In preparation for the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters this week, I re-watched the first entry in the MonsterVerse series, 2014’s Godzilla. With its ambitious plot and strong supporting characters, the film has the potential to be a solid modern monster film, as well as a great Godzilla film. Unfortunately, the main characters prevent that potential from being fulfilled.

This American reboot follows Navy bomb expert Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) helping his father Joe (Bryan Cranston) uncover the cause behind the destruction of a power plant in Japan, which resulted in the death of his mother. Their investigation leads to a global crisis as three massive monsters emerge. Two of them, giant insect creatures known as MUTOs, unite to breed while the third attempts to combat them and restore balance to nature. His name, Godzilla.

The Plot

For a reboot the film is quite ambitious. Not only does it introduce two new monsters but also tries to modernize Godzilla, taking inspiration from the 1954 original and focusing more on the people and how the monsters’ conflict affects them.

Ford is the film’s protagonist and the plot mostly follows his efforts as a soldier and bomb expert to contain the monsters. Through his eyes we see destruction, families getting separated and people screaming in awe and terror before the monsters. Similar to recent modern monster films such as Cloverfield and Monsters, the devastation feels real and believable.

The creatures themselves actually don’t get much screen time. Most of their fights occur off screen until the very end where a spectacular confrontation between the three occurs. I admire this approach as, similar to Jaws and Alien, it emphasizes the importance of the impact of the creatures rather than the creatures themselves. This approach would’ve been successful if the main characters were better written.

The Characters

As I stated before, the supporting characters are strong, especially Joe Brody portrayed incredibly by Bryan Cranston. He was my favourite character in the film as his weakness and desire was very clear. Within the first act, we learn of his grief and anger following his wife’s death. He’s determined to find out what triggered the power plant’s collapse and why the government has quarantined its remains.

Unfortunately, Joe has a minor role in the plot as the rest of the film focuses on Brody and his wife, Elle (Elizabeth Olsen). Brody’s reasons for venturing out and fighting the monsters are never really mentioned, hence it’s difficult to empathize with him.

To make thing’s worse, his and Elle’s characterisations are pretty bland. They present as a stereotypical modern middle-class American couple. They have no distinguishable flaws or traits, nothing interesting. Yet the majority of the film centres around them as if they’re going to reveal something important or undergo a dramatic change. This makes Godzilla an unengaging and even boring watch at times.

I do recommend it for the creative plot, Bryan Cranston’s character and the monster action of course, but I should warn you that you may feel a bit underwhelmed at parts.

I give Godzilla a decent 7 out of 10.