Godzilla (2014): Patient and Well-Executed

Is it strange to say that the most impressive thing about Gareth Edwards's Godzilla is arguably how little screen time it grants the giant lizard himself? I mean this to say that even though it isn't the most complex movie ever made, never before has a monster feature so effectively caused me to anticipate the arrival of its beast. This movie is not at all anxious to get to the money shot of a toppling skyscraper. Rather, it is more interested in lingering on a troubled gaze, a frightening scientific development, a frantically barking dog, and water receding mysteriously back into the sea, the meaning of which every last person living in Coastal Hawaii knows and fears. This particular entry in the Godzilla canon is surprisingly patient and extremely well-made, perfectly conveying both the scope of its story and the scale of the monster rampaging through it.

We live in a world inundated by reboots, and by my calculation, you might as well put considerable effort into making as good a reboot as possible if you're going to make one at all. Godzilla as a whole isn't anything you haven't seen before, but it is nevertheless surprisingly suspenseful, shockingly beautiful to look at, and even intelligently revisionist in its portrayal of actual world history and our seemingly irresponsible nuclear weapons testing of the mid-1900s: trust me on this one. This is a fun movie to watch, and not just because it's about a society-ending alpha predator. It's fun to watch in large part due to its successful crafting of a beautiful atmosphere that feels rich and lived-in, whether it's a long-abandoned quarantine zone overrun by the greenery of nature, a gloomy yet colorful rainy day on the San Francisco Bay, or the flickering lights of a Honolulu airport under attack by savage and ancient monsters. I felt a sense of loss watching this world trampled by these beasts, because this movie treats its environment with far more value and respect than other films in the genre usually do.

On the level of economics, it's obvious that Godzilla was capitalizing on the universal recognition of the giant lizard to sell tickets, which isn't entirely a bad thing. The characters in this movie are kept in the dark about the existence of Godzilla and the other gigantic creatures like him for a decent chunk of its runtime, because that's the only way much of the narrative would work. Still, we as the audience obviously know what's going on well before any of the characters do, and so some of this movie's more redundant attempts to be a flavor of mysterious ground it, to an extent. However, the slow buildup to the reveal of the monster himself is one of the best things about this movie, and the mounting tension is nothing short of a magnificent experience, even if the things it's building towards are never particularly surprising. This movie is more interested in making you anticipate the destruction to come than in playing to our poor attention spans.

Godzilla is something else as well, something that has been very lost on so many other blockbusters built around a grand spectacle. It's deadly serious. There is nothing funny about the destruction of a major city, and even if the characters in this movie don't have much depth, they possess something else that is just as important: sincerity. This movie's surprising seriousness is intoxicating, a tone that makes it more believable than other monster movies, looking at you, Rampage. It refuses to treat its subject matter or characters flippantly, which caused me to sincerely invest in a narrative I was more than ready to dismiss from the outset, even if it never exactly sold me on the depth of its characters (or lack thereof).

Ultimately, the strongest aspect of Godzilla is its ability to give the accepted tropes of the monster genre actual teeth. Soldiers tracking an unseen monster through a dark jungle under the cover of night is now a truly suspenseful experience, a giant crossbred bat-mantis attacking an airport is now a terrifying threat to a child, and though it's slightly off-topic, a once-populous island now overrun by nature is tragic to look at in a way that makes you wonder why some other post-apocalyptic dramas aren't. This is a stock story brought to surprisingly radiant life with premium filmmaking, the type that works best when it's only alluding to the monsters waiting in the wings. In many ways, Godzilla is a special movie first because of its willingness to do the hard, methodical work of foundation-laying that other monster movies aren't willing to do, and second because of its ability to look beautiful whilst doing it.

Again, Godzilla isn't the most ambitious or poignantly resonant movie ever made, not that it needs to be or even that it's trying to be. This is a monster movie, and a very good one that evokes a real sense of suspense and dread, if not necessarily tears and empathy over its characters or surprise at their aspirations. The strengths of this movie lie almost entirely in its execution, its pacing, and its willingness to build anticipation for the third-act destruction to come. Its technical construction is often breathtaking, and its worlds feel more real, lived-in, and interesting than any I've ever seen in a monster feature. This is an extremely well-made movie that had far more thought and effort put into it than a genre film is usually afforded.

I believe that all monster movies contain a level of self-indulgence. Indeed, it's challenging to destroy an entire skyscraper while claiming otherwise. However, Godzilla chooses to forgo this indulgence more often than it doesn't, and we are left with, if not necessarily a masterpiece, then an undeniably well-made movie that cares about subtlety. The story this movie tells is not surprising, but the bells and whistles it uses allude to a consideration rarely afforded to monster fare. Godzilla is an okay story told in a truly fantastic way, a stroke of artistry when all I expected was the indifferent basics.

Godzilla (2014) - 7/10

Luke 16:10-12