Godzilla

I remember watching Godzilla movies fairly regularly as a kid.  In the early versions, Godzilla was a giant monster bent on the destruction of Tokyo and could not be stopped by any of the high-tech tanks and planes sent against him.  Later, Godzilla morphed into a hero, saving Japan from other wicked giant monsters.  I suspect there was some continuity to that which I have long since forgotten or perhaps never knew.  The new Godzilla is in the later mold.

 

The movie is mostly about the unluckiest family alive: the Brody's.  I suspect these Brody's are somehow related to Sheriff Brody of the Jaws movies.  Joe Brody and his wife work at a nuclear plant in Japan.  Though they don't know it at the time, it suffers a meltdown because of a giant monster nesting beneath it.  15 years later, Joe's son, Lt. Ford Brody, has just come home from a tour of duty - he is with Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) - when he gets a call that his father has been arrested in Japan.  He goes to Japan and ends up at the site of the meltdown just as a giant monster awakens and wreaks havoc.  Heading home, Ford stops in Hawaii, where he finds himself on the battlefield of giant monsters!  But he escapes that and gets back to California just in time to run into a giant monster!  His son is on a bus on the Golden Gate Bridge when a giant monster swims into the bay!  His wife is hiding in a subway station when giant monsters start fighting in the streets of San Francisco!

 

I did like that the monsters feed on radiation.  They like nothing more than some tasty nuclear waste.  Also, they have this natural defense of an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) which dramatically limits the ability of the military to attack them.  There is a scene where aircraft just fall out of the sky and all the lights go out.  I still think a naval gun should be able to take them down but at least there is some reason why the military is confounded by them.  Godzilla is immense.  He is the biggest version to date.  I liked what they did with the jagged plates on his back but his face looks too much like a dog.  It was cool that his emerging from the ocean caused a tsunami.

 

The monster fights really take off in the final act and something about the action reminded me of those Godzilla movies of yore.  Though it was done with topflight computer graphics, the way the monsters crash into buildings just seemed like some guy was in a monster suit.  This was likely an homage to those original films.

 

I went into the movie with low expectations (I saw the last Godzilla movie with Matthew Broderick) and was quite surprise to find it was a good movie.  I expect that Godzilla will return to battle more giant monsters that plague the earth.  I can hardly wait.