Godzilla 2014

Directed by Gareth Edwards
Writing Credits
Max Borenstein … (screenplay)
Dave Callaham … (story)
Aaron Taylor-Johnson …. Ford Brody
Ken Watanabe …Dr. Ishiro Serizawa
Bryan Cranston…… Joe Brody
Elizabeth Olsen …..Elle Brody
Carson Bolde …..Sam Brody
Sally Hawkins …..Vivienne Graham
Juliette Binoche……Sandra Brody

Aspect Ratio 2.35: 1
Camera Arri Alexa Plus 4:3, Panavision Primo, C-Series, PVintage, ATZ, AWZ2 and Cooke Lenses

Anytime one remakes a move or makes use of existing characters and or story, the writers and directors are confronted with decisions about how close they should follow the original source material. Follow it too closely and there is no real need for the film, drift to far and face the wrath of loyal fans. It is clear that the director, Gareth Edwards and his writers, Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham went back to the roots of Ishirô Honda’s 1954 classic for inspiration. As the opening credits roll we are watching vintage footage of early nuclear tests, and the credits are made to look like government documents, where portions have been redacted. This opening accomplishes both connecting the film to the 1954 timeline, as well as imply that we have kept from the truth.
We are told the year is 1999 as we see a helicopter baring the name “Monarch”.
land at the site of a disastrous cave-in and meet , the Japanese researcher, Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his assistant Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins). A team goes into the cavern looking for the source of the radioactive readings and cause for the collapse only to find fossilized remains of a creature so large it looks like it could swallow a T-Rex whole. But these remains are not quite as dead as they first appear; and some part of is actually able to hatch some insanely large, alien looking thing that, completely unaffected by a silly waste of bullets, heads out to the sea.

The film then introduces us to Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), an American working in Japan for a nuclear power plant as he anxiously troubled over seismic activity. He and his wife, quickly drop off their young son at school and quickly make their way to the plant, demanding it be shut down. Joe, tells his wife, Sandy (Juliette Binoche to confirm the shaking has not damaged the plant, while he wield his clout to shut the thing down..Brody yells: “We need to shut down now!” but is too late, the reactor core has been exposed and his wife is trying to escape ahead of a radioactive cloud closing in on her and the others in her team. Brody demands that he is granted manual override of the lead protective door in an attempt to save his wife, but as the cloud overtakes them, he has no choice but to close the door and watch his wife die. Movies about skyscraper-sized monsters seldom have scenes of such personal emotion, and Bryan Cranston pulls it off perfectly.
We jump 15 years and Joe’s son, Ford Brody is now a solder, a bomb expert, home on leave with his wife and small son, when he gets a call that his father was arrested in Japan for trespassing. Lt. Ford Brody heads to Japan, bails his father out, and the reluctantly goes with him back to their old home, now in a quarantine zone, looking for computer discs that will prove that the plant was not destroyed by an earthquake, but by “Something else.” Well they get caught and it is at this time that we find Ichiro Serizawa is the head of a team researching another one of these dormant giant creatures, and that he believes that Joe Brody has proof that what caused the disaster 15 years ago, is repeating. Sure enough, again one of these giant things comes back to life and and heads out to sea The Navy tracks the “MUTO” Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism is headed across the Pacific toward San Francisco .

It is at this point that the film sets the military’s “Blow it-it-up” idea against Sirezawa belief that Godzilla will track and kill these two creatures that are destroying everything in their path it to restore balance to nature. Sirezawa condemns the arrogance of mankind’s notion that we can control nature.