Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Godzilla (2014)

Although anime might be huge in America today, that was not the first thing that came over from Japan. In the 1950's,there was a Japanese movie the show cased a huge reptile tearing up Tokyo in epic fights against these big monsters called Kaijuu called Godzilla. There have been sequels and even an American remake that most people are trying to forget. However, Americans have tried their hand again in a remake of these Japanese films,and surprisingly, it turned out decently.

Our plot starts out in the Philippines in 1999 where a group of explorers discover a unusual uranium deposit that seemed to stronger once it was exposed to air. Underground, there was a massive  fossil, bigger than any animal known to man but in the fossil held an embryonic sac, which was the source of the uranium. The next scene cuts to Janjira, Japan where its a normal day as always, except the power plant where one of our main characters, Joe, works at starts reporting tremors from inside the earth. Everyone thinks it's just an earthquake, but when the power plant collapses with Joe's wife inside, he is convinced that it was not just a normal earthquake. Our plot after that point jumps to the year 2014 in San Francisco where Joe's son, Ford grew up with out any problems and has come home from a military tour over seas. However, on his first night home, he gets a phone call from Japan from his dad saying that his dad was arrested from going into a restricted area to get the data from fourteen years ago back. After the police arrest him, he meets up with one of his old co workers from the power plant and as it turns out, where the power plant use to be, there is now a pulsating cocoon belonging to the winged creature called muto which feeds off radiation. Switching scenes, there is another cocoon in Nevada which hatched into a bigger, however wingless muto. As the two travel on their way to meet up, the alpha predator,Godzilla is hot on the muto's trail, traveling across the Pacific, to cross paths with the female muto from Nevada for an epic battle over San Fransico. 

I will admit to that I haven't seen any of the Godzilla movies previously. I went in expecting two hours of monster fighting with maybe a little bit of plot thrown in. However, there was substantial lack of of monster fighting in this movie. When Godzilla him self only shows up three times, I felt like this was a movie more about the humans rather that Godzilla.This movie tried to play on the drama side and tried to show the human's side of the story, which did give our main characters a chance to develop. But when it tried too hard to pull the emotional strings a bit too hard. Another thing that irked me about the plot was the fact they pulled too many plot convenience strings, such as Ford falling off a bridge , being knocked out, and waking up just in time when the military troops walk by.   

The movies tried to play up the human character but they honestly came up as bland. Ford, our main character for majority of the movie was our typical marine guy coming home from a tour over seas. There is nothing that makes him stand out, and often times, I feel like if his character was written out, it might have been a little less bland. His dad, Joe, was slightly more interesting because he was that one guy who claimed to have a clue what was going on, but was looked at like he was crazy the whole entire movie. Unfortunately, all of the other human characters ended up kind of bland and forgettable. Godzilla himself only appeared three times but some things were explained, such as he was the alpha predator and the Muto were his prey.

Overall, I was entertained with this movie. Granted it had a generous amount of flaws,but seeing the big monster fight at the end almost made up for the fact that the human "character development" took up more time than it should have. I will say that the experience of going to the movie theater and having people cheer when Godzilla showed up was a blast. I would recommend it if you can over look some plot holes and enjoy colossal monsters fighting over the city. 


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