I just can't help but feel people are overly harsh on this film for arbitrary and shallow reasons.
I'm not saying it has the deepest, most well acted characters of the year, but the film had a point and I think people miss it either to complain about the screentime of Godzilla or that Ford was boring.
I will concede that it was a bit of a mistake to [BLACKOUT]kill off Cranston[/BLACKOUT] in the first act but the narrative progression of the film is strong enough to overcome that misstep.
I've said it before and I'l say it again: I hate to see how people would react to Alien or Jaws if it came out today. Everybody jumps on that and says "THOSE FILMS HAVE GOOD CHARACTERS SO IT DOESN'T MATTER!!!" And I don't really think that matters. Godzilla is a lot like Alien in many aspects. Sure, it's not a claustrophobic horror film in space, but it's execution and how it delivers it's monsters is very similar.
In Alien all we do is get small glimpses of the monster before the camera cuts away. We don't really SEE anything until the last act when it's chasing Ripley and the confrontation in the escape pod. Every kill is mostly off-screen except the Chestburster. We don't really see Brett, or Dallas, or Parker or Lambert die. The most we see is a super quick shot of the Alien, or some body part like a tail, maybe a shot of a pained face (Parker) and that's it. The movie is mostly about how the people deal with the monster than the monster itself. The Alien I would argue has less screen-time than Godzilla.
And while it's subjective, the characters in Alien are all just as one-note as the ones in Godzilla. No, even moreso really. You may not like what Johnson did with his performance in Godzilla, but the script did give him an arc. Nobody, not even Ripley, has an arc in Alien. Ripley is just the survivor by circumstance, skill and luck. She, as a character, doesn't have any kind of big change or catharsis. She is the same person from beginning to end. No lessons, no personal growth.
This brings me back to Godzilla. People argue that the characters had nothing to do, and that is kind of the point. Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) doesn't have an arc, but she plays an important part. Every character is a representation of something. Elle is the humans embodied in one character. Instead of showing shots of a bunch of people all over the world looking saucer-eyed at the existence of giant monsters....we get Elle to experience it all through. We see her fear. Fear when she see's the news, fear at work when Ford calls her, and fear when she is trying to survive in the city as the monsters tear it up. She is the "human", the "us" that would try to go on existing in the face of this revelation. She is the "every person". She is an avatar for the audience.
So is Ford. Ford is the "Soldier"-the man tasked to be on the front lines of this event, it just happens he has a personal connection to it through his parents. I loved the parallel of birthdays played with in the beginning-like it's destiny. Some may find Johnson's performance too stoic and boring and that's ok, but they did give him stuff to do. It's almost like his family is cursed, mystically linked to these beasts and he destined to play his part in the battle. I loved the shot of the dragon sculpture being engulfed in water right before the bomb blows up, killing the MUTO eggs. At that time, Godzilla is getting his butt whipped, and if it wasn't for Ford, he may have been killed. The dragon sculpture is obviously meant to show that Godzilla's time is running out.
And later, Godzilla returns the favor. I'm not saying that Godzilla knew it was Ford on the boat and that he purposefully saved his life....but
maybe he did. What was that look they shared, both beaten and tired, all about
? Was there some kind of understanding pasted between them? You may see that as stupid, but the Godzilla films (hell, Kaiju films in general) have a history of mystically linking people with monsters. I totally think Edwards wanted to subtly do something along those lines.
And people say the film wasn't a good representation of the intentions of the original film and it's strong anti-nuclear message. Ummmm, WAAAT? YES IT IS! The whole plot revolves around nuclear power and how horrible it is! Here we have a cycle of nuclear tests and incidences that in no way can spell out good things for us. We bomb Godzilla, only to give him more power (while not confirmed, I'm sure his breath powers came from the bombs). Our reliance on nuclear power awakens creatures that feed exclusively on said power which could be a great solution on nuclear armament..but nope! Even if the MUTO's ate all the nuc-bombs on the planet we're still f--ked because we are now not the dominate species on the planet...the MUTO's are! Nuclear testing and power was the whole damn problem to begin with! This is just as anti-nuclear power as the first film was....maybe even more-so because it's more involved in the plot!
Rant over.
