Confession time: I have never seen a Godzilla movie before. I know, there must be some membership card that I’ll have to hand back in now that I’ve said that. We only had one TV station when I was growing up and I can’t remember there ever being a Godzilla movie on. If there was, it may have been too late at night for me to have seen it. I’ve been aware of Godzilla, of course, but until last night, I’d never seen him in action, other than in clips.
Went to the seven o’clock show with Danel Olson, the editor of the Exotic Gothic anthologies and a couple of the Studies in the Horror Film books, including the one about The Shining that will contain a contribution from me. We live only a few miles apart but never met until the WHC in Austin a few years ago.
The theater wasn’t packed, but we’d picked the smaller of the two cinemas in our community and opted against the 3D version. We arrived ten minutes before showtime and got decent seats. The trailers were a sequence of about five in a row that seemed to revel in being cagey about what the films were really about. Disjointed, nonlinear, and about as helpful as the previews for an episode of Mad Men. These were followed by one comedy (22 Jump Street) that you couldn’t induce me to watch with anything known to mankind, and the one preview that actually piqued my interest: A Most Wanted Man, based on the Le Carré novel, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe and Robin Wright.
Then came the main feature. I was surprised by the marquee names who weren’t in the film as long as I’d expected, and had no idea at all who the actor was who played Ford. I was intrigued when Ken Watanabe called the monster Gojira, but in that kind of Japanese accent that made it sound so much like Godzilla that it finally clicked in my head how one had transformed into the other. The director chose to hint at more than he showed, especially in the first hour. There were reactions to and repercussions of the monsters, but not much screen time for the biggest marquee star. The bad guys got more exposure until late in the game. There was some human drama, but a lot of coincidence, too, like how Ford ended up everywhere the bad guys did. A lot of people killed, but so long as they weren’t “our guys” it was okay. That’s the sort of stuff you’d expect from this kind of film, though. The money shot came at the end as Godzilla emerges from the deeps to restore the balance of nature.
It’s all very Lovecraftian, in a sense. These huge monsters are like Elder Gods, with little care for or interest in humankind, unless the humans in question are trying to poke them in the eye with a sharp stick. Buildings and trees and bridges are all the same to them. Obstacles in the battle, or weapons. For the most part, the humans were really surplus to requirements. They had to deal with the bombs, but they were the ones who decided to put the bombs in play in the first place. If they’d done nothing, the outcome would have been more or less the same. All good fun, though. Godzilla reminded me of The Incredible Hulk when he flexed his arms.
I posted two book reviews this week: The Son by Jo Nesbø and The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon. Two very different books, but I enjoyed them both.
