With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the spitting high tension wires down!
Helpless people on a subway train, scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them!
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down as he wades through the buildings toward the center of town!
Oh no, they say he’s got to go! Go go Godzilla!
Oh no, there goes Tokyo! Go go Godzilla!
History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men!
Godzilla!
When I was ten I got the chicken pox from my sister, which announced its arrival in the form of me vomiting on the side of the Long Island Expressway while on vacation with my family in New York.
I spent the next two weeks in an itchy, itchy hell, comforted by the occasional oatmeal bath, and left with my uncle’s collection of old Godzilla movies. That is when I fell in love with giant monster movies.
Last summer’s ROBOT PUNCH MONSTER Pacific Rim was the appetizer to this summer’s main event: a proper remake of Toho’s Godzilla, the iconic gargantuan radioactive lizard monster. I have seen the new Godzilla, and the King of the Monsters is back.
Rather than take the more modern approach of showing audiences the monster right away, director Gareth Edwards has taken the Jaws approach and holds back Godzilla and his opponents (a pair of giant monsters called MUTOs) until about 45 minutes in, giving time for the human plot to develop. However, once the monsters show up, the human plot takes a complete back seat. Basically, everyone goes from being really proactive, trying to get a handle on things, to just trying to stay out of the monster’s way, which is exactly how it should be. The monster fights are amazing, by the way, especially the third act.
As for the Big G himself, he’s perfectly realized. Not so much an animal (although the movie refers to him as the alpha predator on more than one occasion) as a force of nature, utterly unstoppable. To answer a question that I’m sure is on everyone’s Godzilla-loving minds: yes, he has his atomic breath weapon; yes, he uses it; and yes, it’s ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
If you have the chance, I highly recommend going to the theater and seeing Godzilla in all its glory. Hail to the King!
Image: Wikimedia Commons
