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godzillaisepic · 3 years

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And that was Godzilla (1954)! Not a lot of clips, sorry about that! I made this blog partly to clip the funny moments in godzilla films, but as this movie is quite serious there really wasn't much to clip besides the two. I gonna write a little review for this one but I'm not sure I will do this for every movie and this one is certainly a special case!

THE PARTS I LIKED

The whole beginning of the movie. The movie starts by showing ships being sunk by a mysterious explosion and then cuts the ship control center where the crew is being bombarded by family members of the lost demanding answers. When the only surviving fisher man of one of the boats washes ashore a crowd surrounds it asking for any info at all about what happened. A violent hurricane rips through the same small fishing town and destroys buildings and we are left on a scene of a man screaming for his brother who was crushed in their own home. This is a part that I think the film really succeeds in, it's depictions of the pain and suffering in people and groups. In a lot of movies, crowds are a lot of time shown as a faceless mob with some vague goal, but in godzilla crowds are shown as desperate and panicked individuals in a frenzied state trying to find answers to something. Maybe it's all the yelling and jostling in the crowds that make them feel so real. These good performances make every death or ship lost feel like a travesty.

Another good thing was how well the mystery of godzilla was handled in the beginning of the movie. Not really a "mystery" per say (the movie is called godzilla, he takes up most of the poster) but there is a sense of unease and tension as you wait for the big man himself to be revealed. And boy does he! I don't know what it is about this shot but Godzilla looks so uncanny and creepy. The beginning of the movie feels almost like godzilla has been omitted in some form, but you know he's there, lurking.

DESOLATION is also handled very well. The film purposefully provokes images of the the hydrogen bombings after godzilla's attack on Tokyo. Tokyo is burning and flattened to the ground, hospitals are overcrowded and a child cries for her dead mother and it's absolutely gut wrenching. There's a suffocating sense of bleakness and powerlessness as the people watch godzilla kill innocent people and tear apart their city. One person watches godzilla rip and throw aside a bridge and mutters to themselves "damn beast"

All in all this movie is shaping up to be pretty good, eh? and its aged pretty well even in the special effects department. Could this actually be a really great movie? Well that's what I thought watching it up to this point and well, you'll see...

THE PARTS I DIDN'T LIKE

Why does Dr. Serizawa have to look like this? The smallest eyepatch known to man, the constant wearing of a lab coat, the huge rubber gloves. I absolutely cannot take this guy seriously! And then he starts talking about an "oxygen destroyer" and how there is definitely a good use for it besides eviscerating fish he just hasn't found it yet, and he says this in front of miscellaneous beakers and flasks. I'm sorry! I can't! I can suspend my disbelief enough for giant radioactive monster but not for a magic ball that deletes oxygen and turns fish into bones! And he dies at the end, and I don't care! All he did was wax poetic about his special ball that could kill everyone that he swears has a good use for humanity but could also definitely kill everyone. I get it's drawing parallels to the fact that we now use nuclear energy for power but started out as bomb fuel, but fucking, oxygen destroyer?? Apparently this plot point shows up in king of the monsters, so I guess I have that to look forward to.

Another grip I had with movie is how Emiko's character is written. She is super weirdly passive and submissive. In this regard the movie is definitely a product of it's time. Besides her push to break off her engagement and marry Ogata, she spends most of the movie seeming very overwhelmed, apologizing for the men in her life and bursting into tears. Yes she is in a stressful situation but it feels very weird when she is the only one having emotional outbursts not fueled by anger.

It was definitely disappointing how the third act of the movie played out, I was really enjoying it up until that point. But I really didn't care about the characters, or their love triangle, or serizawa's sacrifice. Movies are only going to sillier from here on out so it's very disappointing that the serious one seems to miss the mark.

#godzilla (1954)#godzilla #godzillaisepic #longpost

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