Son Of? Bride Of? Cousin Of? How Many Godzillas Are There, Already?
The world has already seen 28 Godzilla movies — 29, if you count Roland Emmerich's 1998 Hollywood remake (which most of us don't). So why is another one opening this week?
Well, the fiduciary logic is no doubt compelling if you're a studio executive — even that widely derided '90s version made $379 million — but for the rest of us, director Gareth Edwards needs to make a case. He starts in the opening credits, by letting you know that everything you think you know about this story is suspect. The background is black-and-white footage of atom bomb tests from the 1940s and '50s — the time Godzilla originally surfaced — the foreground, movie credits. But as soon as each credit comes up, it's redacted: Words blacked out, censored as if to say the audience lacks security clearance. Something has been kept from us.
Flash forward to 1999, when earnest scientists Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins come across a mysterious radioactive exoskeleton in the Phillipines, at about the moment that trouble surfaces at a Japanese nuclear facility. A seismic disturbance — think of it as a bug in the system — destroys the reactor, and gives the authorities an excuse to keep everyone away from it for the next 15 years, including a hysterically shock-haired Bryan Cranston who lost his wife (Juliette Binoche) in the reactor meltdown and who's now convinced that the powers-that-be are hiding something.
I won't describe what they're hiding, except to say that it's not Godzilla. But it is big, and feeds on radiation, so if you come at it with nuclear weapons, it thinks you're just serving snacks. Oh, and it emits electro-magnetic pulses that knock out all things technological. Nifty critter, about to escape. Fortunately for humanity, the navy's on hand to give it an acronym.
Graaaaaaaaaargh!
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