Toho does their thing with the famed studio's first-ever complete Godzilla reboot. It certainly feels like a thematic kin to preceding films, with a heavy emphasis on human interest stories and military maneuvers, plus a heavy-handed topical metaphor that clumsily attempts to gaze beyond the superficial story.
This time, rather than alluding to the physical destruction and psychological damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mile-high monster provides an example of slow government response and political mismanagement during more recent times of crisis. The Fukushima disaster, for instance. It's an inspired film, with some good ideas (Godzilla's slow metamorphosis from wriggling, serpent-like creature with googly eyes to hardened, lumbering, radiating beast on two legs is particularly cool) but it falls well short of potential. We spend roughly three-quarters of the film in a dull, fluorescent-lit government office, which is just as drab and boring as it seems, and the acting is downright dreadful. Not a lick of charisma or personality to anyone. There's also far too much text on the screen at any given time, with every stiff government suit or slightly-different conference room named with precise, exhaustive detail. Even if I weren't trying to get through the rapid-fire subtitles, that would've been too much.
Most of the visual design work is good enough, although Godzilla never quite feels like he occupies the same plane as his human counterparts and that somewhat shatters the illusion. For the most part, though, he's just window dressing. We dart over to see where he's at for a moment, then get straight back to tedious strategic planning sessions. There was potential here, loads of it, but focus is constantly placed in the wrong spot and the result is about fifteen minutes of really entertaining footage amidst two hours of empty dialog and drab meeting rooms.
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2020-01-29T20:31:33Z
Toho does their thing with the famed studio's first-ever complete Godzilla reboot. It certainly feels like a thematic kin to preceding films, with a heavy emphasis on human interest stories and military maneuvers, plus a heavy-handed topical metaphor that clumsily attempts to gaze beyond the superficial story.
This time, rather than alluding to the physical destruction and psychological damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mile-high monster provides an example of slow government response and political mismanagement during more recent times of crisis. The Fukushima disaster, for instance. It's an inspired film, with some good ideas (Godzilla's slow metamorphosis from wriggling, serpent-like creature with googly eyes to hardened, lumbering, radiating beast on two legs is particularly cool) but it falls well short of potential. We spend roughly three-quarters of the film in a dull, fluorescent-lit government office, which is just as drab and boring as it seems, and the acting is downright dreadful. Not a lick of charisma or personality to anyone. There's also far too much text on the screen at any given time, with every stiff government suit or slightly-different conference room named with precise, exhaustive detail. Even if I weren't trying to get through the rapid-fire subtitles, that would've been too much.
Most of the visual design work is good enough, although Godzilla never quite feels like he occupies the same plane as his human counterparts and that somewhat shatters the illusion. For the most part, though, he's just window dressing. We dart over to see where he's at for a moment, then get straight back to tedious strategic planning sessions. There was potential here, loads of it, but focus is constantly placed in the wrong spot and the result is about fifteen minutes of really entertaining footage amidst two hours of empty dialog and drab meeting rooms.