Godzilla Review

While sitting in the back of the movie theater, watching a legendary kaiju, a relic from my childhood (and, really, my mother’s childhood) introduce himself with that classic roar, standing in the flaming wreckage of a dismantled airport, I noticed the audience was relatively silent (almost certain I would hear unanimous cheering). I wondered if the audience was unimpressed or, perhaps, in awe of the beautifully rendered mayhem playing out on screen. Then, I realized that this Godzilla was a serious incarnation of the monster movie I grew up with….but perhaps not the one this generation was expecting. Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” sweeps aside the sort of intended cheesiness and gung-ho nature of last summer’s unapologetic kaiju slugfest, Pacific Rim and does what Cloverfield attempted (and failed) to do, taking us through ground level urgency where the terror should be. One aspect in which the movie fails (and this is really only where only where old school fans are concerned) is in maintaining the message of the original: “Nuclear weapons are a problem.” Instead of nuclear arms being this thing that comes back to bite humanity in the ass, they become this thing that’s sort of useful as long the threat is big and nuclear enough. However, ultimately, this is an argument that can (and almost certainly will) be had among longtime fans. For everyone else, the movie holds to the idea that we too commonly forget that nature is something greater than us and can transcend our technol…