“You won’t see anything very original anywhere in the film … There’s not enough writing for proper characterisation, not enough plot development for the mind … It bases its appeal on a different set of values. Not very enlightening ones.”

 

Derek Malcolm’s ALIEN review in The Guardian, in 1979.

 

In this lovely Den of Geek interview with Gareth Edwards, the brave young thing compares good reviews to antiseptic: “It’s like this healing cream. If there are enough nice things that you hear, and people like the movie, it kind of heals all wounds. Suddenly, you’re ready to go make another. I’m gonna need a bit more cream, I think, before I go back to Hollywood!”. It would be sad to imagine that a well-respected film journalist might fall asleep in a press screening and then trash a film with blatant ignorance and disrespect, and I would hate to point the finger because the fault really lies with an editor who assigns the wrong person to the subject: practically every time, educated reviewers become rude and dismissive about stuff they haven’t actually watched.

Here are ten things about GODZILLA which enriched my life.

1) Bryan Cranston, despite his wig. I appreciate that it was because Walter White was bald at the time, but they gave BC one of those ridiculous Lou Ferrigno wigs you usually see on actors whose characters have had their hair brutally shorn by an evil headmistress, or by Yoren from “Game of Thrones”. Americans love this kind of hair and think it looks normal. However, Bryan Cranston despite his wig.

2) The Mako Mori Test. PACIFIC RIM, another 21st century kaiju film, inspired an alternative approach to the frequently misunderstood Bechdel Test, for those who want to gauge how feminist-friendly a film is. To pass the Mako Mori test, a film must have at least one female character with an independent narrative which is not there to support a male character’s story. It’s true that GODZILLA isn’t riddled with complex narrative arcs, but the fact remains that it features only three key female characters:

Woman Who Dies (Academy-award winning legend Juliette Binoche)

Shall not pass the MM test. A gamine, interesting boffin, which is cool, but she is basically “main character’s mum/Mrs” whose purpose is to fuel the passion of the Sad White Guys in her family, by dying (in a scene that references GOJIRA’s Oxygen Destroyer).

“all at once it is a confused blank canvas and an intricate mural of emotions”

Woman Who Cries (BAFTA nominee Elizabeth Olsen, welcomed by Roger Ebert in 2011 as a “genuine discovery”)

Shall not pass. She is the dollfaced young wife, there to propel the Sad White Guy husband into greatness. Take One’s Jim Ross describes Olsen’s subtle screen presence in MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE thus: “all at once it is a confused blank canvas and an intricate mural of emotions”; and credits her performance with the strength to carry a notoriously complex and challenging film. Did they cast a good actor as Mrs Brody by mistake? She isn’t given much to do, but what she does do puts Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s glassy eyed Father Dougal impression to shame. Having said that, it’s apt that ATJ should hit only one dazed note with his emoting. You see that slap-happy, self absorbed boggle carried not only by Brody but also by his little son, watching what he describes to his mommy as a “dinosaur attack” on the news? That’s you watching the telly. That’s you and me, how we look when we are watching a tsunami, or a suicide bombing, or a drone attack on the telly. We’re all like, “Oh, dear…” because what else can we do? Isn’t it human to be comfortably numb?

Basil Exposition (Golden Globe and Silver Bear award winner Sally Hawkins)

Shall not pass. Her character is Serizawa’s understudy, there to neurotically deadpan it through the backstory for us so that Serizawa can concentrate on being a wronged, spiritual Oriental with a Fob Watch of Western Guilt.

I can’t even remember any of their names, dag nabbit!

But… there is one non-human female with an interesting story. There are three monsters in this film, and none of them are there to Attack America. The two MUTOs are invading human territory, but the damage is always collateral – bomb nomming aside. GODZILLA is a story of a female mutant trying to start a family in a terrain which is infested by tiny pests, and protected by a world-weary behemoth. Her narrative arc isn’t just about the male mutant – he’s just there to facilitate her population of a beautiful new world where MUTOs can live in peace. The anthropomorphism of the mutant lovers’ reunion, during which a nuclear warhead is tenderly offered and flirtatiously accepted as though it were a gift from Ann Summers, is testament to Edwards’ carefully conceived creature choreography.

Well done, GODZILLA, you passed the test.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1lcZM0MNek

3) Godzilla And Chums

GODZILLA inspires a pleasant retrospective look back at other great 21st century monster films:
MONSTERS

THE HOST

TROLL HUNTER

CLOVERFIELD

GANTZ

And JAWS from the century before… this doesn’t quite count, but Ford Brody’s name is surely a nod to the hero of JAWS.

4) The Art Of Godzilla

Gareth Edwards told “Den of Geek” that he loves “The Art Of…” books, and “The Art Of Godzilla” is one of the best in the series. In the 2014 film, as Godzilla’s back crests the waves, his spines evoke the silhouetted cypress trees on Arnold Böcklin’s “Isle of the Dead“, which was recreated by H.R. Giger: who is a heavy inspiration behind Edwards’ art design (this is even more apparent in the subterranean skeleton scenes).

Also, Kyle Cooper. Ever since SE7EN, the edgy Lettrist style he uses to emblazon the darker side of storytelling has been aped by gajillions of straight-to-DVD horror stylists. The montage at the beginning of GODZILLA gets a lovely Cooper twist with its flashes of redacted text, hinting at the conspiracy theories that obsess Joe Brody at the beginning of the film. Hilariously*, GODZILLA even got a redacted star rating in the Grauniad – it popped up from 2 stars to 3 overnight.

*I concede that it was not hilarious.

 5) Small… Far Away

Edwards is great at playing with scale. There is a running sight-gag where forced perspective shots of toy dinosaurs, insects, origami cranes and in one scene, a horned chameleon, reference decades-old special effects techniques that are still used today. Today GODZILLA is all CGI, and the sky is the limit if you can overlook the physics, but his size in any film is usually based around the highest skyscraper he will be hoofing over. If he were to rampage through Cambridge, he would only need to be a head higher than the Chapel at St John’s College, which has a 163 foot high tower [see right].

6) I want to be Godzilla’s friend

His new look is brilliant. He seems more American Hero than Japanese Legend in this incarnation: a cross between a lumbering Smokey the Bear and a stern Sam the Eagle. When he takes his first smack-down, he looks into the camera as Oliver Hardy might have done, with an endearing “That really bloody hurt” moue before the smoke obscures his face. Having said that, he takes on a Yojimbo-esque role, and has a very Mifune walk in his “My work here is done” scene.

 7) Bioluminescence

Gareth Edwards is good with light. The monsters in MONSTERS glowed like deep sea wonders; the candles in the Day of the Dead scene offered a haunting, decadent counterpoint to the bleached urgency of the daytime footage. In GODZILLA, there is fairylight to be found in Chinese lanterns and monsters’ carapaces – and it even brings beauty to the devastation, when showers of sunlit glass tinkle from a towerblock; or when hundreds of cars’ head and tail lights stipple the murky, gushing water as a tsunami tumbles them through the streets of Hawaii.

Maybe Brody was dreaming he was the monster – or the monster was dreaming he was Brody.

8) It was all a dream

It’s fun to look at a film from an Owl Creek perspective, especially when there is a suspiciously happy ending, or a bizarre juxtaposition of fantasy and the prosaic. Towards the end of the film when both characters have fallen into a swoon, a close-up of a dazed Brody drifting on a boat mirrors earlier shots of Godzilla coursing through the water; bringing the Navy lieutenant and the mysterious defender from the deep closer than ever: defending humanity is a thankless task. Maybe Brody was dreaming he was the monster – or the monster was dreaming he was Brody. Which leads us to…

9) Satire for Dummies

I’m quite dim when it comes to subtext and symbolism, but I was surprised to read a broadsheet review bemoaning the lack of “anti-nuclear satire” when the anti-war satire was so alive and stomping. Take for example the scene where Godzilla tries to hold a crumbling bridge together with his giant paws, as friendly fire from the military myrmidae puts a school bus in jeopardy.

 10) The Trailer

Trailers are usually “best bits” but it’s worth watching the GODZILLA trailers as there are lots of cool scenes that don’t happen in the movie.

Thanks

Bye

httpvh://youtu.be/64c6VLNJQiE