One of the things people hate most about film critics is how we love to complain when giant Hollywood films don’t get it ‘right’. We never miss an opportunity to point out how something was was too dumb or heavy-handed, bemoaning the clunkiness of it all. Comments like, “It’s all just loud effects these days!” or, “Whatever happened to the story?” have become the cliché catcall of the modern critic, capped off with the timeless “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

Well, it would seem that someone was listening, since director Gareth Edwards has taken all these sentiments to heart in his new Godzilla rehash, the most intellectual, existential and ultimately gentlest monster movie ever made. And the question is, should he have listened to us so closely?

After a perhaps unintended but well-timed tribute to HR Giger (the production designer for the Alien films, who died this week), things build in the slowest boil ever set for a film of this stature, kicking off with an emotionally bold sequence that sets the stage for the rest of the film: a man losing his wife. That man is Bryan Cranston (from some show called Breaking Bad), playing the raving scientist who insists that the shit’s about to hit the fan, to whom no one will listen. This is one of the only ‘classic’ nods to basic monster movie plot structure found in the film.

Similar to Alien, the filmmakers are in absolutely no rush to show us the creature(s) in this feature, waiting upwards of an hour for things to really get going (i.e., before we even get to see the ‘Zilla). But this protracted setup is hardly earned – what we think is the long-heralded arrival of the star of the show ends up being something else entirely (trying hard not to give any spoilers here). While restraint is definitely very welcome in a film like this, too much of a good thing can be bad too. Director Edwards and his team are so preoccupied with keeping us guessing that they forget one thing – sometimes it’s OK to give us exactly what we want. Which in this case would be…Godzilla! More Godzilla, please!

And when he finally does come out for his close-up, he seems distracted. Bored, even. Almost like the director forgot to sit down with Godzilla and ask, “What’s your motivation??” The beast—and some of his frenemies—feel slightly listless in this film, as they wander around without the slightest regard for the teeny little human beings that scurry about at their feet. Their danger quotient is seriously lacking: we barely see any actual destruction or doom, and each time a monster showdown or attack is about to get started, we are briskly edited away to a new scene, with audiences having to grab at precious footage of the actual attacks secondhand from faux-newsreel snippets and the like. Toward the end of the film, we find a group of almost 20 military personnel deftly and calmly transporting an armed and highly sensitive nuclear weapon away from a cataclysmic confrontation involving Godzilla, going on somewhere above them in the background. And that’s just it – the monsters are sorely relegated to the background here.

As for the human side of things, Elizabeth Olsen provides a nice share of the drama, but finds herself in danger only once, for about 4 seconds, during which she crouches as the ceiling of her bomb shelter gets ripped off. Her husband, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass (and also Quicksilver alongside Olsen’s Scarlet Witch in the next batch of Marvel movies), is like a slightly headier version of Channing Tatum. And their son is part of a group of interchangeable little kids who observe several of the monumental action sequences (the tidal wave created by the behemoth’s arrival, the beginnings of a showdown between Godzilla and a ‘pest’ that we don’t actually get to see) with a detachedness that the adults share—everyone seems totally cool with the fact that Godzilla exists. Clearly, this isn’t the first go-round for them, either. They greet this primordial radioactive mutant dinosaur with a sort of blasé familiarity, charting his movements on radar like it’s just another day at the office. We don’t even get one of those ‘Oh dear god, what is that?!?!’ moments. Yes, those moments might be dumb or heavy-handed, but this is a monster movie after all.

The very last scene of Godzilla is the most unexpected of all, and it must be said that there’s some smart stuff happening here, with Godzilla recast as a sort-of honorable savior or emblem of the unpredictability of nature. But ultimately, we have a monster movie that might be too smart for its own good, with very little monster-sized action or sense of grand scale menace.

—DH