Lieutenant Ford Tries to Get Home ft. Godzilla (Godzilla 2014 movie review)

This may come as a surprise to people, but this is the first time I’ve ever watched a Godzilla movie. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve watched a kaiju movie in general. My takeaway was my dad offering to watch some of the older movies with me, and I agreed.

Godzilla (2014) was a great movie. Not a great movie about Godzilla, but a great movie otherwise. I forgot it was a Godzilla movie until we hit half way through, because he doesn’t even show up until 1 hour into the 2 hour movie. The plot doesn’t feel much about the monsters. It’s more about the main character, Lieutenant Ford Brody, and his journey to reach his family. My dad compared the ‘get home at all costs’ plot to the movie The Day After Tomorrow (book: The Coming Global Super Storm by Art Bell). I think that’s a fitting choice. Braving what nature throws at you in hopes to be reunited with your family before it’s too late. In this case, nature is the parasitic titans called MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). Even though the one mysterious hatched egg at the start hooked me in, I forgot about the monsters pretty quickly and would have believed you if you told me it was a war movie about nuclear bombs or something.

And speaking of MUTOs! Not knowing anything about Godzilla, I initially thought they were supposed to be Mothra. I was wrong. MUTOs ≠ Mothra. I think they were supposed to be like butterflies because the program at the start was called monarch, but they looked more like beetles to me. I found some design art and sketches of the MUTOs online, and I’m glad I did, because I had very little idea what those things properly looked like. While I appreciated the attempt at ambiance and dramatic lighting, it made it so couldn’t see anything in this movie.

As far as characters go, I was upset that Joe died. He was my favorite character. I wanted to see how he would’ve interacted with the crazy main scientist who flew all the way out to see Godzilla fight in person. Instead, we get Lieutenant Ford, who the whole time talked about how his job was disarming bombs, and not once in movie actually disarms a bomb. I also felt like his family was useless, only there to give him a reason to go back home. There was very little development of his wife outside of her worrying about him. Godzilla wasn’t in the movie enough for me to care much about him much either.

Not having kaiju knowledge, I went into the movie genuinely thinking Godzilla was the bad guy who destroyed towns. However, he ended up being the hero. My dad confirmed that was the case in the other movies too. That was pleasantly surprising. I understood him fighting harder to defeat the female because she was a threat, and required fire breath to eventually kill. But why did Godzilla play with his food, when he could just murder the male MUTO with one sweep of his tail? I’m sure this was like any movie though, drawing out a fight to make it dramatic. I was cheering by the end when Godzilla wasn’t dead after the fight. Despite his lack of screen time, I really did leave liking Godzilla.