Mild spoilers.
So, the new Godzilla movie is great.
What struck me most was the size of the monsters. The film consistently keeps things at a human’s perspective, and maintains a sense of enormity in Godzilla and his new enemies, the MUTOs. This is something rarely achieved in films dealing with multiple kaiju at once. There are no crappy, over-the-monster’s-shoulder shots, or anything of the sort that puts the viewer on their level. Instead, you are consistently reminded that these creatures are of mythic proportions that exceed human comprehension. Gareth Edwards has done an excellent job with the material—I think the film would function perfectly and make a splash even if it were a small-time production with no previous entries. (Of course, this is to be expected from the man who made Monsters, which achieved exactly that.)
Invariably, Godzilla is going to be compared to Pacific Rim, simply for being the latest film to feature large things hitting each other. This is an unfair comparison—Godzilla, in spite of being the one with the long and intricate history behind it, is actually interested in telling its own story and standing out. I spoke of ‘authenticity’ in my piece on Rim, and that is precisely is the main difference between the two—Rim is ‘about’ kaiju eiga, whereas Godzilla actually is one of those movies. Being about movies is not a bad thing in and of itself, but Rim failed to do a competent job of it.
Continue reading The ‘God’ in Godzilla: ‘Godzilla’ vs. ‘Pacific Rim’
