Godzilla

Summary

“Let them fight.”

In 1998, Roland Emmerich released his much anticipated reboot of the Godzilla franchise. Everyone I knew was excited to see the film thanks to a brilliant marketing strategy that involved an amazing chihuahua spokesman for Taco Bell saying, “Here lee-zard, lee-zard, lee-zard.” It was written and directed by the same team that had given us Independence Day and Stargate. The soundtrack had Puff Daddy and the Wallflowers . Those songs were being played on every single radio station. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, the much anticipated film was not what anyone had expected. Fans of the iconic nuclear monster would need to wait for a proper American-made Godzilla until 2014 when director Gareth Edwards was given a chance. Enlisting screenwriter Max Borenstein (with some additional uncredited writing from David S. Goyer and Frank Darabont,) Edwards went to work making a Godzilla film that understood what was so great about the original films and had a unique vision that set it apart from the litany of computer generated films being produced at the time. When Warner Bros. announced that the film would be released on 4K UHD, I was excited to revisit the film. When my copy arrived, I was eager to watch the film with my oldest son to also gain his perspective on the film.

1999, in the Philippines – Miners accidentally uncover a cavern in the earth that held something large. Whatever was there has moved out. In Janjira, Japan, nuclear facility worker Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) recommends shutting down the facility temporarily because of the tremors that he has followed all the way from Philippines. His wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) and him are also celebrating his birthday. They both work together at the facility. As the tremors begin to impact the facility, Sandra and her crew are sent to the bottom decks of the facility to investigate. All Hell breaks loose and Joe is forced to shut the door on his wife and her crew when the reactor suffers a breach. This seals her fate to die from the cloud of toxins. Across the way, their young son Ford looks on as the reactor implodes. Fifteen years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor Johnson) has just served fourteen months of duty. He has come home to San Francisco to his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and their young child. They get a phone call that Joe has been arrested in Japan. Joe has searched for the truth of what happened at the facility for fifteen years and has been arrested numerous times for trespassing. Ford visits his father. Their relationship has grown strained from the paranoid conspiracy theories that his father has explored obsessively. Joe explains that according to his calculations, the quarantine zone is not behaving as if a nuclear disaster has occurred. He convinces his son to come with him as he sneaks into the quarantine zone. The quarantine zone should be lethally radioactive. When they enter the quarantine zone, the air quality has returned to normal which should be impossible. They are quickly discovered by military. Taken to the facility, Joe and Ford are shown a large chrysalis that has formed and fed off of the reactor for fifteen years. The chrysalis then opens up and a gigantic nuclear insect destroys the plant and escapes. Joe is injured mortally. Ford joins a team of scientists – Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) – as they team up with U.S. Naval Task Force led by Admiral William Stentz (David Strathairn) to search for the M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestial Organism.) Serizawa explains that there is another monster that was discovered in 1954 and that nuclear tests performed at that time were failed attempts to kill the creature. The creature’s name is Godzilla.

I am not a big fan of films that focus their energy heavily on computer generated imagery for long periods of time. Mentally, I find myself pulled out of the film if the barrage of generated imagery lasts for too long. What I have found impressive about Godzilla on both of my viewings, is how director Gareth Edwards intentionally tries to focus on the real foregrounds moreso than the computer generated deluge in the backgrounds. Make no mistake, there is a crazy amount of computer generated imagery in the film, but it is done in such a way that I did not feel myself pulling away from the film. For a movie like this, that comes as one of the highest compliments that I can give out. Edwards is an extremely talented filmmaker and I am not surprised that the next film he tackled was Star Wars: Rogue One, which I consider the best of the new Star Wars films. Warner took a risk on allowing Edwards direct the film based on his successful low budget film Monsters. The risk paid off in one of the most interesting large scale action films out of a studio in that decade.

Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey has had a long and interesting career that has enveloped everything from The Avengers to High Fidelity to Nocturnal Animals. The only constant in his career is that he approaches his work with a good eye and strong abilities. For Godzilla, the vision of Seamus and Gareth is draped in dark lighting. This intentional obfuscation has been applauded and criticized in equal measures, but I found the approach extremely effective. The dark lighting matches the script’s sensibilities. I think it is worth noting that this film feels very much like a picture that could only be made by a filmmaker that had experienced the very real falling of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the two wars that followed. This is a film that could only be made in the wake of those tragedies and also seems to draw from the Fukushima disaster in Japan in the same way that the original Gojira drew on the experience of Hiroshima. 

I can’t imagine being tasked with writing a script for a Godzilla film. The idea of a gigantic nuclear lizard is not one that is easy to swallow or make believable for audiences. Add on top of that the pressure of trying to satisfy a legion of fans on two continents that want to see their favorite King of Monsters brought to life with a Hollywood sensibility. Somehow, against the odds, Godzilla pulls it off. The first thing that the script did correctly was focus on things that are relatable. This film is about family and how difficult it is to be separated from one another. Ford and Joe overcome their separation and redeem their relationship in time to say goodbye. Ford is separated from his wife and child who are in imminent danger. The film uses these separations to build tension. It is a conventional writing tactic, but it plays well onscreen. Secondly, the writers understood that the only way to have an audience take the film seriously was to write the entire idea seriously. There is no comic relief in sight. I don’t think the film has a single joke that I can recall, and it benefits from a dead serious approach. By refusing to treat the film as camp, it succeeds. The third reason the film works so well is its casting. The film has some truly incredible actors. Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, and David Strathairn are all in supporting roles that lend the film extra credibility. The two leads in the film – Elizabeth Olson and Aaron Taylor-Johnson – are both enjoyable in their roles even if their characters are fairly boiler plate.

When the film reaches its second half where Godzilla and the M.U.T.O. battle across the city of San Francisco, the film becomes a true visual spectacle. The halo jump scene that occurs during that sequence remains one of my favorite action movie scenes from that decade. At the end of the day, Godzilla is as good a Godzilla movie as I think fans are ever going to get.

Video

Godzilla has been brought to 4K by Warner Bros. with a lot of skill. The film was shot on a 2K digital intermediate so this release actually upscales the film to a 4K HEVC/H.265 encoded transfer with HDR 10. To my eyes, the film looked fantastic. Fine detail is significantly improved from the prior release and the HDR brings colors to the forefront. That said – Godzilla is intentionally a very dark film; at times so dark it is hard to see what is happening even on Vivid mode. I would not recommend watching this film in the daytime in a room that gets even the slightest glare. As a fan of the film, I was very pleased with the work done here.

Audio

Warner Bros. have taken their prior amazing DTS-HD MA 7.1 track and have turned it into a demo quality Dolby Atmos track. This track uses the surrounds to totally immerse the viewer in the action onscreen. I turned the system all the way up to watch the film with my son, and he consistently gyrated to the amount of activity coming from our setup. There are numerous sequences that benefit from the surrounds, but the entire final third of the film utilizes the surrounds an incredible amount for the duration of the San Francisco attack sequence. The score by Alexandre Desplat adds a lot to the proceedings, with his momentary silence during the Halo jump working just as effectively as the more robust sequences. This is a demo worthy track from start to finish.

Supplements:

All of the supplemental features are on the included Blu-ray disc. No new features have been added since the 2014 release. The features are separated into two sets.

• MONARCH: Declassified:
  • Operation: Lucky Dragon
  • MONARCH: The M.U.T.O. File
  • The Godzilla Revelation 
• The Legendary Godzilla: 
  • Godzilla: Force of Nature
  • A Whole New Level of Destruction 
  • Into the Void: The H.A.L.O. Jump
  • Ancient Enemy: The M.U.T.O.s

Overall Scores:

Video – 4.5/5

Audio – 5/5

Supplements – 3/5

Overall – 4.5/5

In 2014, Gareth Edwards proved himself to be a powerhouse of a filmmaker by taking the fantasy of Godzilla and making it a reality. Fans had always wanted a truly great American version of the Japanese series, and with this film, they finally got the Godzilla they deserved. By focusing on the humans at the forefront of the story and by allowing the Godzilla action to largely play out in the backgrounds, the film achieved something special. The script is as well written as I think is possible given that the film features a gigantic nuclear lizard. The acting in the film is for the most part fantastic because the film utilizes a cast of incredibly talented actors that are more notable for their art house films (David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, and Juliette Binoche!) The 4K UHD presentation of Godzilla looks absolutely fantastic, but anyone who found that the film was overly dark in the prior Blu-ray release may still have qualms about how the film looks here. The HDR10 brings the colors in the film vividly to life. The audio presentation is absolutely incredible. The supplements included are the same as the prior Blu-ray release. This is essentially a reference quality release that utilizes audio visual equipment on demo mode for the majority of the time. For fans of the film or Godzilla in general this release comes highly recommended.