It's nice when Hollywood takes risks with its director choices, no matter what the outcome. For every shonky Alien vs. Predator: Requiem - directed by untested music video alumni The Brothers Strause - there's a Cloverfield (Matt Reeves' superb debut) or a District 9, another first-time feature masterfully helmed by FX whizzkid Neill Blomkamp. Both modest films in terms of budget ($40 and $30 million respectfully), but still a fair few quid to throw at 'the new guy' no matter what business you're in. The same goes for Nuneaton-born Gareth Edwards, who's slow-burn sci-fi creature feature Monsters carved him out as another potential force to be reckoned with on the ever-changing Hot New Director roster.
Which is why it was nice to see him handed the keys to a franchise that's been doing the rounds for sixty years now, roundly causing a geek commotion when teaser artwork for his take on Godzilla was unveiled a couple of Comic-Con's ago. But with great budget comes great responsibility, and it's fair to say that $200 million is a fair increase on what the Strausii and Blomkamp's of this world had to play with. And while it's unfair to suggest it's got the better of him, you can't help but feel that this hulking behemoth of a blockbuster is lacking something - and it's hard to say exactly what.
Despite its hefty price tag, this iteration of Godzilla is desperate to stay as tonally distant from the 1998 version as humanly possible. Suffice to say, it takes its cues from the original clutch of films rather than trying to reimagine anything Hollywood did. To that end, it ought to have been called Godzilla vs. Muto. Nay, make that TWO Muto's (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), with all three of them hell-bent on wreaking radiation-fuelled havoc on the East coast. As it turns out, those atomic bomb tests in the 40s and 50s were actually attempts to kill Godzilla (as illustrated in a beautifully twitchy and redacted opening credits montage). The big fella is an ancient relic of the earth, driven underground to feed off radiation from the earth's core when the sun's rays calmed down and the planet got a bit too nippy for his liking.
Okay, reading over that last sentence it's clear that this film is a bit daft to say the least - and that's where it kind of, sort of, maybe starts to fall apart. It's a giant jigsaw puzzle of a film that struggles to fit together as one cohesive whole. Whilst the cast do a largely fine job of wringing emotion from an often stodgy script, it's hard to care too much about Aaron Taylor Johnson's Brody, an army grunt with a sensitive side who suffers the loss of both his mother and his father within the first forty minutes (we do jump-cut fifteen years, but that's by the by). His lithe wife barely registers on the do-I-give-a-shit Richter scale, despite the fine performance from Elizabeth Olsen. And poor Ken Watanabe is left as the sole Japanese voice of serious reason, the scientist desperate to suggest to everyone that we don't try and kill any of this nuclear devilry, oh no. We just "let them fight". He's clearly the only character to have seen the original Toho offerings; he knows Godzilla is the real hero, despite his lumbering ability to kill thousands of innocent civilians without even so much as saying sorry.
All of this is both the film's problem and it's potential upshot - you care more about the monsters than you do the human cast. Intentional? Maybe so. But you only have to look at some of the films Godzilla doffs its cap to to see that you CAN have human drama as well as all-out monster carnage (Edwards need only look to his own Monsters, a film that cost 1/400th of this IMAX-clambering beast). As well as the obvious nods to King Kong and Jurassic Park there's shades of Spielberg's War of the Worlds, a film that ratcheted tension out of similar rote scenarios in a way that Godzilla could only dream of; hints of Independence Day, a film that has aged horrendously but is entirely self-aware of its own ridiculousness (Godzilla notches another epic fail on that count). Yet, despite all this, you can't help but admire its dogged determination to actually bring a sense of credibility to the arena its playing in. Sometimes big failures can be beautiful, and by golly, does Godzilla have some big, beautiful moments.
The teaser trailer money shot, a glut of stock military types performing a HALO jump (High Altitude, Low Opening - it pays to Google sometimes) with red smoke streaming from their ankles, is truly a sight to behold; you'd think it would diminish having been available to view almost in full for several months, but on the big screen with music that echoes the monolith discovery sequence from 2001, it's pure grandstanding drama. In fact Alexandre Desplat's score is key to many of the moments that left me grinning like a kid at Christmas. There's a moment when Godzilla almost looks down at you, the hapless cinemagoer, his deafening footsteps muffled beneath a lone dischordant piano - it's the boldest audio cue you'll hear in a blockbuster this year, and a testament to the studio that it didn't get cut during test screenings. (it's also pretty good when the big guy breathes blue fire and his backplates light up like the mother of all Christmas trees. Yep, I liked that a lot.)
As you can see, it's almost a struggle to write a review for this film when my views are so goddamned conflicted on it all. With so much to like about it (especially towards the end), I can't not recommend seeing it on the biggest screen you can find. But I'd also make sure you go in with your expectations lowered when it comes to anything BUT the monsters (including Heisenberg himself). Maybe it's not the weight of the budget, but the weight of ol' Chewit-lover himself that cripples proceedings - trying to make something oh-so serious out of a giant radioactive dinosaur just doesn't add up. And is the 'King of all Monsters' really a city's saviour when he's likely killed half the inhabitants in a climactic battle to the death? Well, they do have the decency to qualify that proposition with a question mark. I would say no, but I guess only a sequel will say so. Throw in a few people to genuinely root for, and we might finally have the Godzilla we deserve.
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