Greg Ferrara’s thoughtful pieces on remakes last week and yesterday got me thinking again about Godzilla—which was the subject of my own thoughtless post last week. Maybe too many things get me thinking about Godzilla. But since Godzilla movies have been “rebooted” so many times over the years (1954, 1984, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2014 to choose the most obvious ones) there’s almost no remake-related issue that hasn’t been touched on in Godzillaland at least once.
Like Greg, I’ve got no truck with anyone who chooses to remake a classic film—more power to ‘em, I say. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I had to choose between Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars, or between The Thing From Another World and The Thing. I wouldn’t even be happy if I had to choose between The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Man Who Knew Too Much—Hitchcock hit it out of the park on the second try, but that doesn’t invalidate the charms of the first try. Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is a masterpiece, and possibly my favorite film of all time (depends how I’m feeling about The General at the time), but Werner Klingler’s Testament of Dr. Mabuse manages to improve on Lang’s in places, and come in a respectable second in the rest.
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Even when the remake misfires—so what? The original still exists, the remake probably dusted off interest in it, and the failures of the remake can help highlight what made the original so nifty. No harm, no foul.
I don’t even agree with those who would prefer to see filmmakers focus on remaking bad films rather than good ‘uns. The economic reality is that Hollywood wants to cash in on the name recognition of the popular original. I don’t begrudge that. As I said above, do it well, and we all benefit.
Which, somehow, brings me back to Godzilla.
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I happened to rewatch Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla on the day that Greg posted his essay, and I couldn’t help but have it on my mind as I watched. I’ve gotten a fair number of emails from readers who wonder if I plan to revise my book to include the new film—and frankly the answer is no. But, I am willing to bloviate about it here, if that helps.
My initial, candid, personal gut reaction to the 2014 Godzilla was disappointment that it wasn’t funny. Not that I ever expected it would be—clearly that’s not what 99% of the audience wants. As soon as fans heard the advance word at Comic-con a few years ago that it would be “dark” and “serious” they cheered in joy—while a little piece of me died inside.
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My favorite Godzilla movies (like Monster Zero) embrace their absurdity and go for broke. That is fun.
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It’s not like the premise is any way remotely plausible. I don’t care how much effort you put into making it grimdark and somber, the idea that a giant dinosaurian-thing rampages the modern world fighting other monsters by breathing atomic fire is completely ridiculous. The 1954 original can get away with taking that premise seriously because it’s all an allegory on recent history that uses these outsized concepts to dramatize issues that couldn’t be spoken directly—but once you try to do anything else with it, the basic premise of Godzilla becomes silly by definition. So just go with it and have fun.
But that’s churlish of me to say—it’s not fair for me to criticize Edwards’ film for falling short of an unreasonable expectation that I personally had, rather than evaluate how well it succeeded at the ambitions it set for itself.
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So, taking Godzilla at its intentions, there is a lot to like. I particularly want to single out the portrayal of the military. Let’s take for example the scene where the Admiral (David Strathairn) argues with Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) about whether to use a nuclear bomb off the coast of San Francisco to fight the monsters.
It is a surprisingly nuanced debate, that doesn’t set up either side as a straw man. Serizawa argues against the plan on both rational and emotional bases—1) the monsters are known to consume radiation, and have already demonstrated invulnerability to A-bombs, so there’s no logical reason to assume they will succumb to an H-bomb blast; and 2) his father died in Hiroshima, a reminder of the last time Americans threw nukes at their enemies. But Admiral Stenz has good points of his own—1) H-bombs are astronomically more powerful than A-bombs so that’s not a valid comparison; and 2) you got a better idea?
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When the plan is put into action, it goes awry—as it must, but how it goes awry is notable. Things go pear-shaped not because the military is incompetent, or overweening, or villainous. They are trying a desperate act in tough circumstances, and the situation turns against them. Simple as that.
They have thought ahead to use a bomb with a clockwork mechanism, so the electromagnetic pulses emitted by the MUTO creatures won’t trigger or disable the bomb, and they bring along a bomb expert with firsthand experience using the retrofitted clockwork technology. They are careful not to send the train carrying the bomb down a bridge until they can confirm the bridge hasn’t been taken out by the MUTOs. And when the MUTO attack derails the train and sinks the bomb, they find it and bring it back to the surface to try again. When the bomb is taken from them once more and used to festoon a MUTO nest, they parachute a bunch of soldiers into the action to retrieve it all over again —all these steps show foresight and adaptability.
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My favorite bit about this sequence is how it ends. From the beginning of the movie, we’ve been told Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Capt. Brody is a bomb expert, and throughout this climactic sequence he has repeatedly reminded us that he’s the only person qualified to disable this device if it goes wrong. So when things well and truly go wrong, does he disable the device? No, he can’t even get a chance to try because the glass case is cracked and won’t open. Take that, Chekov.
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It is refreshing for a movie that so prioritizes its military characters to be willing to paint them as heroic people who make mistakes, failing in the face of impossible odds because the odds are impossible and not because of any failing of character. If anything stands as realistic in this epic battle of the Unlikely vs. the Impossible, it’s nothing to do with Godzilla and everything to do with Capt. Brody.