Godzilla (2014 film)

Godzilla is a 2014 American monster film directed by Gareth Edwards. Produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is a reboot of Toho's Godzilla franchise, and the first film in Legendary's Monsterverse franchise. It is the 30th film in the Godzilla franchise, and the second Godzilla film to be completely produced by a Hollywood studio. The film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Bryan Cranston. In the film, an American soldier attempts to return to his family while caught in the crossfire of an ancient rivalry between Godzilla and two parasitic monsters known as MUTOs.

The project began under executive producer Yoshimitsu Banno (director of Godzilla vs. Hedorah) as an IMAX 3D film in 2004, but was transferred to Legendary in 2009 to be redeveloped as a feature film. The film was officially announced in March 2010 and Edwards was announced as the director in January 2011. Principal photography began in March 2013 in the United States and Canada and ended in July 2013.

Godzilla was theatrically released on May 16, 2014, to generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the direction, visual effects, music, cinematography, respect to the source material, and Cranston's performance, but criticized the script, characters, and Godzilla's insufficient screen time. The film was a box office success, grossing $529.1 million worldwide against a production budget of $160 million, print and advertisement costs of $100 million, and a break-even point of $380 million. The film's success prompted Toho to produce a reboot of their own titled Shin Godzilla, and Legendary to proceed with sequels and a shared cinematic franchise. A sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, was released on May 31, 2019.

In 1954, Godzilla, a prehistoric alpha predator, is lured to Bikini Atoll in an attempt to kill him with a nuclear weapon. In 1999, Monarch scientists Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham investigate the skeleton of a monster similar to Godzilla in a cavern unearthed by a collapsed uranium mine in the Philippines. They find two giant spores, one dormant and one hatched, along with a trail leading to the sea. In Japan, the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant experiences unusual seismic activity. Supervisor Joe Brody sends his wife Sandra to lead a team of technicians into the reactor. A tremor breaches the reactor, forcing Joe to close the reactor door before Sandra and her team can escape while the plant collapses.

Fifteen years later, Joe and Sandra's son Ford, a U.S. Navy EOD officer, returns from a tour of duty to his wife, Elle, and son Sam in San Francisco. He departs for Japan after Joe is detained for trespassing in Janjira's quarantine zone. Joe is determined to find out the cause of the meltdown and persuades Ford to accompany him to retrieve vital data from their old home. They learn that the zone is uncontaminated and retrieve the data, but they are discovered and taken to a facility in the plant's ruins. The facility harbors a massive chrysalis that had been feeding off the plant's reactors for 15 years and emitting intense electromagnetic pulses over time. A giant winged insect-like creature emerges from the chrysalis and escapes, destroying the facility. Joe is severely injured and later dies. The incident is reported publicly as an earthquake.

Serizawa and Graham join a U.S. Navy task force led by Admiral William Stenz to search for the creature, dubbed a "MUTO" (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). Serizawa and Graham reveal to Ford that a 1954 deep-sea expedition awakened Godzilla. Nuclear tests in the 1950s were attempts to kill him; when this did not work, Project Monarch was established to study Godzilla and similar monsters secretly. They explain that the MUTO caused the Janjira meltdown. Ford reveals Joe had monitored echolocation signals indicating the MUTO was communicating with something, presumably Godzilla.

The MUTO attacks a Russian submarine and drops it in O'ahu to eat its nuclear material. Godzilla arrives, causing a tsunami in Honolulu, and briefly engages the MUTO in battle until it flees. Serizawa deduces Godzilla was only listening as the MUTO was communicating with something else, prompting the military to investigate the other spore stored in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. A second, bigger, wingless MUTO has emerged and attacks Las Vegas. The scientists deduced that it was female and was what the male was communicating with, their signals being a mating call.

Over the scientists' objections, Stenz approves a plan of using nuclear warheads to lure all three monsters out into the open ocean and destroy them. Returning to the U.S., Ford joins the team delivering the warheads by train, but the female MUTO intercepts them and devours most of the warheads. The remaining warhead is airlifted with Ford to San Francisco, where the monsters are converging, and activated after Godzilla appears at the Golden Gate Bridge. The male MUTO snatches the warhead and takes it to the female, who forms a nest around it in the Chinatown area.

While Godzilla and the MUTOs battle, Ford and a strike team enter the city via HALO jump to find and disarm the warhead before it detonates. Unable to access the timer, the team gets the warhead onto a boat for disposal at sea while Ford destroys the nest. Godzilla defeats the MUTOs and collapses from exhaustion. Ford gets the boat out to the open sea, is rescued before the warhead explodes, and reunites with his family at an emergency shelter the following morning. Godzilla reawakens and returns to the sea, while the media dubs him the "King of the Monsters".

Additional roles include: Carson Bolde as Sam Brody; Richard T. Jones as Captain Russell Hampton; Victor Rasuk as Sergeant Tre Morales; Patrick Sabongui as Master Sergeant Marcus Waltz, USAF; Jared Keeso as Jump Master; Al Sapienza as Huddleston, the head of security at the Janjira MUTO facility; Brian Markinson as Whalen, a scientist at the Janjira MUTO facility; Catherine Lough Haggquist as PO #1 Martinez; Jake Cunanan as Akio; Warren Takeuchi as Akio's father; Yuki Morita as Akio's mother; Ken Yamamura as Takashi, Joe's associate at the Janjira facility; Hiro Kanagawa as Hayato, a technician at the Janjira facility; Garry Chalk as Stan Walsh; and Christian Tessier as a technician.

Godzilla franchise actor Akira Takarada was cast as an immigration officer, but his scene was cut from the final film. Edwards stated cutting the scene was his "biggest regret". Despite cutting the cameo, Takarada is still listed in the closing credits of the film.

In March 2014, Edwards cited Godzilla (1954) as an inspiration for the film. Edwards stated, "Godzilla is a metaphor for Hiroshima in the original movie. We tried to keep that, and there are a lot of themes from the '54 movie that we've kept." Edwards decided on a restrained approach similar to when films were fueled by a "sense of anticipation" and relied on "high suspense", citing Alien, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind as influences. On why Edwards chose a restrained direction, he stated, "I felt that in modern cinema it's so easy to just throw everything at the screen constantly." Edwards also wanted Godzilla to feel "universal" in a way that it could appeal to a general audience like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Edwards additionally stated, "I grew up watching Spielberg movies, what they did so well — as well as having epic, fantastic spectacle — they made the characters feel real and human. We were trying to do the same thing here." Critics and journalists have also noted the film's nods to Steven Spielberg's style of filmmaking and influence from films such as Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira had also influenced the visual design of the film, Edwards stated, "One of our designers on the film - a friend called Matt - when we were designing things, and got stuck, we'd always go, 'What would Akira do?'" For the film's cinematography, Edwards wanted "...to do this beautifully real documentary vibe, but also that classic Spielberg style". Real life events such as the 2004 Indian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster served as heavy influences on the realism behind the film's destruction scenes and man vs. nature themes.

Edwards had also cited action films from the late 70's and early 80's having influenced the film as well, stating, "We tried to make a blockbuster that harks back to the pace and style of the early '80s and late '70s action movies."

Personnel taken from the press release.

In 1998, TriStar Pictures released their Hollywood reboot Godzilla. However, plans for a trilogy were cancelled due to the film's poor reception and TriStar let their remake/sequel rights expire on May 20, 2003. In 2004, Toho Co., Ltd. released Godzilla: Final Wars to commemorate the franchise's 50th anniversary and to put the franchise on hiatus, due to low ticket sales and audience burnout, until demand increased for another film.

In August 2004, Yoshimitsu Banno, who had directed 1971's Godzilla vs. Hedorah, announced that he had secured the rights from Toho to make a Godzilla IMAX 3D short film at his Advanced Audiovisual Productions (AAP) production company. The film was tentatively titled Godzilla 3D to the Max, and was to be a remake of the Godzilla vs. Hedorah story. In 2005, American Peter Anderson was added to the project as the cinematographer, visual effects supervisor, and co-producer by an independent producer Kenji Okuhira who represented Banno. In the same year, American producer Brian Rogers signed on to the project after the meeting with Banno arranged by Okuhira and Anderson.

In 2007, also through Anderson, Kerner Optical then came on board to develop the technology and to produce the 3D film and with Kerner's backing, in the fall of 2007, the team met with Toho in Tokyo where they re-negotiated their license to allow the release of a feature-length 3D theatrical production. In 2008, Kerner was facing financial troubles that threatened to cancel the production. In 2009, Rogers, Anderson, and the then-proposed director Keith Melton met with Legendary Pictures to get their backing on a 3D theatrical film. In 2010, it was green-lit by Legendary to go to production. From the Godzilla 3D production team, Banno and Okuhira would remain on the project as executive producers and Rogers as a producer. In November 2013, Banno stated that he still planned to produce a sequel to Godzilla vs. Hedorah. However, Banno died on May 7, 2017.