I know what you’re thinking: Why isn’t she watching the original Godzilla movies? To be honest I don’t know, and I would have if they were part of the MonsterVerse, but they’re not. This franchise also includes King Kong, which is the next movie, so stay tuned for that. To be honest, for the first time watching Godzilla, I really liked the story. I wish they showed more of the monsters, but I’m assuming they didn’t have a big enough budget to show them a lot, because these guys were HUGE. I think that’s what fascinated me the most. I watched Godzilla v. Kong with Andrew and I thought it was really cool too, which is why I figured I start from the beginning. Anyway, here is what Godzilla (2014) is all about.
During the main title scene we are shown newspaper clippings from the past. We learn that in 1954, Godzilla, a prehistoric alpha predator, is lured to Bikini Atoll, it’s a coral reef in the Marshall Islands, in an attempt to kill him with a nuclear bomb. In 1999, my birth year woot woot Monarch scientists Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham investigate the skeleton of a monster similar to Godzilla in a cavern unearthed by a collapsed uranium mine in the Phillippines. They also find two giant spores, one dormant and one hatched, along with a trail leading to the sea.
In Japan, the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant experiences unusual seismic activity as supervisor Joe Brody sends his wife Sandra to lead a team of technicians into the reactor. Kind of a dumb idea if you ask me. A tremor breaches the reactor, forcing Joe to close the reacter door before Sandra and her team can escape while the plant collapses. I was kind of annoyed by this, because she could’ve lived if he didn’t send her down there. PLUS this guy basically watched his wife die because she made it to the door, but he couldn’t open it because of this “radiation”.
Anyway, 15 years later, Joe and Sandra’s son Ford, a U.S. Navy EOD officer, returns from a tour of duty to his wife Elle and son Sam in San Francisco, but must immediately depart for Japan after Joe is detained for trespassing in Janjira’s quarantine zone. My dude lol. Also, I didn’t really like the actor in this movie who played Ford. He was kind of bad to be honset, but luckily they didn’t seem to show him talking too much. He was good action-wise, but not talking-wise if that makes sense. I don’t know maybe I’m just dumb lol.
Joe is determined to find out the cause of the meltdown as he should since it bascially killed his wife and persuades Ford to accompany him to retrieve vital data from their old home. They discover the zone is uncontaminated guys. These people are freaking out over uncontaminated land!! It’s like Chernobyl but NOT and retrieve the data, but are discovered and taken to a facility in the plant’s ruins. The facility harbors a massive chrysalis that had been feeding off the plant’s reactors for 15 years and emitting intense electromagnetic pulses over time. Joe was trying to tell everybody this, but they wouldn’t listen to him, until you know, he dies of course. Yeah, I know, another sad series of events. A giant winged insect-like creature emerges from the chrysalis and escapes, destroying the facility. This is where Joe gets injured and then dies. Best character in the whole movie, if I’m being honest. The incident is reported publicly as an earthquake. Because everyone is going to believe that.
Serizawa and Graham join the U.S. Navy task force led by Admiral William Stenz to search for the creature, dubbed “MUTO”. Serizawa and Graham reveal to Ford that a 1954 deep-sea expedition awakened Godzilla. Great. Just great. This is why we need to leave things alone. This guy was sleeping not bothering anyone and look. We got curious and now we’re dealing with the consquences. He ain’t going to sleep again. He’s up and that’s it. WHY ARE WE ANNOYING AND NOSY!? Nuclear tests in the 1950s were attempts to kill him; when this didn’t work, Project Monarch was established to study Godzilla and similar monsters secretly. Because why not. Let’s study these creatures and maybe make more and cause more problems. Like I said, we can’t just worry about the next football game, we gotta go and study these huge creatures that literally can kill us.
They also explain that the MUTO caused the Janjira meltdown. Ford reveals Joe had monitored echolocation signals indicating the MUTO was communicating with something, presumably Godzilla. Faaaaaaaantastic. They’re working together now. The MUTO attacks a Russian submarine darn? and drops it in the O’ahu to eat its nuclear material. Godzilla arrives, causing a tsunami in Honolulu way to be discreet Godzilla and briefly engages the MUTO in battle until it flees. Serizawa deduces Godzilla was only listening as the MUTO was communicating with something else, prompting the military to investigate the other spore stored in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. However, a second, bigger, wingless MUTO has already emerged and attacks Las Vegas. Perfect. There’s three of them now. The scientists deduce that it is a female and was what the male was communicating with, their signals being a mating call. Even better.
Over the scientists’ objections, Stenz approves a plan of using nuclear warheads to lure all three monsters out into the open ocean and destroy them. Because that worked the first time. Returning to the U.S., Ford joins the team delivering the warheads by train, but the female MUTO intercepts them and devours most of the warheads. The remaining warhead is airlifted with Ford to San Francisco, where the monsters are converging, and activated after Godzilla appears at the Golden Gate Bridge, only for the male MUTO to snatch it and take it to the female, who forms a nest around it in the Chinatown area. oh.
While Godzilla and the MUTOs battle, Ford and a stike team enter the city via a HALO jump to find and disarm the warhead before it detonates. This is because it would literally kill a bunch of people if they didn’t. Unable to access the timer, the team gets the warhead onto a boat for disposal at sea while Ford destroys the nest. The poor fish who are probably going to die from this bomb. Also, this mom MUTO is a fricken loser, she literally just lost all her kids lol. Godzilla defeats the MUTOS and collapses on the shore from exhaustion. I mean same. Ford gets the boat out to the “open” sea. I put quotes there because it was literally like inches from the shore, but it’s fine he’s rescued before the warhead explodes and reunites with his family at an emergency shelter the following morning. Godzilla reawakens and returns to the sea like nothing fricken happened, while the media dubs him the “King of the Monsters” and speculate whether he might be a savior. The end.
Like I said in the beginning, this movie wasn’t bad. Were there times where I was like “why is everyone being dumb?” of course, but that’s how movies are. If you like action movies like this and want to see the full, real action I recommend taking a look at this movie. The lesson I learned: leave things alone.
Next movie: Kong: Skull Island
Gabriella Dragone 