Godzilla

Director: Gareth Edwards

Writers: Max Borenstein, Dave Callaham

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn

Runtime: 123 minutes

Certification: 12A

Rating: 4⁄5

Godzilla has it all on paper. Provided you take ‘it all’ to mean ‘an extremely promising concoction of interesting choices that might just work’.

A director who got the job based on his one previous feature film - a gorgeous indie monster flick (titled, surprisingly, Monsters) that won critical acclaim while making over 4.2 million dollars on a half a million budget.

A cast consisting of a man fresh off what was quite possibly the best performance ever seen on TV (Bryan Cranston, Walter White from Breaking Bad should you be confused, but let’s be honest - you’re not) and too many other big names to count (Olsen, Taylor-Johnson, Binoche, Watanabe and more).

A script by Max Borenstein (not a man with too many scripts to his name), with help from the likes of David S. Goyer (Christopher Nolan’s _The Dark Knight trilogy, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel_), Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption,_ The Walking Dead_).

Throw it all in a pot, add quite possibly the most famous cinematic monster of all time, stir, simmer for a touch over two hours and release.

And despite all that, despite the propensity that things that have it all on paper have to somehow manage to throw it all away at the final hurdle, Godzilla manages to make it into the big leagues.

Edwards takes the lessons he learned from Monsters, carrying over his indie, small-scale sentiments into this obscenely big-budget beast, choosing to focus on the small details. From a laugh-inducing cut to a small chameleon in lieu of the big CGI monsters, to focusing on a small family holidaying in Hawaii just as Godzilla and friends arrive, his choices are perfectly balanced ways of humanising a story about something far, far bigger than mankind.

Add in some beautiful editorial decisions - a shot through an airport terminal window is held just long enough to show you the carnage outside, before it crashes away to another view - and it’s a beautifully directed film, if nothing else - a credit to Edwards’ skill.

The cast mostly put in performances to match - Cranston is as incredible as you’d expect, while Watanabe gives his role the awe and respect for Godzilla it calls for. There is a strong sense of wastage, however - the film suffers from a nasty tendency of killing off its best actors as fast as it can think of reasons for them to die, or from side-lining them in favour of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s well-grounded albeit somewhat dull and bland hero. Elizabeth Olsen is probably the biggest victim of side-lining here, giving a killer of a performance (there’s tears and everything) with far too little screen time.

Story-wise, Godzilla does an impressive job of continually driving forwards, but it does rely on a rather strong suspension of disbelief (the US Military - as in all B movies - is apparently run by idiots). It takes the bold move of not actually showing Godzilla himself for a significant swathe of the run-time, instead opting to actually flesh out the back-story and build up to the big finish.

This does, of course, mean there’s a feeling of Godzilla being relegated to a bit-part in his own movie, but it equally makes for a stronger experience (and where the human driving the back-story is Bryan Cranston, it’s hard to feel particularly cheated).

There’s not a huge amount else that can really be said about Godzilla - the CGI is impeccable, and the final fight is entertaining like nothing else (hilariously choreographed, riddled with deus ex machina - which here means ‘god(zilla) from the machine’) - but it does have the capacity to prove divisive.

Fans going expected to see a monster-fuelled romp in the vein of _Pacific Rim _may end up disappointed by its focus on story at the expense of monster (not to say Pacific Rim had no story - it did and you know it), while fans going expecting a strong story may be disappointed by its willingness to embrace its B-movie heritage and ditch logic whenever the story calls for it.

It’s still ultimately a lot of fun, and it’s definitely worth a watch (it’s a film that cries out for the IMAX-sized screen, although the 3D is utterly pointless and ineffective) if you have the time or chance.