Where to watch Godzilla
2 Stars
Placing event in Tokyo, either as homage to the source material or a plea for foreign audience approval, Nuclear scientist Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his family are witness to a bizarre disaster that will destroy the city and take the life of Joe’s wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche). Almost immediately there is a cover up afloat, the government officials are calling the disturbance a tremor, but Joe realizes that this is not seismic activity, but rather a living creature.
The story then jumps ten years forward and we are re-introduced to Joe’s son Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), now a decorated solider on leave to spend time with his own young family. Things are peaceful until Ford receives a call that his presumed mentally unstable father has been imprisoned in Japan. So, he reluctantly boards a flight overseas to bail out the older man. While there his father pleas with him to visit a supposed quarantine zone to gather further evidence of the cover-up.
At this point the movie is only 30 minutes old and all semblance to rational human decision-making is out the window. The duo are arrested and taken to the former power plant, now acting as an underground base for research on a creature that is hatching. This particular bit of freak nature is nicknamed MUTO and looks like a cross between a beetle and one of those Arachnids from Starship Troopers.
I guess the two biggest surprises in the movie are; Bryan Cranston is being sold as the lead, when he is absent after the first act; and Godzilla is not the villain but a savior of our cities against the destructive forces of the MUTO twins.
As I watched the glorious visuals play out, there was a tendency to overlook the ridiculous screenplay that freely borrows from not only Emmerich’s Godzilla, but even ID-4 and The Day After Tomorrow. In a post-Jurassic Park world all others look like imitators. I must once again state by ongoing boredom of watching American cities getting decimated on-screen, after years of post- 9/11 taboo, the barometer has swung too far in the opposing direction.
Director: Gareth Edwards
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen