Godzilla: A Spoilerific Review

When I read CNN's review of Godzilla the week before release, they said, "It will make you feel like a kid again" and they weren't wrong.  I felt like I was a little kid again, watching old Godzilla films with my dad on VHS on a Saturday afternoon.  I went into this movie with low expectations, but I was totally blown away by what was there.

Once thirty minutes of previews were done, we moved on to a 1999 excursion in the Philippines, where we find fossilized remains of a giant radioactive creature and then run into a cocoon and a shattered cocoon, which leads to a hole in the side of the mountain.  One of the things had awoken when the mining company found it and moved on to Japan to a nuclear power plant...where our protagonist's father and mother work and he's but a boy.  It's his dad's birthday, but he's detecting bad things seismically (unknown to him, the burrowing monster).  Disaster befalls the plant and the father has to seal the mother in with radiation to die, barely escapes himself, and our then little kid protagonist is watching on as the plant falls apart from his classroom out the window.  This brings us to my first two full on snark points about the movie:

1) I feel like I'm in a Disney film here, the protagonist just lost one parent (and until later, you think it's both).

2) I never learned the protagonist's first name until the credits.  If it was ever used, it was only in passing.  People call him son, dad, Lt., etc. but if we ever heard this guy's name in the entire film, I totally missed it!

At this point we do a cut away to fifteen years later, explained helpfully by the words "fifteen years later".  Our now old Protagonist is back from a 14 month deployment as an explosive ordinance disposal officer with the U.S. Navy and is looking forward to seeing his family.  We meet his wife Elle, who seems to be a pretty strong female character at first, having held the family together during the deployment and having been a single mother while he's been gone, and his son Sam.  See, these people have names!  Why doesn't Protagonist Everyman!?  There's a touching scene with the little Sam asking his "dad", no names for Protagonist Everyman, if he's going to be there tomorrow still, or if he's going to leave again.  Protagonist Everyman gently assures his son he will be.  We have an awkward half sex scene that satisfies the MPAA need to keep Godzilla PG-13 rather than R, so parents will be more likely to bring their kids to it; they sure did at my showing, along with a very drunk redneck who kept laughing at every single lame joke.

Then we get the call...it's the Japanese consulate in San Francisco.  Protagonist Everyman's dad has been arrested in the quarantine zone in Janjiro, Japan, outside of their old house.  Protagonist Everyman now has to break the promise to his son, Sam, and go bail his father out of Japanese jail, flying off to Japan.  We next see him waiting in a police station, where a punk kid is released first to some VERY angry parents who berate him the entire walk out of the building.  It's one of those nice fun moments that breaks up the monotony before the coming of our monster friends.  Then Joe, Protagonist Everyman's father is released...for his son to berate him and tell him to stop living in the past, that there is no cover up of any sort.

Joe is still not recovered from shutting the radiation doors on his wife to save himself and others and leads his son, Protagonist Everyman back to his lair.  Well, tiny apartment, but it resembles a lair.  There are paper clippings everywhere about nuclear coverups and accidents, books on echolocation that he explains loosely are related to tracking what's really happening, but he's still not sure what they're hiding.  Seriously, I mean lair, it looks like Joe has become a total serial killer; it's the set up that you expect when the cops burst through the door of some guy who has been chopping up and raping people nonstop.  They totally sell me on how mentally unbalanced Joe is, even though I know, due to genre savviness, and a pretty much dotted line path between the shattered cocoon and the nuclear plant 15 years ago, that he's got to be right.

Somehow, Joe convinces Protagonist Everyman to breach the quarantine zone with him by boat.  It's all overgrown and foggy, and it looks like the movie makers really did their homework here.  This is completely believable growth and decay in the quarantine zone, resembling things like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the Hashima Island, an abandoned coal mining island off of Japan's coast.  They find what they want in their old house, including old Zip disks with information on the plant from the date of the meltdown.  They stop to gawk across the bay at where it looks like the plant is being rebuilt and get captured and interrogated.  Dr. Serizawa tries to kill the creature in the cocoon after reading the information from the zip disks, because, you know, archaic technological media readers are just everywhere apparently,  and realizing what's about to happen, but fails.  The U.S. Military steps in afterward and seizes control of Project Monarch that is in charge of dealing with these creatures.  Joe dies in front of Serizawa and Protagonist Everyman, who is now being called Lieutenant, and will be for the rest of the film.

It's time for Dr. Serizawa and his vaguely British assistant to do an exposition/info-dump on Protagonist Everyman, now that we're on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Japan.  We're told that the monsters are MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), an ancient breed of creature which feeds off radiation.  The largest of these was discovered in 1954 by a nuclear sub, which was never heard from again in the Pacific Ocean, with both the U.S. and Soviets blaming each other for its disappearance.  All the nuclear tests in the Pacific, such as the Bikini Atoll, were actually attempts to kill this MUTO, which Dr. Serizawa has named "Godzilla", because it is like a God, the apex predator of these creatures.  The MUTOs are leftovers from an era when Earth was far more irradiated, and they feed on radiation.

When it becomes evident they really need the deceased Joe, Protagonist Everyman's father, he gets sent home via helicopter to Honolulu to catch a connecting flight to San Francisco.  He calls his wife, whose phone is on vibrate and then she apparently never checks it again for voice mail, to tell her there was "an accident" in Japan and his dad is dead and that he's coming home.  Unfortunately, a Russian sub disappears near Hawaii, and the task force is on the case.  They find it, in the middle of jungle near Honolulu, being sucked on by a flying MUTO we saw escape earlier.  Bad things happen, the military begins deploying to a rooftop of a hotel and I'm dragged completely out of the film by Snark Point three:

3) How much did Hilton pay to be the only product placement in the film itself, I mean sure, Fiat has TV commercials, but this is in the film?  The U.S. military sets up on the Hilton rooftop, it's the only logo visible in all of downtown Honolulu during all of this, and we watch them painstakingly slowly rope down from the helicopter to the Hilton roof.   For about two straight minutes, all they tell you to do is book your Hilton Hawaiian vacation today.

Protagonist everyman and a tourist kid are on a tram, he's assured the parents through the glass he'll bring their son back.  He calms the kid by giving him a toy soldier from his own childhood, picked up at his old house.  Then an EMP blast happens...that's right, the MUTO is on the move in downtown Honolulu and all the electronics get temporarily fried.  Because whoever did the research on EMP somehow thinks it's just like tripping a circuit breaker, because every time it gets used, electronics come back on in about a minute.  Protagonist Everyman even reassures the kid of this.  Sure enough the lights come back on and we find ourselves staring at the now illuminated MUTO who takes  a moment to snack on the radiation free train, even though it eats radiation, and so we can see Protagonist Everyman heroically save the kid from becoming monster poop.

Now we get to a shout out to the 2004 Tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia, and in particular a little British girl.  You see, when this little girl noticed the sea was foaming and receding, she shouted to her parents that they needed to run, because in school, they learned that was a sign of a tsunami.  Sure enough, a little girl, American this time, points out the sea to her parents doing the exact same thing as happened in real life and the father is the one to shout "tsunami".  It's a great piece of minor storytelling in a film that seems more interested in action, and really sets the mood, as well as being a nice nod of the head to that little girl's heroism in real life and the lives she saved.  Why am I talking about a tsunami?  Because Godzilla causes one by coming ashore.   Now it's time, I'm pumped, the entire theater is pumped, we're all ready for a fight between Godzilla and the MUTO and...

There's a small fight, we learn this flying MUTO is putting out a mating call.  It and Godzilla barely touch each other before it runs away because it's thinking with its penis.  Protagonist Everyman and the kid reunite with the kids' parents at a FEMA setup in Honolulu come daylight, and the Navy gives out of uniform and no ID Protagonist Everyman a ride back to California because he says he's in the Navy.  Godzilla for some reason swims towards San Francisco, content to have a U.S. Navy escort.  Dr. Serizawa looks like a kid on Christmas to get to be on an aircraft carrier, watching his apex nuclear predator up close in the wild.

We get to California and Protagonist Everyman gets sent with a pair of nukes by train; they've got analog triggers to survive EMP.  They're going to be sent to San Francisco to be detonated in the bay as bait and to kill the monsters, even though Dr. Serizawa just warns us that it'll make them stronger.  What does he know, right?  He's just spent his entire career studying this stuff.  Dr. Serizawa shows his pocket watch to the admiral in an attempt to make him reconsider; it stopped at 8:15am, on August 6, 1945.  The admiral notes it was Hiroshima's bombing time and date, and Dr. Serizawa nods and quietly remarks that it was his father's watch.  The admiral decides to continue on with the plan anyhow.

This was a great shout out and brings me to what we'll label Snark Point four, even though it's not really a snark, as much as something that brought me out of the film.  This scene made me realize two things, which will both be under this point:

4a)  America does not have the same nuclear experience as Japan.  This scene is a warning of the danger of nuclear weapons, just as Kaiju films, in particular Godzilla, were meant to be in Japan when they were first produced.  Japan has felt their sting, and has a right to fear them.  American Kaiju films never measure up usually, because we don't understand culturally, the roots behind them, they're more than 'scary big monster' films.  This is an attempt to reconcile that in this scene.  Ken Watanabe, playing Dr. Serizawa, is a master of exposition throughout the film, including an exposition to the audience here, if they'll allow his words to reach beyond the Fourth Wall.

4b)  Protagonist Everyman keeps being in the places where these MUTOs attack.  He's either extremely lucky or unlucky, depending on your point of view, and reminded me of a Japanese businessman at the end of the Second World War.  Tsutomu Yamaguchi, worked for Mitsubishi, and was in Hiroshima when it was bombed.  He was wounded, but made his way home to Nagasaki, just in time for the second atomic bomb to be dropped on him.  Though an estimated 160 people were affected by both atomic bombings, he was the only one recognized by the Japanese government officially as surviving being nuked twice; he only died four years ago in 2010.  Protagonist Everyman, here, is essentially our American Tsutomu Yamaguchi; each time he goes somewhere in this film, he encounters a MUTO and he is hurt by them, but continues to survive.

Anyhow, yeah, the pocketwatch totally pulled me out of the film as the action was about to blitzkrieg. The evacuation is stalled as Godzilla arrives.  Buses of kids are still on the bridge as the military pulls in Abrams tanks and guys with shoulder mounted rocket launchers.  The Navy has what looks like the entire freaking Pacific Fleet in the bay, and they begin to open fire on Godzilla, despite the yelling of one soldier on the bridge that there are civilians there.  We're taken out of the film by the actions of an actual everyman character, who in my opinion, is the biggest damn hero of the entire film:

5) The short bus driver.  This guy ignores the cops, the military, and all common sense and pushes his busload of child evacuees through the military lines on the bridge with explosions falling all around them and Godzilla ripping a chunk of bridge out next to the bus, in order to save the kids under his care.  He's the only person in this film that you can see is genuinely caring more about the civilians than themselves or the monster, and he's risking his life to do so.  He steps up to the plate when the U.S. Military is too busy trying not to wet its pants.

Protagonist Everyman is the only survivor when the second, female MUTO, attacks the train and steals a nuke.  He gets picked up and patched up as the military recovers the second nuke, and does a Halo drop into San Francisco as part of the bomb disposal team, as the only survivor of the people who put the original trigger in.  They make it in, and begin to go on foot towards the nuke and find it in the midst of China Town with a ton of Kaiju eggs all around it.  They work to get it free of the nest, and meanwhile Godzilla FINALLY begins an EPIC fight with the two MUTOs.  And then Snark Point Six rears its head:

6) What the Hell are the balloons in China Town made of exactly?  They survive everything.  We see Godzilla roar loud enough to shatter building facades next to these balloons and they stay intact.  MUTOs and Godzilla crash through them, and they're still normally inflated on the ground.  Seriously, if we made our buildings out of whatever material this is, a Kaiju rampage would never be more than a nuisance to humanity again!

Anyhow, the bomb is damaged and they rush to Plan B, moving it onto a boat to get it as far into the bay as they can, so as not to hurt the citizens of San Francisco.  Except for Protagonist Everyman that is.  He stays behind, despite orders, to open up fuel lines so that he can torch the nest and kill all the Kaiju eggs.  Smart move dude...there are thousands of them after all.  This has an added bonus of enraging/distracting the female MUTO from the fight and Godzilla kills the flying male by bashing it repeatedly into a skyscraper.

Protagonist Everyman is the only survivor of his squad, again, and manages to set the boat on auto pilot out to sea.  The female MUTO is roaring after the boat when Godzilla grabs her and his scales begin to shimmer and then HELL YES!!!  The moment everyone in the theater has been waiting for, Godzilla uses his atomic breath like a momma bird puking into her baby bird's mouth by shoving it straight down the female MUTOs mouth, killing it, and then collapsing himself.  Protagonist Everyman is flopped out on the deck of the boat as well, in a very "Do you get the Messianic overtones" crucified pose, bar the crucifixion.  Yes, we get it, he's essentially Navy Jesus, except Jesus has never made me wish He was eaten by monsters for being so blandly annoying and Mary-sue-ish.

And now for EVERY OTHER SNARK POINT (or two):

7)  The boat is barely moving, maybe pulling ten knots an hour as it goes into the bay.  There's 5.5 minutes left on the nuke timer when Protagonist Everyman collapses and looks over from his Navy Jesus pose.  We've been told that this is the largest yield nuke ever, that it makes Hiroshima look like a firecracker.  The Tsar Bomba, in 1961, had a yield of 50 megatons and could be seen 59 miles away and destroyed an entire village 34 miles away.  San Francisco should be entirely and totally doomed then, if this is bigger than that.  Yet, Protagonist Everyman, in that five minutes, gets rescued by helicopter, and it detonates with a tiny mushroom cloud and doesn't hurt the city at all, when it should take at least a 40-60 mile chunk out of California.

8)  The helicopter, with mere minutes to spare, outruns the shockwave (and actual, you know, EMP) of a double digit megaton nuclear explosion.  Just...no.  It doesn't work either.  No one with even a simple knowledge of nuclear weapons worked on this film.  No one looked at Google, no one checked a book out of a library, no one even bothered to watch a documentary on the Manhattan Project.  Seriously, there's no other explanation.

Godzilla wakes up as we dig for survivors in a very post-9/11 firefighter scene.  Normally I'd think this was kind of exploitative, but really, people have kind of forgotten just how big a deal it was for these men and women to be digging for survivors, almost finding none, and in constant danger.  Meanwhile, Dr. Serizawa and his assistant climb the wreckage and look at Godzilla, who suddenly takes a deep breath and stands up.  Yes, Godzilla has just risen from the dead.  He's Reptar Jesus.  Media helicopters show him walking out to see with banners proclaiming, "King of the Monsters" and "The City's Savior" as they tell the world of his exploits. The King of King...erm...King of the Monsters goes back to sea, and we all eagerly await a sequel.

Our last scene is Protagonist Everyman and his family reuniting in a FEMA shelter set up in a stadium.  The end.  End credits begin to roll and...HOLY CRAP!  PROTAGONIST EVERYMAN'S NAME IS FORD!?!  COULD WE HAVE MAYBE MENTIONED THAT SOMETIME IN THE LAST TWO HOURS AND ELEVEN MINUTES?!  Really folks, the giant monsters had more character development than "Ford", we at least knew their names!  Also, I assumed the wife's name "Elle" was an abbreviation, it wasn't, she's just Elle.  Like every other woman in the film, she's a very strong feminist figure...until after her first introduction, after that her entire purpose is screaming, crying, overreacting, and being the anti-thesis of a strong female character.

The film starts slow, has almost no character development, and gives entirely too little screentime to its Kaiju.  That said, I loved this movie so much!  It was an amazing ride, the fight scenes were top notch, and while I could care less about "Ford" and his bland Navy-Jesus thing, I did enjoy the scenes with Joe, his dad, as well as those with Dr. Serizawa.  Ken Watanabe lent a lot of gravitas to this film, which made it more enjoyable than it would've been otherwise.  The Godzilla reimagining is a classic Kaiju film and quite possibly the first America has actually managed to get right.  CNN was correct, it did make me feel like a kid again, and I look forward to the DVD release.