Godzilla

Wrinkled andcrinkled,huge in Japan,heroically reluctant to give up, and forever touringthe world on amission tomake usscream, Godzilla is the Mick Jagger ofgiant amphibians. In the latest version of thelegend,directed by Gareth Edwards, Godzillaevenhas a Ronnie and a Keith to mess around with: a pair ofscaly,primeval throwbackswho risefrom thedepths and joinhim in merry mayhem. Forfood, they snack on nuclearpower plants and othersources of radiation, chompingatomicwarheads as if they were Twinkies. All that’smissingfrom this film is a Charlie Watts figure: someslender beast, nicelypreserved,calmlybeatingtime at the back of theaction.Webegin in 1999, in the Philippines,whereminingoperationshave unearthedwhat is either a fossilized ribcage the size of anaircrafthangar or a stageset that Ridley Scottordered for “Prometheus” and then forgot to use. Itsprincipalfunction is to allow a visitingscientist (Sally Hawkins) to utter thephrase “Oh my God, is it possible?,” indicating that thenexttwo hours are unlikely tostrayfrom awell-trampled path. Other pleasing examples, for anyscholar of disaster movies, include “I can’tbelieve this is happening!” and―a truly outstanding contribution to thegenre―“I’massuming that yourorganizationhas situational awareness of theunidentifiedcreature.” Incommonparlance, this means “Where’s thebigbug gone?,” but that wouldbreak the mood. Thescreenplay is by Max Borenstein, and the story by David Callahan, butno doubt other hands were involved. Thecomputerizedimagery in “Godzilla” is soprodigious, and therefore sogreedy forthe filmmakers’ attention, that it seems tohave sucked thelife out of the writing.From the Philippines, wespring to Japan,where Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) andhis wife, Sandra (Juliette Binoche),both work at a nuclear facility,whichhas the misfortuneto be treated as an all-you-can-eat buffet bypredators unknown. Next, weadvance fifteen years, bywhichtime Brody―strangely unaged, with the same bad hair, as if adose ofplutonium keeps you young―is still hung up onwhat happened. By contrast,his son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson),hasbrushed thepast aside andbecome a valiant, buff, and indomitably boring navalofficer, with adevoted wife (Elizabeth Olsen), a home in San Francisco, and a job inbomb disposal. Hehas one of thosetricky talks withhisfather about moving on,making achange, and soforth; they then wake up thenext morning andhave the same conversation all overagain. I took thisto be aneditorialoversight, but it’s the start of a pattern. We get an excitingscene on abridge, forinstance,which is thencompounded by aslightly less excitingscene on adifferentbridge―the Golden Gate, indeed,which not long ago had anarmy of indignant chimps clambering all over it, in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” When was thelasttime that anyoneactually succeeded in drivingacross withoutinterruption?Thegeography of “Godzilla” is acurious matter. Once themonsters get theirheads down and start causing seriousdamage, theirfirst port of call is Honolulu. Then comes Las Vegas. The implication is clear: these are not mutants, or Jurassic dinosaurs thathave somehowsurvived theeons, or the result oftechnological hubris on thepart of mankind. No, they are tourists―hellbent on thenation’s hot spots, like the students inlast year’s “Spring Breakers,” but minus the Day-Glo bikinis. “Why would they go to Nevada?,” somebody asks, and the obvious answer is “To get rat-assed on forty-dollar mai tais, hauledoff theblackjack tables, andmarried in an Elvis suit attwo o’clock in the morning.” Some hope. The beasts just want tohavefun, but the gravest letdown in Edwards’s film is that,most ofthe time, hefendsoff the chance tohavefunhimself. How hemanages toinsert a humongous creepy-crawly into the Strip,have itstomp around in the footsteps of Sinatra, and not derive a singledecent