I barely remember the last time I saw a Godzilla movie in theaters. It was Godzilla 2000, I was in 6th, possibly 7th grade, and while I had actually enjoyed the awful 1998 Emmerich Godzilla movie at the time (note how young I was), I was absolutely thrilled to see the REAL Godzilla again, for the first time on the big screen.
Since then, I’d been waiting, hoping for another theatrical release of a Godzilla film. Other giant monster movies came and went, sure, but it wasn’t the same. As much as I absolutely loved Pacific Rim last year, it wasn’t the king of the monsters himself, you know? And this past weekend, it finally came, a new Godzilla movie, directed by Gareth Edwards. After the first trailer or two put a lot of my doubts and worries to rest, I could hardly contain my excitement. Thursday came, I went to the first showing, and it was immense…
…But it was also a little disappointing. I had mixed feelings. I had, without realizing it, developed so many expectations for this movie, and in the space of two hours those expectations were met, surpassed, let down, and outright avoided all at once. I felt like the trailers had set me up for a completely different movie. You’ve probably already read plenty of reviews, seen the valid complaints: poor characterization, not enough Godzilla, too much teasing. But still, I couldn’t shake certain images from my head, certain sounds, the music. I complained to a number of people about the movie’s flaws, nodded in agreement with others, but I had to see it again nevertheless because there was something undeniably wonderful in there that I simply couldn’t ignore.
Why do I love giant monsters so much, especially Godzilla? I can never really answer that in a satisfactory way. It could be that the genre was imprinted on me at such a young age, Godzilla Vs Megalon being my first movie, which I’ve watched so many times I have the whole thing practically memorized. Power Rangers came soon after, speaking a language I was very much familiar with, and in 1st grade I met my best friend, and we bonded over our mutual love of giant monsters, though he had seen far more movies than I, and had all the Trendmasters action figures that were coming out at the time.
It could be a psychological thing: I’ve always been this tiny, scrawny, weak kid. Godzilla and the monsters he went head-to-head with were invincible giants who smashed through cities like they were nothing, surviving military assaults and bombs and everything else thrown at them. I was bullied, not too badly, but enough to get on my nerves, while Godzilla didn’t take shit from anyone. He refused to stay down.
So I went and saw it a second time, catching a matinee showing by myself. Right up until I left for the theater I was talking with a friend, the both of us detailing all the problems we had with the movie. But a weird thing happened: the opening credits came up and all of those complaints I had went right out the window. Maybe this time I was able to set my own feelings and expectations aside and just let the movie do its own thing, I’m not sure, but I enjoyed it so much more this second time around, appreciating it more for what it is than being bugged by what it isn't. None of the movie’s issues bothered me, outside of giving Elizabeth Olsen absolutely nothing to do in her role. The smaller crowd in the theater was more into it than the Thursday night group, cheering along, laughing. I heard a man say to his kid “there he is!” when Godzilla first showed up in Honolulu. I smiled a little when a woman in front of me went “awww…” as Godzilla, exhausted after a huge fight, collapsed to the ground. He connected. They nailed him so perfectly, his behavior and mannerisms, who cares if Aaron Taylor-Johnson can’t seem to emote when he’s not around his family?
There’s a scene in the new movie that has me grinning any time I think about it: Godzilla rising out of the water next to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, moving alongside school buses full of excited and frightened children. I can remember sitting on the bus, heading to or from school, staring out the window, imagining that: Godzilla or some other giant monster rising up in the distance, traveling in the same direction as me. My imagination at odds with small-town mundane life. Those kids in the movie are experiencing the kind of thing I wanted to experience myself when I was that age.
Honestly, I went in hoping the movie would avoid that kind of thing, Godzilla as the hero, the one people cheered on and got excited to see, but now I’m so glad they included that element, because it really is a big part of those movies. They could have easily gone for a darker, grittier, reboot like the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy or Man of Steel, the trailers made it look like that’s where they were going, but they didn’t. That’s a crazy thing to realize, but it works so well, right? Or is it just me?
It’s surreal that this movie is doing so well and is so popular. It’s bizarre seeing people talk about it on Facebook. It’s weird that people have actually been genuinely asking me what my opinion is, and that they’re already hyping us up for a sequel.
That’s another weird thing about Godzilla when compared to other franchises: they can crank these things out year after year until society collapses and I’d be cool with that, and yet I shudder at the sheer number of superhero movies we’re being hit with. Four Transformers and seven X-Men movies feels like way too many, but twenty-eight, twenty-nine Godzilla movies isn’t enough. Rebooting Spider-man so soon and announcing spin-off titles? What’s the deal with that? And yet Godzilla has been rebooted multiple times, heck, the Millenium series is just reboot after reboot with one exception. Outside of the Heisei series, Godzilla movies just give the finger to continuity. Those movies are all across the board, some good, some great, some mediocre, some terrible, but Godzilla just doesn’t stop. None of them are perfect, they go in so many directions, and that’s one of the most wonderful things about them. Godzilla endures. The monster has been through so many decades, different genres, designs, directors, not even Roland Emmerich's failure could stop him.
I can’t…I don’t know that I can come up with a nice, solid conclusion to these thoughts, a way to wrap them up nicely. The movie isn’t perfect, there are plenty of valid flaws, but I can’t get over how well it was shot, the scale of it all and the excellent use of space. I’m thinking of seeing the movie one more time tomorrow. I’m getting the library to order the prequel comic for me to read. I’m annoyed at how lousy all the action figures are because I really want one. I'm bummed that NECA made his head so small when their Pacific Rim figures were so perfect, but I’m ordering a set of the chibi figures of him and MUTO because they’re kind of great. I’m sad they didn’t make stand-alone MUTO figures because they’re pretty cool monsters. I’m living in a world where a Godzilla movie currently rules the box office, outperforming Captain America 2, and people are really enjoying it, and they’re already talking about a sequel. That’s just the greatest.