Godzilla the Messiah Monster, and other atomic-age aberrations

(This review is spoiler-free.)

On the sixtieth anniversary of the original Godzilla, director Gareth Edwards reboot succeeds more by the strength of the director’s undeniable talent than it does its tired and pedestrian script. Infused with Edwards’ obvious passion for the material and the genre, the film is unfortunately perched on the rickety skeleton of action and disaster movie clichés. For all the passing similarities to real world analogues, little in the film is novel or particularly exciting, and the assortment of recycled ideas keeps Godzilla from ever reaching its full potential. However, considering that it’s Edwards’ first time directing a major tentpole film the results are more than competent.

The Trouble with the Opening of “Man of Steel”

The narrative structure of Man of Steel‘s opening is about as chaotic as the events it depicts. The film begins with all bombastic fury when the planet Krypton is plunged into chaos by General Zod, a militant general with grand designs for a eugenically pure kryptonian race. In the midst of this, Jor-El is trying to save his son from an impending Armageddon of a different sort than Zod’s revolution. So already we have three competing story drives. Zod’s revolution (#1), Jor-El’s desire to save his son (#2), which is related to impending destruction of the planet (#3). Less than 5 minutes in and this film is stuffed with plots to explore. The whole thing plays out like an explosive, overly rambunctious homage to the opening of Star Wars, without much grace or eloquence to the execution and with hardly enough of a nod to suggest homage. Theft might be a more apt term then, but not simple wholesale appropriation–that version would at least be coherent–this is merely tactless retrofitting.

Allow me to explain the charge. In Star Wars, Lucas didn’t need to keep explaining his story more than what he already had because the events in the opening were directly related to the remainder of the film. The conflict between the Empire and the Rebellion, Leia’s goal to overthrow this empire, Darth Vader and his goal to stop them, the hunt for the death star plans: it’s all set in motion by this opening. Not so in Man of Steel, in which Krypton’s problems only serve as marginal backstory for a much broader narrative about taking over the Earth. So the problem is that rather than deal with any of these three elements outlined already, the story instead takes an abrupt turn to have Jor-El go hunting after an item. The most marginal problem with this, and the only problem I shall explore since it’s the only one capable of being fixed with a minor adjustment in the script, is that the film does nothing to signal this detour in the narrative. Quite simply we don’t know he’s going after an item until he finally retrieves it. Granted, he does allude to a mysterious object called “the codex” after a brief chase sequence, and after three plot themes have been crammed together, but why be so needlessly obscure in your opening? I admit, this is probably my own failing as an audience member to pick up on the most marginal of details in the most chaotic of openings, and generally I wouldn’t bother describing my own personal response in this case, but I use this instance as a vehicle for talking about the brilliance of The Dark Knight and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I’m going to take it.