It puts the whole thing in a comic book frame. By that, I mean early 2000s comics, where the literature have started moving out of the purple prose of Sandman into something far more practical; which is simply doing the pre-existing genres (superheroes, etc.) well and in a fresher way by 1.) putting them in the moment, 2.) bouncing off their concepts into real world situations, and 3.) finding the enthusiasm from there, with all the fun bits of speculation and hypothetical setups that will entail. Basically celebrate and enjoy what the material is, where all the flight of fancies support its actual purpose, instead of supplant it with something that seems much grander at first glance, yet ends up making the product lesser ( i.e. Ang Lee's 'The Hulk', where its daddy issues ended up with the Hulk beating the shit out of a giant jellyfish).
Fitting, since its only aim is to be a Godzilla film.
I like how the tsunami and flooding references were just incidental visual details that signal the arrival of Godzilla, than stuff that the movie stops and lingers upon for far too long, until these end up taking over the characters and the plot. The metaphor is still there, and it informs your appreciation and understanding of the monster, but that's for you to pick up as you go along. I mean, there's a seconds-long scene at San Francisco which trumps ALL the 9-11 shit in 'Man of Steel'.
All of these show how wise this film is as a technical exercise, and how functional it is to its material in a smart way [1]. This is a creature feature film. It doesn't mean we can't be politically and socially aware around it, cannot bring up biology, and amp up its beats with contemporary knowledge and insight. But it is still a creature feature film, and primarily so. And a really great one at that. It trumps a lot of dramas and action pieces in how well it manages its form and content.
Having said that, I can see how people would think the film is a sort of unevenly played out. There is a bloat in this film that goes beyond the notorious fatness of this version's Godzilla.
That bloat is Bryan Cranston. Namely his character and story arc.
These are probably what gave people false impressions of what this movie is, since it ended up being something else. Mainly because it ended up being about bombs and monsters, & power itself. It had nothing to do with rejected scientists and lost wives, or even corporate behavior. His arc seemed to belong to a different draft of the script and was just put in here to give a certain emotional and sociological background to the soldier guy (played by Aaron Taylor Johnson). But we might as well see him dismantling bombs, and start from there.
In fact, the film could have begun with the M.U.T.O.'s first appearance. The M.U.T.O. could have just struck from underneath a random Japanese plant, which sets off the chain of events. Then, you start bringing in all of these protagonists into the story. Dr. Serizawa (played by Ken Watanabe) arrives to investigate, until the U.S. military takes charge. They send in the soldier guy, who's currently stationed at the Okinawa base. The action goes to Honolulu, where things escalate. Then Godzilla arrives. Serizawa is brought to the briefing room where they try and figure what is going on. Then, we get our first clues about the mysterious organization that he works for...
That could have indeed been a tighter film. At the very least, Godzilla's appearance wouldn't have been a 1 hour wait. All that lounging about in San Francisco would have been done away with. There wouldn't have been a lot of complaints about the 'boring', 'two dimensional acting' of the other characters, given how the soldier and his wife spend quite a few minutes just lounging around the house.
Except I never thought their acting was two-dimensional. Rather theirs were of another calibration and wavelength, certainly different from where Bryan Cranston and in fact Juliette Binoche were; both of them play the soldier's scientist parents. They could look as if they were directed from another vantage, from another emotional place, and for a different version of the movie. Juliette Binoche's character dies, when the plant both she and Bryan work for melts down and she gets stuck inside. This gives Bryan's character so much pain. It drives in him an obsession that lasts for 15 years, so much so that he trespasses into a quarantine area, to try and get to the bottom of his wife's death, based off a few electromagnetic readings.
This story arc is difficult to part with, since it's a very strong one, and is among the parts of the film that really pulls our heartstrings. What it also is, is a crushing domestic drama that is accentuated by a looming existential threat: in this case, a hundred feet monster from the prehistoric ages. One which puts the terror of Godzilla on a truly human and personal scale. You can see how someone like Frank Darabont could have ran with this[2]. That arc has Stephen King written all over it. Of course, this leads to certain expectations as to where the film must go, and how we expect its actors to behave.
And that's where the dissonance begins: Bryan Cranston's arc is for the heart, while the rest is for the adrenaline.
The rest of the cast delivers on that end by focusing the viewers on their actions more than their feelings. When they speak, it is mainly to bring up certain bits of information that will help them move across the set pieces. Nothing too tangential to the overarching incident, such as private grievances that are more or less ignored by the movie. It's like these characters only serve to accommodate the appearance of the monsters, and are expected to adjust their acting, so that they do not overwhelm it and instead give it stature. Again, 'creature feature'.
I am not particularly resentful towards that arc, though, and I don't think this film would be a better one without it. In fact, I've found a newfound appreciation for it.
First, is it leads to a nice subversion of the norm. I actually think that the dissonance is quite novel. It's jarring to the viewer, and it thus gets their attention. They may not like it, but they will think it, and may even have a few things said about it. Also, I like how the film unfolds into a whole another thing I wasn't expecting, rather than being set in stone from the get go. Your typical disaster message film here evolves into a monster battle. From ponderous grimdark Hollywood to a flat-out Toho picture, yet with A-level cast and production values all throughout. That manages to be both a humble and ambitious proposition at the same time. The dissonance is what makes you sense that.
Second is that it offers a nice metatextual conceit. The obvious one is the resemblance to a chrysalis, where that 'docudrama' incubates and hatches a whole another cinematic beast, a.k.a. the kind you paid money to see this for, similar to the transformation of the M.U.T.O.s in this picture. Seriously though, it's how it anchors the level of scale the director intended for the picture within the structure of the plot.
Sure it would be a lot more efficient to start with the soldier dismantling bombs, and cap it all of with him staring at the embodiment of nuclear fear. Yet it would make his arc much smaller. Same deal with the rest of the movie. Adding his father's storyline makes this more of a generational tale, than a mere incident. It adds breadth and depth to the plot details, by spacing out the story and expanding the sociological landscape of the soldier lead, where it involves stories more than that of himself.
This also serves to properly dwarf the soldier, as being merely consequent to the journey and the experience his father has made. His father managed to spend his life researching the monstrosity, while he's just here to minimize the damage. It also works in reverse, by casting Cranston's pissings here as minuscule, compared to the containment missions and the escalating global scenario (the fact it was all swiftly done with around the end of the first act brings this to bear). This all feeds not only its narrative approach with regards to the gargantuans, but also to the particular worldview that governs it: that we are a minuscule species and our dramas are insignificant in the face of tectonic plates. That would not have been made apparent had there been none of that 'human drama' as a point of reference.
Sure, that arc may be extraneous, but that is kind of part of the deal. I mean, we might as well ask why the director had to frame the mines in extreme wide angle shots, when he could just zoom right at the entrance? Why did he have to resort to computers to achieve the look of the cheaper rubber suit? Why is Godzilla hundreds of feet when he can be a microbial cloud? Why he had all these cameras when he can just use the DSLR?
Why are we even making movies in the first place?
- Carlo Cielo
[1] This is kind of reminiscent in a way of how Warren Ellis just gets down to business with his superhero comics and his animated take on G.I. Joe, 'G.I. Joe: Resolute'; where the characters are way colder and less emotional, and where he doesn't even bother to show you their home lives. Which is about fine. You expect these characters to go in, do their job, and get out, and you expect the shows and cartoons to do the same. Of course, the job can be done so well that you are provided with added angles and ideas about the world and how you view the several facets of it.
[2] Frank Darabont was brought in to do a rewrite of the script, and has in fact been given credit for the meltdown scene. He is the famed writer and director of Stephen King's 'The Mist'.
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