Godzilla First Look Reaction

Godzilla

A few of us from Subculture Media were lucky enough to attend a special screening of some of the footage from the forthcoming film Godzilla from the very talented director Gareth Edwards. The screening itself was really a bit of a teaser as it baited us just enough for us to really want to have a look at this film.

The fact that Godzilla is directed by Gareth Edwards the man who delivered the very fine Monsters back in 2010 is obvious. For those that saw Monsters you will quickly remember that this was a monster film that was more about characterisation and drama than the monsters at hand. He also showed a great talent for dramatic action sequences and while the sequences they showed us of Godzilla wasn’t really enough for us to make up our minds on too much of the film it was enough to suggest that this film is going to be a lot better than the one that surfaced in 1998 and starred Matthew Broderick.

From what we saw Edwards has gone for a Battle: Los Angeles feel to this film, realistic looking battle sequences from the military’s point of view that looks so real you could be excused for thinking that it’s actual footage. There also seems to be a main plot thread that follows Joe Brody (Bryan Cranstan) a scientist that works at a nuclear power plant that is hit by a series of earthquakes. With his wife dying in the disaster and the fact he doesn’t believe it was an earthquake he returns to the scene of the accident and soon learns that things aren’t what they seem.

We were shown the scenes of Joe trying frantically to rescue his wife and while they were suspenseful there was a bit of a concern that perhaps Cranston may be more like he was in Total Recall than Breaking Bad. Still it wasn’t enough to make a fair judgement on, and to be honest the scenes of him returning to the scene-of-the-crime and the footage of the destruction of capital cities with tsunamis etc did actually look bloody good.

We’d love to be able to tell you what Godzilla himself looked like, but sadly just like Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen we didn’t see much of him. Just a quick glance that actually made him look pretty fearsome, certainly no cute looking dinosaur creature here.

To sum up Godzilla looks like a disaster film with the brute force that only Gareth Edwards can bring to a film. The ideas of military and Government conspiracies does look like it brings a nice edge to it… so I guess now we just wait and see how Godzilla turns out when we get a chance to review the full the thing.