WARNING:
The
following contains spoilers for the movie Godzilla
(2014). If you have any interest in seeing the movie, you'll want to do so
before reading this. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Well, I finally saw the recent Godzilla movie.
I say "finally" because
I had every intention of seeing it in the theatre but a certain small child
refused to see it with me. She was quite keen to see Maleficent, the Boxtrolls,
Big Hero 6, and similar fluff, but Godzilla? Nope.
Sigh. Kids these days.
Anyway, I won't bore you with a
review; as far as what does or doesn't make it a good movie there really isn't
much to say. It's a fairly typical Big Monsters Smashing Stuff film that is a
good watch as long as you take it for what it is and don't try to get
intellectual about it.
"So what's all this about
then?" you might ask.
"Shut up, I'm telling
you," I might respond.
I like my movies to have some
mystery about them, and trailers never fail to ruin it. Yeah, I get it--they're
trying to make it look its best by showing all of the best and most important scenes.
The problem is that any good story will have one or two unexpected plot
developments and trailers inevitably give away the first one. This means the
film is halfway over before there's even a chance
of something happening that isn't painfully obvious.
The horror genre is the worst
about this. They'll title the movie "Killed to Death by Werewolves"
and then make you sit through half an hour of people examining hairy footprints
and torn jugulars and reports of howling while the characters gasp, "What
could have done something like
this?!?"
A werewolf. It's a goddamn
werewolf. Just get to the part where stuff happens.
I have the same problem with
synopses on the back of books or DVDs (which I've learned never to read). Granted,
one will always have a fair idea of what they're getting into (if you grab one
from the 'Western' section, expect cowboys) but for God's sake, at least something should be left unrevealed
before the film starts.
Which brings us to Godzilla.
It started with the requisite
half hour of "What could have done
this?!?" and me sitting there saying, "It's Godzilla. Clearly it's
Godzilla. Get to the part where people get squished and stuff gets
smashed."
And then it wasn't Godzilla.
When 'Muto' (a giant mantis-like
critter for those who didn't see the movie and now probably won't bother to)
popped out of that hole instead of Godzilla, I was surprised. I honestly didn't
see it coming.
I suppose one could argue that
I'm just dense and should have known better, but here's the important fact in
all of this: not one of the trailers I
saw showed any monsters but Godzilla. For that, I am immensely grateful.
This meant that Godzilla being
the good guy came as a surprise as well. True, any self-respecting Zillaphile1
knows that Godzilla only was a destroyer in the first few movies. Thereafter he
was actually defending Japan from
such beasties as Mothra, Rodan, Mechagodzilla, Ghidorah, King Kong, and Gary
Busey, but in most American 'Zilla flicks I had seen, it was back to the
basics--Godzilla comes in like a wrecking ball (apologies to Miley Cyrus) and is
fought off in the end.
I'm a guy who tends to root for
the monsters in these sorts of films, so to see Godzilla suddenly in the role
of protagonist was refreshing. After all, he's taken a lot of flack about his weight lately, the poor guy.
So thank you, makers of Godzilla, and a further thank you for
the spoiler-free trailer. This may not have been the best movie I've ever seen
but there's really nothing better than seeing a film that hasn't been
pre-spoiled. I can't be the only one that feels that way either. After all, M.
Night Shamalamadingdong made millions off of the "crazy plot twist at the
end" formula, relying entirely on the element of surprise and the element
of your asshole coworkers not ruining it for you before you've seen it.
Try it yourself: the next movie
night you have, watch one without knowing what it's about. Have a friend pick
something. Grab a random movie off the shelf. Turn to a movie channel and don't
read the summary. See what you've been missing.
Mystery--it's not just for
mysteries2.
1 - Pretty good, huh? I should trademark that.
2 - That too.
