Godzilla is a giant monster movie distributed by Warner Bros Pictures starring the classic monster of the same name. It opens up in 1999 with scientists Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham investigating the scene of a bizarre occurrence in the Philippines, and they’re shocked to find the skeletal remains of a large creature along with one egg that seemingly has hatched creating a trail leading to the sea and another egg that appears to be dormant. But whatever hatched from that egg isn’t innocuous as a nuclear power plant in Japan would start to feel unusual tremors, which results in the Plant Supervisor, Joe Brody, having one more thing to think about to keep his mind off the fact that it’s his birthday, and his wife, Sandra, is also part of the staff. Unfortunately she’s part of the team that is sent to check on the sensors that are going haywire, and Joe starts to discern a pattern in the tremors and raises the state of alert because there’s no epicenter nor is it being reported anywhere else. His concern would be correct when one tremor is so strong it cracks the foundation of the plant and results in radioactive contamination in the plant that has to be sealed off before his wife and her team could make it out in time. Inexplicably the tremors still continue to get worse until the entire power plant collapses, which eventually results in the entire area being quarantined and residents permanently evacuated.  15 years later it’s still difficult for Joe to come to terms with the events of that day nor will he ever believe it was a natural disaster. This puts him at odds occasionally with the law as well as his son, a Navy officer who has to fly to Japan to bail him out. Joe instead convinces him to go searching one time in the quarantined area of Janjira because he believes he’s close to getting to the truth and all the current signs point to another disaster like the one that occurred 15 years ago occurring again very soon. Even if he’s not too late what can be done against monsters who are capable of leveling entire nuclear islands and still survive?

I was excited when I first saw the trailer for Godzilla but equally as apprehensive because of the 1998 movie, which was in its own rights a nuclear disaster. I didn’t truly get my hopes up for this movie until after seeing Bryan Cranston in it AND seeing the Asian trailer that showed the movie in a completely different light. When I finally got to watch it I felt this movie was off to an amazing start in setting up the sheer magnitude of the monsters’ impact using the scenes described above and old file footage, as well as the devastating impact on a personal level using the Brody family. It was a powerful scene with Joe and Sandra Brody face-to-face and then their son, Ford, watching the power plant collapsing from a distance. So it was easy to understand how this would impact them in different ways with Ford relatively moving on with his life and being married with a son due to the belief it was just a horrible nuclear accident. And Bryan Cranston does an incredible job in establishing the gravity of the entire situation and raising the anticipation of what was to come even after two were captured. And the setup was pretty impressive with it being revealed that the two scientists,  Serizawa and Graham had been working on a secret project with the military and studying the chrysalis recovered from the site years ago. And apparently it was  communicating with another monster or MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), with a third, presumably Godzilla, listening. Of course the chrysalis would hatch and the initial scene with it wrecking the base was thoroughly enjoyable. And explaining the Godzilla mythos would fall on Dr. Serizawa who believed Godzilla was a force of nature whose purpose was to restore the balance, i.e. the ultimate predator of other MUTOs and this was really cool. And the story would progress very well from this point with some surprises but once all of this was established it started to drag.

SUMMARY

Godzilla was a decent start to what will be and should be another movie franchise but the very intriguing mythos establishing Godzilla as nature’s force to maintain the balance and the lack of Godzilla until closer to the end implied parts of this movie were sacrificed for a sequel. It started very strong and even tried to connect with the history of Godzilla and didn’t truly pick back up until late when Godzilla plays a larger role after repeated attempts to establish a human element without any character development. I did have higher hopes for it but I did enjoy it and have hopes in the potential of future installments.