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By Sandra Olmsted

Godzilla, the star of 29 feature films turns the big SIX-ZERO this year, and with maturity comes a complete remake of the myth and the body. In the director Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, there are no zippers to look for in these monsters although the monsters in this version do have the anatomic look of being a human in a monster suit, which is only fitting considering the history of the monster himself. Still an object lesson about the dangers of the nuclear age, Godzilla’s opponents in this film are Muta, a giant creature struggling to procreate with a mate and drawn to the energy of a nuclear power plant.

The first monster appears when Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche) work at a nuclear power plant in Japan. The resulting disaster kills Sandra and turns Joe into a conspiracy-obsessed scientist, who barely acknowledges his own son Ford Brody, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson as an adult and as a boy by CJ Adams. All grown up, Ford has a family of his own with wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and son Sam (Carson Bolde), who is close to the age Ford was when he lost his mother, an event that still looms large. Just back from a tour of duty, Ford, a bomb specialist in the Army, must go to Japan to bail his father out of jail for trespassing into the restrict zone around the power plant where Sandra Brody died.

Joe Brody insists that there is something other than a nuclear disaster going on, and twenty some year on, the same odd series of small earthquakes is rattling the secret instillation at the same location as the destroyed nuclear power plant. Torn between guilt for unknowingly sending his scientist wife into the danger that killer her and the desire to warn people that it is happening again, Joe convinces Ford to go into the restricted zone, where the two discover an interesting coverup. The father and son get arrested and taken to the secret facility just in time for the tremors to escalate to full-blown earthquakes. Now Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), two scientist working on the project, start listening to Joe, but is it be too late? Will Ford get home to Elle and Sam in San Francisco before the monsters converge on the city?

This big-budget, computer-generated version of an epic battle between one monster and another, the male and the female of the Muta, makes for much higher production values of course, but even better is Edwards’ directing style which has Hitchcockian elements. Edwards often shows the audience less and gets more scare out of the not seeing than the seeing. It was very refreshing! Of course, he also maintains the tropes of the Godzilla films and the monsters, especially the monster of the hour, Godzilla, who has to step on the guy who stops the scream and look at the giant. One great sequence has Ford handcuffed to the police wagon in the path of Muta’s destruction.

The actors, including David Strathairn and Richard T. Jones as military leaders, are excellent, and no one projects emotional distress on screen like Olsen, the younger sister of the Olsen twins. Taylor-Johnson has all the makings of the next All-American on-screen hero. The 3D is worth the extra money and avoids cheap trick to use the extra dimension to expand the space of the film in exciting ways. Another fun element is the music: Listen carefully for strains of music from other films, such as WWII films and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I will say I wanted the classic, two-note Jaws theme at the end, but that was my only disappointment in Godzilla. In theaters now, Godzilla, a Warner Bros release, runs 123 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence. The film is a co-production of Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, along with the Toho Company, the creator of Godzilla.

More of Olmsted’s reviews are available at <www.thecinematicskinny.com>.

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