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G60: GODZILLA (2014)

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I am become death, destroyer of perceptions.

This is not a review. As of this writing we are two weeks removed from opening weekend and critics’ opinions of Godzilla (2014) are by now well documented. I’m not here to compare and contrast it with its Hollywood contemporaries. I’m here to contextualize it within Godzilla’s history and speak for what it has done for the King of the Monsters and his fans. Reviews have been mostly positive and the film blew away all predictions for how it would fare at the box office. For the first time in well over fifty years it is possible to talk about Godzilla in public without people deriding it. I cannot stress enough how monumental this is for not only Godzilla fans, but also for the character’s legacy. It may seem unremarkable now in light of Legendary Pictures’ expertly-crafted marketing campaign that had even the most cynical filmgoers talking, but it used to be that you simply could not talk about Godzilla out in public without the average person dismissing you as some kind of fringe-nerd who had yet to wise up like the rest of society. Thanks to Gareth Edwards, Thomas Tull, and others to whom I show my appreciation, those days are finally numbered. The Godzilla in this film may not exactly be Oppenheimer’s “destroyer of worlds” that the 2012 Comic Con teaser implied he might be, but he is undoubtedly a destroyer of perceptions. And that might actually be something better.

There is an oft-quoted expression among Star Wars fans who grew up with the original trilogy and felt betrayed by the prequels. “George Lucas ruined my childhood!” is the popular phrase. It exposes a limited perspective, yet still rings true for millions of people for whom Star Wars is something far more than just a hobby or weekend distraction. That is how I am with Godzilla. Since the age of six when my father brought home a rental VHS of Godzilla, King of the Monsters to keep me distracted for the babysitter, Godzilla has forever been my Star Wars, my Batman, my James Bond. Nothing has ever compared nor ever will. But it was a lonely fandom and one I was unable to share on equal footing with anyone until I finally met another well into my college years. I always assumed it was easier to find friends with a passion for Godzilla in Japan, where I imagined you could strike up a conversation on the Big G at any random street corner in Tokyo. I have no idea if that was ever even remotely true, but it certainly was not in America! That above all is the greatest gift Godzilla (2014) gave us. Even if only for a few brief weeks one spring, you could talk about Godzilla anywhere. People were excited for it and my fountain of knowledge on the subject was suddenly a commodity. All that was left was to watch the film itself and hope that it delivered. And by almost any criteria, it did. Edwards, Tull, and the film they made did not ruin my childhood – far from it, in fact. They validated it.

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I still find it hard to place myself in a world where a Godzilla film made $93 million in one weekend and outpaced such respected franchises as X-Men and Spider Man. I don’t think the realization has quite hit me yet that we are now in a situation where there will be one or more big-budget, Hollywood-produced sequels to such a film. I am so accustomed to viewing Godzilla as something outside the mainstream that I hardly know how to process his newfound stature of acceptance. It’s as if something that was once the sacred domain of myself and a few others suddenly belongs to everyone. It will take some adjusting, but I love the fact that it has happened at all. The film is not perfect. There are some valid criticisms out there regarding the plot and characters and I can agree with a few of them. It is also not quite the film I have spent years of my life crafting in my dreams. But that dream would have been a piece of fan-service that may never have accomplished what the finished product has.

The thing about accomplishment is that it rarely comes without change. The film makes changes to what Godzilla is and represents that were hard for me to stomach on first viewing. Toho’s Godzilla of 1954 was a living warning to mankind of its own self-destructive nature. He arrived just months after the largest nuclear test in history up to that point. Godzilla was a destructive force that could only be temporarily defeated and would rise again whenever nature had something new to teach us. The Godzilla of 2014 is something similar, but different. Since the new timeline ignores the 1954 film, it necessitates that everything Godzilla embodies must be updated as well. A Godzilla that waits until 2014 to appear on dry land can no longer be a warning against nuclear weapons. If he was, he would have attacked decades earlier when nuclear testing was at its peak. This Godzilla keeps the Toho version’s nuclear origins intact, but he means something else now. Godzilla is now nature’s power to restore balance. This new meaning makes the character much greater in scope while still respecting what Toho intended. Godzilla can save us from other forces that threaten nature’s balance, as well as attack us when we violate that balance ourselves. This allows Godzilla to function in both the role of hero and villain without compromising what he stands for. It took me a second viewing to understand why, but it’s a brilliant new take on Godzilla and is absolutely the right approach going forward. Making him the same character from sixty years ago would not work the same way today that it did in 1954. That Godzilla was a product of its time that even the Japanese had to alter significantly to keep relevant. Legendary’s Godzilla is exactly what he needs to be and I’m glad to have him.

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The absence of the well-known “Toho Co. Ltd.” logo from the start of the movie raises an interesting question. Should Godzilla (2014) be recognized as the (un)official 29th entry in the Godzilla series? The logo itself is irrelevant, but its inclusion in all twenty-eight preceding films symbolizes their cohesion as a unit – one series from one company about one character. Tristar’s Godzilla (1998) also lacks the Toho logo and most people exclude it from the ranks of official Godzilla films. Is being a Toho production the deciding factor? Or is it more about the filmmakers capturing the essence of Godzilla himself? I choose the latter as my litmus test for what is and is not a true Godzilla movie. The real Godzilla is not featured in the 1998 film, but he is in the 2014 one. Suit, CGI, hand-operated puppet – it doesn’t matter how Godzilla is realized or by what studio – the character is what counts and the Godzilla of 2014 feels, looks, and acts like his Toho self. This movie belongs on the same mantle as Gojira (1954) and deserves to be talked about on equal terms with films ranging from GMK to Godzilla vs. Gigan. I do count it as part of the series that began with Toho and so far, it appears that most Godzilla fans will do the same.

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What type of Godzilla is the new one? My greatest fear leading up to the film was that Edwards and the special effects team would miss something and their Godzilla would wind up just being a 350-foot animal. That would be in keeping with the way American giant monsters are depicted on screen. They are simply giant walking plot points devoid of personality, in stark contrast to the Japanese approach where kaiju are every bit the characters their human co-stars are. Godzilla has always been anthropomorphized to varying degrees which has allowed him to mold a recognizable persona over the years. It changes a bit from one film to another to suit the story and tone, but certain qualities remain. Godzilla does not back down or retreat and there is a theatricality to him when the momentum of battle swings his way. He also makes calculated decisions when fighting other monsters which show that this is not a creature operating on animal instinct alone. Godzilla’s actions are deliberate and display real thought. This is why Masaaki Tezuka failed to make Godzilla feels like himself in all three of his pictures. Tezuka never understood how to blur the line between character and animal. But Gareth Edwards does. His Godzilla is by far the most interesting character in the film. While that in part points to some of the generic qualities of the human cast, it is also exactly what a director should strive for. Godzilla should be the star of his own film and in this one he is. This Godzilla is part-Heisei and part-1960s Showa with a dash of GMK brutality. Part of me still wanted and expected more of a 1954 doomsday beast to show up, but that might have limited the new series going forward. Godzilla has room to grow into that mold if that’s a direction filmmakers want to take him. For now though, I am very satisfied with the revamped Heisei-era force of nature/Showa series anti-hero we’ve got.

My greatest memory of Godzilla (2014) will be sitting in sold-out theaters on opening weekend, listening to the masses CHEERING and APPLAUDING when Godzilla finally unleashed his blue atomic breath for the first time. The audience members were just faces in the crowd on those nights, but to me they represented all the people that had ridiculed Godzilla at my expense over the years. Due to their limited exposure to the Godzilla series, they did not understand it or know how to appreciate it. All that changed in 2014. Now we were all invested in it together and they were enjoying it with me. I don’t know when I’ll ever have another theater experience like that again that so resonates with my very core.

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For now, my G60 series is at an end. It was harder to write than I anticipated and I had to keep coming up with gimmicks to entertain myself near the end, but I learned a lot more about Godzilla than I knew before. I’ll revisit it eventually if and when a sequel arrives, but until then it’s time to close the book on analyzing Godzilla in such depth. A year ago I wrote a piece titled Godzilla Countdown where I ranked all of the Toho-produced films in order from greatest to least. Godzilla (2014) joins that list now. My opinions of the other films changed in some cases after re-watching, so a new list is necessary. Here is that list:

1. Gojira (1954)
2. GMK
3. Godzilla (2014)
4. Godzilla vs. Biollante
5. Mothra vs. Godzilla
6. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah
7. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 2
8. The Return of Godzilla
9. Invasion of Astro-Monster
10. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
11. Terror of Mechagodzilla
12. Destroy All Monsters
13. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
14. Godzilla 2000
15. King Kong vs. Godzilla
16. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
17. Godzilla X Mechagodzilla
18. Godzilla Raids Again
19. Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster
20. Godzilla Final Wars
21. Godzilla vs. Gigan
22. Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster
23. Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster
24. Godzilla X Megaguirus
25. Godzilla & Mothra: The Battle for Earth
26. Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla
27. Son of Godzilla
28. Godzilla vs. Megalon
29. Godzilla’s Revenge

Previous:  Godzilla Final Wars

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