I love Godzilla. I make no secret of it. He's by far the coolest monster in the history of monsters. I think the fact he has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame is a good indication that I'm not alone in that sentiment.
First off, I loved this movie. This is a Godzilla movie that Americans have waited for since Godzilla 1984. For some reason cheesy Godzilla movies don't get much play in the main stream in the USA. Probably because to the average movie goer, these movies suck. I'm saying that totally as a fan. I get it. Big beat 'em up monster movies are a dime a dozen and seeing a guy in a crappy rubber suit isn't anything special. Except this is Godzilla.
The movie is pretty simple so even though I am going to go into spoilers, there really isn't anything to spoil. A monster appears, Godzilla arrives from parts unknown to do battle. That's it. And yeah there's a bunch of humans running around losing their minds trying not to get squished.
In this one we have a new monster. This one is named Muto. It's supposed to be one of those military acronyms I swear they make up before figuring out what it means. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Muto is supposed to be a prehistoric parasite that feeds on nuclear radiation. I know. It's Godzilla. It's supposed to be silly. In fairness, all the scenes of Muto literally eating nuclear bombs is awesome!
The history of Godzilla is long, confusing, and sometimes contradictory. Maybe one of these days I'll do a Godzilla retrospective, but not tonight. I'm soaking in the awesome.
There were a few elements I thought needed to be fixed. The first being the unacceptable amount of focus on the humans. Humans have always been a part of Godzilla movies. Mostly for squish fodder and cheap emotionalism, but the focus of the movie was always the battle. This movie not so much. It all builds up to the climax and then we get the awesome monster beat down. But then it's spliced in with the humans mucking around. It breaks up the flow of the fight and it's just a bad decision.
So is cock blocking us from the monster fight twice!!!!! The first scene was the trailer scene. We finally see Godzilla in all his monsterous regal beauty. He roars with the intensity of a pride of lions, he squares off with Muto, and then... nothing. They cut to something else. Next thing we see is Godzilla swimming towards San Francisco. I honestly thought Godzilla killed the first Muto off screen. Luckily I was wrong. (By the way there are 2 Mutos. One male and one female.) The second time was just as the fight is about to start, the humans close a door in our face and we don't see the fight for another few minutes as we watch the humans muck around some more.
It got frustrating. But once the action hit, it was beautiful. Just as I'm about to scream at the movie, "use your atomic fire breath!" Godzilla uses his atomic fire breath. The Mutos honestly felt like more of a threat to humans than to Godzilla. Their EMP ability does reek havoc on the humans because planes are falling out of the sky and cars won't move, but what does Godzilla care if there aren't any lights on? With movies like Godzilla: Total War we see monsters with unique abilities that are a serious threat to Godzilla because they all team up against him. And that hilarious bit where Godzilla takes down that pretender, Zilla from the 1998 American Godzilla movie in about 2 seconds. Priceless. Anyway, Muto never really looked like a serious threat to Godzilla except when the two teamed up.
Last thing I want to call BS on is them trying to play off that Godzilla almost died in the fight. Really? A building falling on Godzilla is going to kill him? Really? Come on, man! That's not even close to believable. There's only one thing that has ever killed Godzilla and that's when his own heart when into nuclear meltdown! And even then death was only a minor inconvenience.
Go see it. It's awesome. I put it up there with some of the best Godzilla movies out there.
Hail to the King, baby!
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