Monster and Kaiju Movie Thoughts and Impressions

1: Gojira

This is only my second time seeing the movie if you don't count the one time I saw the original Godzilla King of the Monsters as a kid. I don't remember much aside from finding it boring at the time, but I'd been introduced to Godzilla with the later sillier movies and was, you know, a child. I also kind of remember Godzilla vs. Gigan as being a super long slog that had about 10 minutes of great tag team action at the end and that's just really not how that movie is paced.

Personally, I think Gojira is just a little bit overrated as a movie. Just a little mind you, I just find the praise people like to heap on it gets just a bit too thick. Not wrong, just over-applied. I know it comes from a place of love and passion; 'no my hobby has a totally respectable angle to it' - you know, the same phenomena that causes younger people to go "You don't like the thing I like? Clearly it is too deep for you." Or made people argue so passionately for video games being art or whatever their favorite thing is.

Now I admit most of the things that take me out of the movie are nitpicks; some come from the movie's age and how film was done back then, some of it is cultural, and some of it is the experimental nature of the effects. It is what it is.

I'm not going on a criticism outing or anything here, but here's what I can recall jumping out at me as the movie went along.

The boat fatalities come at a really quick pace, it's sort of surprising in a movie of its age. At least the first half hour progresses at a snappy clip, and feel free to insert your own jokes about "No shaky cam" or "No fifty cuts in a scene" or whatever you like to make. Even later on it doesn't drag many scenes out past their welcome.

The timeline of the movie seems pretty vague but the electric lines strung up around the bay seem to be really fast for such a large project. Also I find it a little funny that all the machine guns around the perimeter are aimed straight ahead, at human height, presumably striking Godzilla in the toes and maybe up to his ankles at most.

Godzilla just smashes right through the barrier and sort of just wrestles it down. There doesn't seem to be much cause for him to unceremoniously bust out the atomic breath to wreck more fence. It's just such a natural escalation it feels a little weird that it's not a bigger deal to dash the human character's hopes of stopping Godzilla. On the other hand if the lines had notably hindered Godzilla it would give the old King Kong vs Godzilla more credence and the idea of that is annoying.

The planes showing up and shooting at Godzilla feels like it's played as the equivalent of a Calvary saves the day moment with the music and how the crowd cheers. The mood is kind of fouled by the fact Godzilla was already leaving and I didn't see any of the missile strikes hit Godzilla. Maybe I missed something, but at least the majority of attacks missed. - Now I know, early on and they weren't throwing their suit actors into hazardous situations where things exploded right next to the costume, I'm not that upset by that just noting it does bring the scene down a bit.

Emiko ratting out Serizawa just really reinforces that saying about how two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. It's a movie and it needs conflict but it does occur to me that maybe she should have floated the idea to Serizawa herself instead of immediately throwing a broken promise in his face before they sort of gang up on him. Also, yeah, Japanese cultural issues are at play here too I'm sure. Just I have a hard time taking this character choice very well. Still, no deal breaker, just a personal issue.

My biggest critique of the movie is that the Oxygen Destroyer is really silly. Mad science and the nonsensical variant at that. The concept of ever increasing destructive power, A-Bomb to H-Bomb to What Else is understandable, it's just that Oxygen...deletion? Is a weird choice. I also don't really like the definitive death of Godzilla that it brings about, forever after sequels have to be about another Godzilla appearing so there's no one true King of the Monsters to base the story around.

Finally I think this might have just been an oversight on the writers' part or something and I'm being a rude nitpicker again, but I don't think Serizawa should have told anyone else the weapon's real name. He killed himself and burned all his notes only to tell the world where to start looking to replicate his invention. Sure it's a little vague but it narrows the field of sciences down an awful lot compared to some variant of "new weapon" or something else entirely generic.

For the strong points; yes, its take on horror does often work. I know people love to bring up the mother gathering her kids and telling them they'll see their dad soon but I had read a lot of people hyping that scene up and finding out it has that kind of overwrought 50's style was kind of disappointing. Scene cuts from family to Godzilla to family back to Godzilla and so on until it loses its punch. On the other hand when they're using Geiger counters to inspect survivors and a doctor waves it over a little boy causing the machine to go nuts and the doctor just sadly shakes his head - that one gets to me.

Really I don't dislike the movie. As the first movie it's the most important to the existence of Godzilla, obviously, and it's a solid monster movie. Original King Kong spends an awful lot of time focusing on a rather unneeded subplot - Denham plucking Ann out of the food line - at the beginning and lost run time for the spider cave because of it. It's also a definite improvement over The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms as a movie. I still like the monster of that movie, but there was so little connected story around it that the movie felt nothing about cutting off abruptly as soon as the Rhedosaurus dies.