye-dazzling, at its biggest moments of mayhem quite beautiful to look at visually. It does cool things with POV that are arguably enhanced by 3D and iMax viewing (I half agree, being a fan of iMax but not of 3D). Monsters are seen from cramped positions, with people in front of the line of vision, creating some momentarily dramatic public-private contrasts. Besides this, special effects have taken a leap forward since 1998, providing more handsome critters and more plausible urban destruction, both of which Gareth Edwards does just fine. But unfortunately Edwards has left out the kind of heart-stopping crowd action a master like Steven Spielberg would have given us, the way truly effective editing would integrate monster and mankind to create memorable drama. What we get is more like a memorable, and huge, video-game. Godzilla is still and always will be a Fifties movie, and maybe ought to embrace that fact more boldly. Fifties sci-fi movies did the scared crowd thing really well.
Gadgetry is fine, but what's not improved is how monster movies use or misuse their human cast. Though Emmerich had Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno, Gareth Edwards' cast is, pointlessly, even better. It includes prizewinners and A-Listers like Oscar nominees Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Olsen, even Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, no less, all completely wasted, though Breaking Bad lead and Emmy winner Bryan Cranston chews up the rug in his every scene as if he were going for an Oscar. As his son, the human-scientific hero Ford Brody (what a safe WASP name!), is the chameleonic Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3577-KICK-ASS-2-%28Jeff-Wadlow-2013%29)fame, who has gone in five years from playing the scrawny young John Lennon to a kind of monster hulk himself, a big over-bulked military guy specialized, this time, in bomb diffusion, what the Brits called in World War II (see The English Patient) a "sapper." All these actors try hard with nothing original or deep to do or say, except for the conflict between those who "know" the "truth" about the natural phenomena that turn out to be out-of-watery-limbo monsters (and their benevolent nemesis), and those, like Admiral William Stenz (David Strathairn), in charge of a blunt-instrument government emergency operation, who wants to blow up Godzilla, and lots of people too if need be.
These actors, variously opposed or over-stressed, try hard but are given nothing to do. And why should they be? There ought to be more about Godzilla, and yet his entrance is held off till a whole hour into the drama. That's crazy, though we understand the coyness: isn't horror scarier while it's kept off stage? Anyway, a lot of huffing and puffing by shallow characters leads up to a giant battle of the monsters that's never integrated into a story we can truly care about. Great kitsch comes rarely, and this ain't it.
Being more savior than villain now, the giant lizard (perhaps originally an outgrowth of Japanese folktale woodcuts), crazy as this may sound, now exhibits the occasional cuddly Smokey-the-Bear-like profile and mannerism. The villain monsters this benevolent "dinosaur" (as a kid calls him) must defeat are of the giant insect variety, with a metallic, mechanical quality. Maybe when push comes to shove, we do prefer reptiles to bugs. But Godzilla's positive role leads to some real contradictions. When you see how he wrecks major downtown San Francisco buildings, you may wonder about this savior, unless this is some kind of reverse urban renewal, taking the city back to its Fifties charm before the Italian-American mayor Alioto started getting all the skyscrapers built downtown dwarfing beloved landmarks like Russian and Telegraph Hills.
It's all complicated, the US government hiding what's going on for decades, stuff about radioactivity being what the evil critters are conceived, hatched, or born out of, Nature being allowed to restore its own Balance. You may need to be a fanboy or Godzilla-nerd to care about some of these details, an editorial writer to care about others. The main thing is that the previously obscure writers Max Borenstein and David Callahan have contrived a way to make Godzilla into a superficially up-to-date clash of the titans -- but one which, unfortunately, makes the humans in the story largely irrelevant. It's impressive, but you have only to remember the considerably cooler Golden Gate Bridge action in 2011's Rise of Planet of the Apes (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3127-RISE-OF-PLANET-OF-THE-APES-%28Rupert-Wyatt-2011%29) to realize the storytelling and CGI destruction of real settings aren't very interesting this time. This is also a more primitive treatment of the Japanese monster creatures known as kaiju, their giant form (like Godzilla) known as daikaiju, terms westerners know better after films like Guillermo del Toro's gorgeous, if lumbering Pacific Rim. (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3556-PACIFIC-RIM-%28Guillermo-del-Toro-2013%29) We may be more savvy, even jaded, about our folkloric archetypes and want them more complex now.
Godzilla, 123 mins., opened in virtually ever country in the world that has movie screens in mid-May 2014. Screened for this review in 3D and iMax on its East Bay opening day a week later at AMC Bay Street 16, Emeryville, California.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/daikaiku.jpg
DAIKAIJU (GIANT MONSTER) RODAN FROM 1956 FILM:
ANY PROGRESS SINCE?
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/godzilla.jpg
EDWARDS INTEGRATES CHINESE LANTERNS WITH MONSTERS BETTER THAN PEOPLE.
THIS MAY BE GODZILLA'S BEST IMAGE.
A lot is good about the new Godzilla movie, yet as human drama it still fizzles
This is the first English-language Godzilla, that originally Japanese post-Hiroshima creation, since Roland Emmerich's 1998 dud. And -- two cheers -- this time it's not a dud. Alas, it's no masterpiece either. It's plenty loud and eye-dazzling, at its biggest moments of mayhem quite beautiful to look at visually. It does cool things with POV that are arguably enhanced by 3D and iMax viewing (I half agree, being a fan of iMax but not of 3D). Monsters are seen from cramped positions, with people in front of the line of vision, creating some momentarily dramatic public-private contrasts. Besides this, special effects have taken a leap forward since 1998, providing more handsome critters and more plausible urban destruction, both of which Gareth Edwards does just fine. But unfortunately Edwards has left out the kind of heart-stopping crowd action a master like Steven Spielberg would have given us, the way truly effective editing would integrate monster and mankind to create memorable drama. What we get is more like a memorable, and huge, video-game. Godzilla is still and always will be a Fifties movie, and maybe ought to embrace that fact more boldly. Fifties sci-fi movies did the scared crowd thing really well.
Gadgetry is fine, but what's not improved is how monster movies use or misuse their human cast. Though Emmerich had Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno, Gareth Edwards' cast is, pointlessly, even better. It includes prizewinners and A-Listers like Oscar nominees Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Olsen, even Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, no less, all completely wasted, though Breaking Bad lead and Emmy winner Bryan Cranston chews up the rug in his every scene as if he were going for an Oscar. As his son, the human-scientific hero Ford Brody (what a safe WASP name!), is the chameleonic Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3577-KICK-ASS-2-%28Jeff-Wadlow-2013%29)fame, who has gone in five years from playing the scrawny young John Lennon to a kind of monster hulk himself, a big over-bulked military guy specialized, this time, in bomb diffusion, what the Brits called in World War II (see The English Patient) a "sapper." All these actors try hard with nothing original or deep to do or say, except for the conflict between those who "know" the "truth" about the natural phenomena that turn out to be out-of-watery-limbo monsters (and their benevolent nemesis), and those, like Admiral William Stenz (David Strathairn), in charge of a blunt-instrument government emergency operation, who wants to blow up Godzilla, and lots of people too if need be.
These actors, variously opposed or over-stressed, try hard but are given nothing to do. And why should they be? There ought to be more about Godzilla, and yet his entrance is held off till a whole hour into the drama. That's crazy, though we understand the coyness: isn't horror scarier while it's kept off stage? Anyway, a lot of huffing and puffing by shallow characters leads up to a giant battle of the monsters that's never integrated into a story we can truly care about. Great kitsch comes rarely, and this ain't it.
Being more savior than villain now, the giant lizard (perhaps originally an outgrowth of Japanese folktale woodcuts), crazy as this may sound, now exhibits the occasional cuddly Smokey-the-Bear-like profile and mannerism. The villain monsters this benevolent "dinosaur" (as a kid calls him) must defeat are of the giant insect variety, with a metallic, mechanical quality. Maybe when push comes to shove, we do prefer reptiles to bugs. But Godzilla's positive role leads to some real contradictions. When you see how he wrecks major downtown San Francisco buildings, you may wonder about this savior, unless this is some kind of reverse urban renewal, taking the city back to its Fifties charm before the Italian-American mayor Alioto started getting all the skyscrapers built downtown dwarfing beloved landmarks like Russian and Telegraph Hills.
It's all complicated, the US government hiding what's going on for decades, stuff about radioactivity being what the evil critters are conceived, hatched, or born out of, Nature being allowed to restore its own Balance. You may need to be a fanboy or Godzilla-nerd to care about some of these details, an editorial writer to care about others. The main thing is that the previously obscure writers Max Borenstein and David Callahan have contrived a way to make Godzilla into a superficially up-to-date clash of the titans -- but one which, unfortunately, makes the humans in the story largely irrelevant. It's impressive, but you have only to remember the considerably cooler Golden Gate Bridge action in 2011's Rise of Planet of the Apes (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3127-RISE-OF-PLANET-OF-THE-APES-%28Rupert-Wyatt-2011%29) to realize the storytelling and CGI destruction of real settings aren't very interesting this time. This is also a more primitive treatment of the Japanese monster creatures known as kaiju, their giant form (like Godzilla) known as daikaiju, terms westerners know better after films like Guillermo del Toro's gorgeous, if lumbering Pacific Rim. (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3556-PACIFIC-RIM-%28Guillermo-del-Toro-2013%29) We may be more savvy, even jaded, about our folkloric archetypes and want them more complex now.
Godzilla, 123 mins., opened in virtually ever country in the world that has movie screens in mid-May 2014. Screened for this review in 3D and iMax on its East Bay opening day a week later at AMC Bay Street 16, Emeryville, California.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/daikaiku.jpg
DAIKAIJU (GIANT MONSTER) RODAN FROM 1956 FILM:
ANY PROGRESS SINCE?