Film Review: Godzilla (2014)

Directed by: Gareth Edwards

Written by: Max Borenstein & Dave Callaham

Review

In 1999, a couple of scientists find some pods in a cave in the Philippines. Meanwhile, Joe Brody and his son Ford Brody begin what should be just another day, that quickly turns into tragedy. Joe’s wife heads into a sealed off area of the nuclear power plant that they both work at. An earthquake sets off a chain reaction that releases radiation into the area and Joe has to close the doors, knowing that his wife is still in there, sentencing her to death. The earthquake continues, eventually collapsing the entire plant and threatening the entire area. Jump to fifteen years later, Ford Brody, now a young man with a family of his own, returns from his most recent tour with the Army. A lieutenant he is called to bail his Father out of jail, leaving his family behind in San Francisco. His father has spent the last fifteen years attempting to prove that the disaster which destroyed the power plant and led to his wife’s demise was not natural and that the Japanese government is attempting to cover it up. He drags his son along to the quarantine zone where there old house was and discover that the government is hiding one of the pods from the beginning of the film. They arrive just in time for it to give birth to a creature called Muto, which eventually begins communicating with the second pod, now located in Area 51. The two mutos awaken and begin to crawl towards each other, threatening San Francisco, where Ford Brody’s family lives. Also, Godzilla is there to fight with the Navy against the Mutos.

If that seems like I spoiled a lot of the plot of the movie, I promise that’s only the first half hour or so, and it really is about that much information. This movie has pacing issues, where all of this plot up here happens in about the first third of the film, but almost nothing of important plot relevance occurs afterwards. It’s simply Joe’s journey to return to San Francisco and do something about the monsters threatening his family.

Here’s the first gripe: Did you notice how much I talked about Godzilla in that synopsis? Godzilla is not present in the film titled Godzilla. Oh he’s there, but he’s almost an afterthought. The film focuses so much on the human level, that you forget at times that its a monster film. The entire first built up monster fight between Godzilla and a Muto is established and worked up to for an intense monster versus monster smack down and then it cuts to a scene of the fight happening in the background of a news broadcast, just for it to cut to the next morning looking at the destroyed city scape and noting that, “Yep, something really awesome just  happened here, too bad we didn’t show you it.”

Which would be perfectly fine if the human level of this movie worked. But the human level of this movie suffers from consistency issues. For one, the dialogue is not well written. Nearly every line of dialogue is an explanation of the motivation or behavior of the Muto monsters. Any line of dialogue not having to do with them is going to be about Joe Brody’s beliefs about a conspiracy. Any other line of dialogue is going to be Navy men shouting orders at each other. There are several notable lines of dialogue throughout the trailers for the film. Just about every single one, when presented for us in the film, appears out of context, delivered in a conversation that makes no sense, and mostly sounds like characters spouting something for the sake of sounding cool… or appearing in the trailer.

From about five minutes into the movie I began asking myself why. Why do these characters say what they say? Why did the film cut to this specific point after the end of the last film? Twice, it appears that Joe Brody is going to or has been killed just for the film to do a jump cut and he appears again, still alive from something that logically should have killed him. Why does this character suddenly change motivation scene to scene? At one point a mother declares that she and her child are going to be staying behind while her friend evacuates. Her reasoning is that she knows her husband is coming soon. The very next shot of this woman is her placing her son on the bus alone and staying behind herself. We have no declaration of what has changed her mind, or why she changed her mind for just her son to get on the bus.

If the dialogue was already bad enough, we never really get genuine moments of the character talking to each other. There are a few tense moments between the Navy Commander and Dr. Serizawa, for the intents and purposes of the film, a slightly deranged Godzilla expert. Joe and Ford never have any tense emotional moments, despite Ford’s assertions that he believes his father is crazy and the seeming nature of him to just forget things that are too emotional for him. He then follows his father to a government quarantined island, just to humor him I suppose. He never says one emotional thing to his Father, he never tells him to let it go or move on, he mostly stares while his Father rants about the conspiracy.

So, then, if the human drama is going to be bad simply from a lack of well written dialogue resulting in a lack of good acting and suffering from consistency due to poor editing, at least we can see some monster fights, at least a really cool CGI Godzilla can punch another monster in the face. Sure, the film says, he will, near the end of the movie after we’ve teased two monster fights and not shown you either. Sure, the film says, after we establish that something tense is going to happen on the human level, and even during this climactic battle between monsters we’re going to constantly jump back to Ford who is crawling amongst the wreckage of San Francisco to disarm a nuclear device that the Navy put there because even though we changed the origin of Godzilla which told us that NUKES ARE BAD M’KAY, we want to go ahead and reassert that mindlessly using NUKES is BAD M’KAY.

I am left wondering why. Why would someone have looked at this finished product and decided it was finished? It very clearly isn’t. Nearly every scene suffers from some consistency issue or pure lack of dialogue in the space that’s provided. Nearly an hour and forty five minutes of the film is spent with the camera mostly taken up by the face of the actors in question, who are most often staring at another actor who also isn’t saying anything. There are moments where any level of emotional dialogue can take place. We are following characters that have been traumatized by the loss of important family members, who have watched their parents grow up to be conspiracy nut cases, who are now living in a world in which gigantic dinosaurs are roaming the earth and they must desperately get back to their families.

I don’t mind waiting for a monster fight in a film. I’m not complaining that the monsters weren’t there in what was advertised as a monster movie. I’m complaining that what they decided to replace monster fights with was this crappy an execution of human drama. There is an obvious lack of understanding of the mechanics of drama, character motivation, internal consistency, and on top of all of that, I only get to see Godzilla fight for like ten minutes tops? And you teased me two other fight scenes that you just didn’t show because… reasons? And I don’t even know WHY Godzilla is fighting these things without also fighting humans at any point? Why? Why did you advertise this film the way you did when it was not at all representative of the final product of this film in any way, shape, or form? Why was Godzilla not given a story in a film title Godzilla? Why is this the cut of the film that was released?

I do not recommend Godzilla to anyone. It is not satisfying for anyone wanting drama, it is not satisfying for anyone wanting an action blockbuster, it is not satisfying for anyone wanting a monster movie. There is no point in which we get any genre or any facet of what films in this day and age should reasonably provide. No one should see this movie and at the end of the day it deserves to fail.

Save your time, or go see Neighbors, I hear that’s pretty good.

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Animal Crossing & Diablo: Brothers from different Mothers

Okay, you might be saying, wait. First, you want to tell us that Skyrim and Oblivion aren’t great RPGs, and now you’re going to tell us that Animal Crossing, the colorful family friendly capitalism simulator is exactly the same as mother freaking Diablo!? No, you’ve crossed the line.

But wait, I say to my imaginary audience, I have several points. First off, what I’m trying to say is that playing both games feels the same. This is because at the heart of Animal Crossing and Diablo is a basis of a luck-based reward system.

See, Diablo is a loot-grind RPG. You kill a bunch of monsters and stack up gold, gems, weapons, armors, and experience points. Not only is your equipment getting better, your character is getting better. Well, in Animal Crossing, you shake a bunch of trees and hit a bunch of rocks and fish up a bunch of fish or dig up a bunch of fossils or hell whatever you want really. These tasks reward you with money and sometimes furniture, clothes, carpets, wallpapers, and whatever else to decorate your house. So take Diablo, replace monsters with trees, the shops with Tom Nook, the quests with your villagers (who give you random tasks for rewards), chests with rocks, grinding with making money, and luck with luck.

One could even argue that as your character gets stronger and better equipment in Diablo, they’re chance of finding better stuff increases. They kill enemies far more efficiently cutting down the time required to find genuine upgrades. There’s even character progression where higher stats and levels equates to better more fitting equipment that one can wear and wield. The customization of your character also increases as you progress in the game.

Well, in Animal Crossing, your efficiency may not necessarily increase as you go on, but you do have character progression. For instance, your luck in the game is based on the quality of the items in your house and, you guessed it, the rarer items grant you more luck. The bigger your house is, the more items you can put in and as such the better luck you will have. There’s even bonuses for placing sets of items in your house, just like equipment sets in Diablo.

But, you might be saying, what does it matter if Animal Crossing and Diablo are the same? They’re obviously not the same game.

While Diablo might be a fast paced D&D style action RPG, and Animal Crossing a life sim, they take the same basic game play designs and elements as pointed out above.

Both games are different. The original Diablo was well renowned for its very dark and horror esque tone on top of being an RPG. Diablo II has a legacy of its own, and regardless of its transgressions against game play and tone, Diablo III is still a very playable and enjoyable action-RPG (at least as of the recent expansion). Animal Crossing has a legacy of its own, the original and its sequels are masterpieces by way of just being Animal Crossing. The family friendly atmosphere is relatable for young children and adults alike. They have cute animals and easy to understand tasks but the game also makes a statement about capitalism with its plot mechanics.

In short, I wonder what else these game play mechanics can communicate. Diablo and Animal Crossing are two picks from very different baskets using very similar game play mechanics. While the majority of action-RPGs take Diablo’s formula and keep it down to the tone and loot grind, I’m curious what could be accomplished if we opened up the barriers. I mean, I truly feel like Animal Crossing is the same game with a completely different aesthetic and goal. It’s unique elements on top of a solid game play structure allowed it to express something wholly different from Diablo. No doubt other possibilities exist.

Film: The Godzilla Trailers Frustrate Me

I have personal transgressions about the way that the new Godzilla movie (out this weekend) has been marketed. When comparing what has occurred in the first two North American trailers and clashing it with what is shown in an Asia trailer has left me frustrated. As it turns out, we can also speculate about the content of the film from these trailers quite a bit. So in preparation of its wide release this Friday, let’s discuss.

WARNING: Some of what I discuss in here could potentially be seen by you, the reader, as spoilers. While this is all speculation I’m going to go ahead and put this SPOILER WARNING right here, just in case I actually get anything right. Keep in mind: I have not seen the film yet.

Here are the trailers in question: Teaser – Official North American Trailer – Asia Trailer – “International” Trailer

That teaser is so damn good. The shots of the clouds as they fall, the musical accompaniment, the lighting, the explosions. Yeah, okay, you could say they are clearly taking a militaristic bent on the idea by focusing on soldiers and operations, but that damn speech, the airdrop, the red trails, the storm clouds, the destroyed city landscape are all about fear.

This sequence with the montage of scared faces, muted music, and only veiled or momentary shots on the visage of Godzilla market a horror film. This is how horror movies are shot, especially good horror movies that focus on themes more than on spectacle, which is a Godzilla movie we haven’t had for a long time.

On to Trailer 2.

Now, in retrospect,  I realize the other two monsters are seen in this trailer. So here’s my first problem: They are never spoken of directly. It is never acknoweledged. Rather than expressing plot the trailer continues with the theme. An extremely aggravated and shaky man screams about not knowing what’s coming. He reminds me of the Comedian from Watchmen, a man disturbed by what he’s seen. There are lines that insist this isn’t a natural disaster, that someone is hiding something. Here’s where not directly pointing out that there may be a couple of extra monsters lurking around becomes a problem because, these lines could be attributed to covering up the fact that it was Godzilla killing things and not the other way around.

I should also mention that here it seems like they’re rewriting the origin of Godzilla as being the reason they were testing nukes in the pacific in the first place, as opposed to the original where nukes awoke Godzilla and mutated him. This is problematic in that it seems to reverse the original intent of Godzilla as a monster from being a consequence of nuclear testing to the reason we’d test nukes in the first place, which, if it’s really in this film, would just be god awful.

So lets discuss Trailer 3.

This trailer dashed my hopes and dreams of a seriously thematic treatment of Godzilla from the other two trailers.  “Let them fight,” one of the characters helpfully says.

Monster fights?

I don’t know am I just getting more and more against metaphors as I’m getting older? Monsters aren’t characters. Godzilla is just Godzilla. He is a monster.  And while this Godzilla film looks like it will concern real human characters, the idea of those characters then battling with Godzilla seemed to be great.

So let’s discuss the International Trailer.

This trailer lets us in on the back story of Joe Brody, (from here on out, I’m speculating) who appears to lose his wife in an accident at a nuclear power plant due to some destructive force. Piecing together his screaming demands about people hiding something we can safely say that one of the other two monsters must have caused this. I say this, because back in the Asia trailer, Dr. Ichiro Senizawa seems to think Godzilla could stop the other two monsters causing destruction. Now, perhaps it could still be Godzilla who destroyed the power plant and they could still be purposefully leading Godzilla to fight the two man-made monsters, which would cause dramatic and moral problems for the main characters. I don’t think so though.

Now  these are just trailers. None of these are wholly representative of what the film is going to be. But surely I’m not the only one who feels like there is a genre switch hiding between the teaser and the official trailers.