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Crash of the Titans
‘Godzilla,’ unexpectedly, is the best monster movie since ‘Jurassic Park’
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor jones@dallasvoice.com
Poor Aaron Taylor-Johnson — dude can’t of recent vintage, the stakes start out incredibly catch a break. Sure, he appears to have been high — nothing short of world destruction and carved out of alabaster and leftover marble from global financial collapse, as opposed to an isoMichelangelo’s David, gilded with Apple pie lated villain with a bug up his butt. They crash and puppy kisses. And yes, he has top billing in and flail and wreak the untold havoc of a toda summer tentpole movie. dler at a Toys R Us sale. Top billing, perhaps, but not the title role. But overlook these miscues. Moreover, forget That plum belongs to Godzilla, a 60-year-old that abortive comic-tinged version from 1998. movie monster who doesn’t make his appearThis Godzilla is one of the most satisfying monance until an hour in this two-hour actioner. ster movies since Jurassic Park. That’s star power: the ability to show up late to It helps that we approach the film with six the party and still get all the chicks. decades worth of backstory. The opening credits, That leaves Taylor-Johnson as one of the most a montage apparent classified newsreel footage passive action heroes that modfrom the early atomic era of the ern moviedom has seen. This 1950s, become kind of shorthand isn’t entirely a bad thing. Godzilla superhero origin story. Godzilla GODZILLA avoids many of the clichés of the and his nemesis, a giant winged Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth traditional action film, even as it arthropod code named MUTO, Olsen, Ken Watanabe, Bryan slyly reinforces some of its more are remnants from an age when Cranston. Rated PG-13. 120 mins. Now playing in wide release. appealing tropes. On the downdinosaurs could feed off of radiaside: The wife of Taylor-Johnson’s tion. MUTO has the ability, with character, played by Elizabeth Olsen, spends the stamp of a talon, to emit an electro-magnetic most of the movie running while glancing uppulse, essential bringing the whole of humanity ward with her big, dewy cow eyes (she also into the stone age. How can you defeat a creaworks in a hospital, as all female partners of ture who feeds on the fallout from ICBMs? movies superheroes are required to). And the Maybe Godzilla — as a Japanese scientist, explanation about the source of power for these played by Ken Watanabe, poses — can bring mythic super creatures — that they feed on radi- balance by attacking his natural predator on beation — doesn’t fully justify the science of how half of mankind — the kick-ass Yin to MUTO’s eating and unexploded nuclear warhead would Yang. And just what are Godzilla’s superpowprovide them with the energy needed to step all ers? You have to wait and find out, but it’s over San Francisco. And, like many action films worth it. (Hint: One of his best moves he RADIOACTIVE MAN | In Gareth Edwards’ surprisingly awesome film, the CGI-created Godzilla has more humanity than a sequel’s worth of Transformers.
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05.16.14