Last night I finally got around to seeing Godzilla Fat Smirky Dinosaur. I went in with high hopes. Hopes that ‘Hollywood’ would have learnt not to ruin a good film with stupidity, like I had seen so many times before. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed.
The story starts back in 1954 with nuclear bomb testing in Bikini Atoll. But this isn’t just testing bombs as the government would want you to believe, this is an attack. Something has been lurking below the depths, and we are trying to destroy it. Everyone thinks its a success, the unidentified creature is gone.
Fast forward to 1999 to a quarry in the Philippines where two scientists (Ken Watanabe & Sally Hawkins) are called to investigate a freaking huge skeleton found after a collapse in the quarry, two egg-shaped pods are also discovered. One of which seems to have hatched, and escaped the cavern in to the sea.
Now, over in Japan Joe Brody (Cranston) and wife Sandra, who both work at a nuclear plant are called in the look for damage following seismic activity. During the inspection an explosion occurs, and basically the plant gets destroyed. Thus resulting in the entire area being quarantined.
Again we fast forward, but now to present day, Joe’s son Ford (Aaron “Kick Ass” Taylor-Johnson) living in San Francisco is called to Japan after Joe gets arrested for trespassing in the quarantined zone. Basically Joe is convinced that the government is covering something up, and that something completely different happened.
He goes digging around again, and drags his son along. This time when they get caught, they aren’t taken away, but are taken to the power plant site. This is where all Joe’s conspiracy theory’s start to get confirmed. There is an egg thing at the plant, and its looking like it wants to hatch. They try to kill it before it gets out of control, but it comes alive, breaks free, and starts wrecking shit. The military try to track it, but the creature, now named MUTO emits an electromagnetic pulse which knocks out all the radars, so they lose sight of it.
All the while Godzilla – who didn’t actually get blown to pieces, has been living under the sea all chilled out and stuff. But when he hears MUTO making a racket he is all like “Aww hell no, this is my planet, I’m the only monster thing around here who can wreck shit.” Godzilla then starts to hunt MUTO.
Now up until this point I was really enjoying the film. I liked the concept of government cover ups an conspiracy theories. The first sightings of the monsters was good, they looked and sounded great. Everyone panicked in the appropriate manner. The government tried to cover things up again as just another accident.
Then MUTO pops up in Hawaii, starts wrecking more shit, firstly a nuclear sub, because, you know, monster love uranium… duh. This time loads of people see it, and the secret is out… Monsters Exist, they are huge, and eat nukes for snacks.
I won’t touch on the story any more because I obviously don’t want to give it all away. But for me, things started to unravel a little from this point, and just became a bit unbelievable. Ford is apparently indestructible, he gets thrown around in an armored car, and walks away, he falls off a bridge that’s being destroyed, in to a river filled with tank debris and mostly walks away. He wonders through cities which literally have skyscrapers collapsing around him and… you guessed it, walks away.
At one point the army go looking for a second egg which is held in a nuclear waste mountain in Nevada. Well the MUTO has hatched and escaped. But this is only realised once they look through a tiny little window, even though she smashed her way through half a mountain to get out. How they didn’t notice a 300ft monster walking across the Nevada desert before hand is completely beyond me. Or at the very least feel or hear a mountain being ripped apart…
For me Godzilla also looks a bit weird. I guess he is probably made to look a bit more like the original Godzilla from way back, but it just doesn’t look right to me, and he also has the weirdest grin on his face, which I cannot unsee!
Why do people continued to fire machine guns at him when it clearly does nothing. Why do these people not run away? If tanks aren’t working, your puny little rifle sure as hell isn’t going to.
Also, I got a little confused about how big Godzilla was at times. One point he is swimming – basically fully submerged, in to San Francisco, then he is stood up, but is only about ankle deep.
The eventual fight between MUTO’s and Godzilla just goes from silly to completely silly. Weird atomic light beams of death come from his mouth, which I know pop up in other versions, but it just didn’t work for me in the film. It all just got a bit stupid.
Oh Godzilla also gets cheered…. CHEERED! What the actual F**k. “Oh look Godzilla just flattened San Francisco and probably millions of people died whilst he had a fist fight, but lets cheer!” “YAY!”
Ok, ok… Now that I’ve got that out of my system I will just wrap up.
It wasn’t a bad film by any stretch. I just feel it lost its way towards the end and got too OTT. I get that these kinds of films have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I felt like I needed a handful for the last 30-40 minutes of this. The special effects and sounds were really good. The cast was mostly really good, not sure about Aaron Taylor-Johnson, he just didn’t fit the role quite right for me, also when did he beef up so much?
If you can get past things getting a bit stupid, then its well worth a watch, heck… its worth a watch anyway really, it’s just me not being able to buy in to the whole OTT thing too much.
– Will
I had a nap – it was that bad.