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Unlike the disaster of a movie that was Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla (1998), Gareth Edwards’s film keeps true to that metaphor or subtext. In Godzilla (2014) the kaiju is a symbol of nature’s way of restoring order. Yes Gojira — it was referred to by its original name in the movie — wreaked havoc on Jinjira (Japan), Haiti and San Francisco but it also saved earth from a fate worse than that as it battled a bigger threat that grew out of man’s obsession with nuclear power, fitting in with the evolution of Godzilla from being a savage monster to a saviour of sorts.
I love Edwards’s Godzilla because it is the ground-shaking, heart-thumping treat that a Godzilla movie should be and is much closer in vein to the original than the last Godzilla film could ever hope to be — whether it was in terms of the subtext, the look of the monster or the pace of the monster’s reveal. Yes, I wish there was more of Godzilla in the first half, but I also realise that it did have enough to make for a gripping, roaring success. Godzilla is not the ridiculous, fast-moving, dinosaur-like, egg-laying monster of Emmerich’s film. This Godzilla, though CGI, has the same feel of the man-in-a-rubber-suit Godzilla of the original with its heavy, clunky and clumsy movements. The blink-and-you-miss shots of Godzilla fighting the other monsters seen through the eyes of someone else or through tape or in shadow are wonderfully done. There were two moments in the film where I couldn’t help but clap out loud — the tail-flick move and the atomic breath (yes, this Godzilla has atomic breath like the original, unlike the fire breath of the 1998 monster).
The cast and the human element of the film is also another big improvement on the 1998 disaster, though it still fell short. Bryan Cranston was only there 20 minutes and I wish there was more of him, though Aaron Taylor-Johnson did not do too shoddy a job. Ken Watanabe’s character might just seem like someone who just stands around and mopes, but he is there for a reason and his name, Dr Ichiro Serizawa, and the fact that he was the only Japanese on the team made it quite clear why. And he has the coolest dialogues, like ‘Let them fight’. This Godzilla roars — and what a roar it is.
GODZILLA FILM FACTS
• Godzilla was actually called Gojira, a clever combination of the English word ‘Gorilla’ and ‘Kujira’, which in Japanese means whale. Gojira actually existed, though not as the monster we are familiar with. It was the nickname of a worker at the Toho Studio in Japan, the producers of the original franchise. The name came to the notice of character co-creator Eiji Tsubaraya, who used it for his 1954 film. However, for the sake of American audiences, it was changed to Godzilla.
• When Godzilla was first created, its mighty roar was produced by rubbing a leather glove over a bass-violin string. YouTube it!
• As it became more Americanised, Godzilla also mastered basketball. A 1992 Nike commercial featured the monster, wearing particularly hideous pink-framed shades, play basketball with NBA great Charles Barkley.
• The town of Zillah in US has a Church of God in which a steel-wire frame dinosaur can be seen clutching a cross and a placard stating ‘Jesus Saves’.
• If you are a Batman fan and are particularly looking forward to Batman vs Superman (or not!), you need to know that at one point of time, a showdown was planned between Batman and Godzilla. The film, however, was never produced. But Godzilla did fight the Avengers. A 24-issue series, running between 1977-79, featured the monster and included face-offs with the likes of The Fantastic Four (in picture).
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1996) also paid a tribute to the Japanese radioactive monster. In a scene where Japanese tourists are featured running away from an enraged T-Rex, one of them says in Japanese: “I escaped Japan to get away from this!”
• In 2008, Godzilla and his offspring featured in an advertisement on good parenting. The tagline? “It takes a man to be a dad.” Cute!
• Godzilla could never actually exist. Paleontologists claim that the limb cartilage of an animal as massive as Godzilla would be crushed “like over-ripe watermelons” by its own body weight. However, a 210 million-year-old, 18-ft-long dinosaur found in New Mexico has been named Gojirasaurus quayi, after the monster.
• Godzilla was conferred a lifetime achievement award by MTV in 1996.
• Godzilla also has its own star in the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Compiled by Riddhima Khanna
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