Godzilla (2014)

I was in Toronto this week, and my late night flight in on Sunday wore me out. By late Monday afternoon, the coffees were barely helping. After I left the office, my wife and I took care of a last minute mortgage-related document request (she at home, me in the hotel Business Center), then I had to catch up on work at a nearby 24 hour Tim Hortons with free WiFi.

After all that, I rested a bit in the hotel, then decided to take a walk and find some dinner. It was past 9pm at this point. I ended up on Younge St near the Toronto Eaton Centre, and got some thai fast food dinner at the mall food court. They also had free WiFi, so I had an oppportunity to chat with my wife via Google Hangout.

While I was deciding on food choices, I discovered there was a movie theater upstairs, and I ended up catching the new Godzilla flick. The 9:50pm showing was only available in 3D, but I figured why not see it anyway. Although the film came out in May, there were quite a handful of people in the audience, including a strange older man who kept talking to himself loudly.

Gareth Edwards directed the film, but I have never watched any of his previous works. The film primarily stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ken Watanabe. Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathairn, and Juliette Binoche also have minor roles in the film. The film starts off in 1999 when there is a strange discovery large fossils within an underground cavern at a mining site  in the Philippines. Soon after, there is a mysterious accident at the Janjira nuclear power plant  that levels the entire plant. Bryan Cranston’s character loses his wife in this “accident”, and then spends the next 14 years attempting to discover the truth.

As the film progresses, both Godzilla and the other monsters glimpsed in the film trailers are fully revealed and eventually do battle. Humankind, however, can do nothing but do its best to not get run over. It’s an entertaining film, and you get your monster battles. There are a lot of plot holes, but you need to let those go so you can enjoy the film.

Godzilla (2014)