Godzilla
The World's top predator is backBY REID PERKINS ON JUNE 6, 2014
The world’s top predator has finally made his triumphant return. Legendary Pictures (Batman Trilogy), along with the help of director Gareth Edwards, has once again successfully rebooted another franchise. The last “Godzilla” film to be made was in 1998, and it was an absolute failure. The story behind how the creature came to be was not very interesting and downright dumb. Also, the “Godzilla” looked like a giant deranged T-rex and in no way resembled the original, iconic 1954 Godzilla. It’s safe to say that the name Godzilla has left a bad taste in the mouths of many after that last cinematic disaster.
With this most recent Godzilla film, Edwards not only had to make a decent film, but a film impressive enough to right the wrong and clean up the mess that the 1998 Godzilla film left behind. And he did just that. “Godzilla” (2014) was one of the more epic movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It begins with an American family living in Japan where the father and mother work as engineers in a nuclear power plant. At the same time in a large strip mine, the mining crew disturbs what seems to be a massive egg. The egg hatches and the creature that was inside makes a beeline for the closest source of nuclear power: the nuclear power plant where this family lives. As the creature destroys the power plant, the father, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is forced to sacrifice the mother, Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche), in a rather heart wrenching series of events which the government covers up as a “natural disaster.” Years later, their child Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) becomes a Marine with a wife and young son. His father, Joe has descended into madness as a conspiracy-theorist about what really happened at the power plant. When the monster that the government is hiding at the power plant finally awakens, the giant creature goes on a rampage searching for radioactive substances to devour. This creature awakens another creature of the same species and their rampage continues together. But their rampage does not go unnoticed; it attracts the attention of the king of all monsters: Godzilla. Overall, this movie was great and had no major flaws, although it was not exactly what I was expecting. Edwards directs the movie much like the way Jaws was in that only glimpses of the monster are seen until its grand appearance near the end of the film. The story was also told through the eyes of the people and not so much as Godzilla. It is not simply a giant monster fighting movie, but a movie about the balance of nature and our role as humans in it. While some things were not what I was expecting, Godzilla himself was as iconic as ever. Edwards and his crew modeled him largely after a bear and succeeded in making him terrifying and fearsome, and godlike monster. By the end of the movie his terrible power left me in awe and his bellowing roar echoed in my head as I left the theatre. HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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