King of all monsters

Gareth Edwards’s “Godzilla” obliterates the ‘90s version—and lots of people, too

Back east, when I was a kid, there were only two or three fuzzy television stations you could get over-the-air with those quaint, rabbit-ear antennas. But on Saturdays one of those stations (perhaps WWOR) ran old-creature features all afternoon. That’s how I was introduced to the lo-fi joys of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animated monsters, “Sinbad” flicks, “King Kong” and “Godzilla.”

The big, green guy was the first kaiju (though a lost Japanese knock-off of King Kong technically pre-dates him). From his beginnings in 1954 as a metaphor for the horrors of Japan’s nuclear destruction, Godzilla morphed into the homeland’s occasional defender, duking it out (or sometimes teaming up) with the likes of Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah, and eventually even King Kong in a series of kaiju slug-fests that Toho Studios kept cranking out all the way up to 2007’s “Godzilla: Final Wars.”

But it was the early films that were catnip to lost, little-kid me. They fueled a love of big monsters tearing shit up that has persisted through “Jurassic Park”, “Cloverfield,” “Pacific Rim,” and even the fairly awful 1998, Roland Emmerich-directed “Godzilla.” (Chief criticism: it exists.)

And while that film left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths, it also meant that almost any new version would inevitably be a step up. After the surprise creative and financial success of director Gareth Edwards’s indie, sci-fi/horror feature debut “Monsters” back in 2010, the young Brit filmmaker was tapped to right the (many) wrongs of Emmerich with a new American origin story for everyone’s favorite, radioactive luchador.

And right them he does. Mostly.

In 1999, two scientists, Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) are brought to the Philippines to investigate an ancient cavern (inadvertently discovered by miners) containing a massive, prehistoric skeleton and the remains of an empty cocoon. The cocoon’s former inhabitant is nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, in Japan, nuclear plant supervisor, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), is troubled by strange, new seismic activity that may force the shutdown of the reactors. Sure enough, all hell breaks loose when the plant craters on itself, releasing a deadly radioactive gas that claims Brody’s engineer wife, Sandra (Juliette Binoche). Left with his young son, Brody becomes obsessed with the mystery of what killed her.

Fast forwarding fifteen years we find Brody’s son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), married (to Elizabeth Olsen) and working as a military bomb disposal specialist and living in San Francisco with a son of their own. When Ford learns that his father has been arrested (yet again) for trespassing on the verboten grounds of the old nuclear plant, he hops on a plane to bring his dad home.

Instead Ford gets roped into his elder’s obsession: the plant is not a radioactive death zone but instead conceals a dark secret. Ford quickly discovers that pops is not a delusional conspiracy theorist after all, when a gargantuan, winged beast—dubbed a MUTO by the U.S. military (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), who have known about them all along and covered up their existence—violently bursts out of hibernation, taking flight toward Hawaii. Due to his father’s work (or something), Ford finds himself drafted by Dr. Serizawa, who reveals the secret history of prehistoric monsters, and one in particular who might be the only hope of saving the world from being overrun by the massive, pissed-off, electromagnetic pulse-generating MUTO. You can probably guess who that is.

There’s a lot to love about “Godzilla,” especially if you love Spielberg. Shades of “Jurassic Park,” “Close Encounters,” “War of the Worlds” (right down to the burning, out-of-control train), and most especially, “Jaws,” pervade the film. That’s something of a letdown if for no other reason but it feels like we’ve seen much of this stuff before. Though that’s another way of saying Edwards brings comparably formidable film craft to the table. His frames are packed with debris-strewn details and a sprawling sense of scope, while he stages the smaller moments of tension with a ringmaster’s sense of palpable anticipation.

The seams show in the characters. The script is credited to Max Borenstein (“Seventh Son”) but it’s clear a few writers took a pass at this story, including the legendary Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption”). There’s a fragmentation that comes with that many cooks in the kitchen. So while Cranston, Binoche and Hawkins bring a higher caliber to their roles than are written into them, their brief parts are a booster rocket that breaks away once the ship achieves orbit, leaving us to root for paler archetypes that don’t have the same weight.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is fine as Ford, though it’s kind of baffling that he never gets to utilize his oft touted bomb disposal skills. Elizabeth Olsen has a fairly thankless, generic concerned wife role to play. I wanted to love Ken Watanabe, but his performance here consists of a sleepy combination of guilt, concern and stunned revelation. The human element of “Godzilla” doesn’t collapse under itself, though it’s just barely enough to support the weight of a fun, suspenseful, action film, whose wrath of nature themes strike similarly glancing blows.

But the name of the game is Godzilla throwing down with big beasties while humanity deals with the catastrophic consequences. And on that score it’s glorious. Premium levels of destruction and carnage give weight to the epic nature of the threat. Edwards’ visual sense is grandiose. And Godzilla’s design is a warm throwback to his mid-‘50s, man-in-suit roots—a wicked-looking, radiation-breathing badass who somehow feels like a cuddly, reptilian protector bear who gets tired when he’s been fighting too much. You just want to give him a hug.

Taken all together, this is almost the best “Godzilla” film ever made.

Movies worth your brainwaves

“Locke” // This taut drama has been getting raves all over the place. Tom Hardy plays a construction contractor juggling a concrete-pouring job and the future of his marriage by phone during a two-hour car ride to London. The simple premise belies a deeper drama, which looks likely to be knocked out of the park by the typically adept Hardy’s performance and a script by “Dirty Pretty Things” and “Eastern Promises” writer Steven Knight. // Opens on 5/23 at the Circle Cinema

“The World According to Monsanto” // The next entry in Circle Cinema’s ongoing “Earth Matters Film Series” documents the notoriously evil bio-tech conglomerate and how its products and policies—ranging from the creation of Agent Orange, which killed a lot of Vietnamese (and Americans) with the herbicide Round-Up, specifically designed to work with their weird, genetically modified seeds—are probably awful inventions for everyone. Or, at the least how, thanks to government collusion, they help to drive independent farmers out of business and enslave a poor, captive audience to a food industry that is slowly killing us all while patenting life itself. Did I mention these assholes were evil? // Opens for one night only on 5/27, 7:00 p.m. at the Circle Cinema

“Maleficent” // In what looks to be a scenery-chewing role for star Angelina Jolie, “Maleficent” is a live-action iteration of “Sleeping Beauty” told from the perspective of its antagonist. Part back-story and part re-imagining, the film chronicles Jolie’s arc from protector of the forests to becoming “The Mistress of All Evil,” eventually crossing paths with the Princess whom she cursed at birth to fall into a coma on her 16th cake day. The early involvement of Brad Bird is a hopeful sign of quality. The late re-shoots of the first act, not so much.
// Opens 5/30 everywhere