GODZILLA (2014) (4K UltraHD Review)

GODZILLA (2014)

Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Region Code: Region-Free/A

Duration: 123 Minutes

Rating: Rated PG-13

Audio: English Dolby Atmos, English Dolby TrueHD, English DTS-HD MA 7.1 with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 2160p UHD, 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1) 

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston

I remember watching director Gareth Edward's sci-fi alien creature-feature Monsters (2010) and thinking to myself, "now this is the sort of guy that should be making Godzilla movies", and sure enough I was not alone in that thinking, and his next film turned out to be the relaunch of Godzilla (2014)!

The movie opens with Dr. Ishirō Serizawa (Ken Watanabe, Batman Begins), a scientist for the secretive government agency Project Monarch, who discovers the giant fossilized skeleton of a kaiju creature that resebles Godzilla in the collapsed cavern of a uranium mine, alongside two enormous egg sacs, one hatched, one still dormant. A short time later Joe (Bryan Cranston, Malcolm in the Middle), the lead engineer at the Janjira nuclear plant in Japan is investigating strange seismic activity, his wife Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche, The English Patient) is a nuclear safety  consultant at the same facility. Mrs. Brody finds herself deep in the bowels of the plant investigating the structural integrity of the reactor during the tremors, and as the seismic activity increases the nuclear reactor containment wall is breached,  resulting in Joe having to close the reactor containment doors before his wife can escape, saving untold numbers but dooming her. 

Fifteen years later Joe is still living in Janjira where he lives the live of a conspiracy hermit, now estranged from his  adult son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kick-Ass), who is a a member of the US Navy as a  Lieutenant of Explosive Ordnance Disposal. He is now living in San Francisco,  married to Elle (Elizabeth Olsen, WandaVision), with whom he has a five year old son. When he gets a call from the authorities in Japan that his father has been arrested for trespassing into the Janjira's quarantine zone around the former reactor he reluctantly flies to Japan to bail his father out.

Reunited with his dad Ford grows tired of his father's conspiracies, convinced that the meltdown at the reactor fifteen year earlier was cover-up, that the government is hiding something, and hiding something big, and of course he is right! Joe convinces his son to accompany him into the forbidden zone, to revisit their former home to recover some files he needs for his research, where they discover that zone is uncontaminated, and end up at a MONARCH headquarter, where the truth is revealed.  

I like the set-up of the film, how they slowly introduce 

Godzilla with vintage 8mm footage of him being nuked at Bikini Atoll, it's a cool teaser. His kaiju foe in this first entry is dubbed a M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), a winged Lovecraftian-looking red-eyed, winged creature, that to be honest the first time I saw it in theaters I did not care for. Now I like quite a bit, but I found the unnatural angular design a bit off-putting. I thought the non-revolutionary update of Godzilla perfect, a bit of the new, a lot of the old Toho design, and thankfully not over-redesigned as Godzilla (1998). For the record I do not loathe that '98 film as some do, it's a cool popcorn muncher, but it did not look and/or feel like a Godzilla flick, and that's okay, it's still silly, overstuffed, big-monster flick escapism.  

The kaiju battles we see on screen here are awesome, the action set pieces are epic and breathtaking, with the stomp-Toyko type action in San Francisco pleasing me quite a bit. The movie looks great, and the ratio of big monster action to on-the-ground human drama is well balanced, though I was a bit disappointed that both Cranston and Binoche exit stage left rather early. 

Audio/Video: Godzilla (2014) arrives on 4K UHD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in 2160p UHD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. Shot on digital and sourced from a 2K D.I. the image is upsampled in 4K  with HDR10 color-grading, the result are terrific. The previous Blu-ray was overly dark in spots that obscured the big-screen kaiju action, and while this is still a dark movie the HDR10 greatly improves contrast and the richness and subtlety of the black levels. There's also a slight uptick in detail over the Blu-ray, the textures of the MUTOS and Godzilla looks superior, as do clothing textures. The colors, while inherently muted by design does get a proper primary-pop due to the HDR10 color-grading. 

Audio comes way of English Dolby Atmos or Dolby True HD with optional English subtitles. Not surprisingly the Atmos upgrade is a real shack-shaker, the soundstage is absolutely immersive with some terrific use of the surrounds and height channels to create a bombastic, muscular and bass-filled experience befitting of kaiju creature-feature. The clicking noise of the Mutos, Godzilla's deafening roar, and the ringing of artillery and gunfire are ear-piercing, and the score from composer Alexandre Desplat (Moonrise Kingdom) sounds terrific. 

Onto the extras we get nothing new, which is not unexpected, but still a bit disappointing. All the extras are exclusive to the Blu-ray, which is actually the excat same disc as the 2014 Blu-ray release from WBHE. These include an hours worth of in-character extras that look as if they are classified videos produced by MONARCH itself, which I do love quite a bit. We also get some cool behind-the-scenes featurettes, animatics, conceptual designs, and some solid interviews with the cast and crew that gets into the herculean task of relaunching the franchise and the massive amount of work that went into it. There is also a digital code for a Movies Anywhere/VUDU 4K copy of the film, that includes the extras.

The 2-disc Blu-ray/UHD combo arrives in a black Viva Elite eco-keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork that look to be a new illustration. To my eyes it looks to be taking a cue from the original Godzilla mixed with elements of Katsushika Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa painting. It has a cool retro vibe, the same artwork is mirrored on the metallic finish slipcover. The Blu-ray disc inside is the same 2014 Blu-ray with lettering on a black background, the UHD disc has a cool silver and grey image that's sort of translucent, nothing too special. 

Special Features:
- MONARCH: Declassified - Discover explosive new evidence not contained in the film that unravels the massive cover-up to keep Godzilla’s existence a secret. (7 min) HD 
- Operation: Lucky Dragon (3 min) HD 
- MONARCH: The M.U.T.O. File (4 min) 
- The Godzilla Revelation (7 min) 
- Godzilla: Force of Nature (19 min) HD 
- A Whole New Level Of Destruction (8 min) HD 
- Into The Void: The H.A.L.O. Jump (5 min) 
- Ancient Enemy: The M.U.T.O.s (7 min) HD 

Godzilla (2014) on UHD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is a solid upgrade over the previous Blu-ray, there are no new extras and I wish the accompanying Blu-ray was a new scan and color-grade, but the UHD looks and sounds terrific, and if you're looking to revisit it before the release of Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) there is no better way to watch it at home. 

Screenshots from the 2014 Blu-ray (WBHE):

Extras:

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) (Blu-ray Review)

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) 

Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: PG-13
Duration: 132 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Widesceen (2.40:1) 
Audio: English Dolby Atmos 7.1, English, Latin Spanish, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 
Director: Michael Dougherty
Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang

Synopsis: The new story follows the heroic efforts of the crypto-zoological agency Monarch as its members face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed Ghidorah. When these ancient super-species—thought to be mere myths—rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity’s very existence hanging in the balance.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) picks-up five years after the events of Gareth Edward's Godzilla (2014), the planet is now aware that Titans exist, and the crypto-zoological organization Monarch has been locating, quarantining and examining these titanic creatures as they've located them hibernating around the globe. This time around we're given a new set of characters to follow, we have paleobiologist Dr. Emma 
Russell (Vera Farmiga, TV's Bates Motel) working for Monarch, along with her teen daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown, Netflix's Stranger Things). She's been working on a device called the Orca which can transmit frequencies that could potentially attract or alter Titan behavior, which we get to see in action when she uses it to calm down a new winged-Titan dubbed Mothra, which has been kept hidden away in a South American Monarch base located inside an ancient Yunnan Temple. At the start of the film Dr. Russell and Madison are then kidnapped by an eco-terrorist organization lead by Alan Jonah (Charles Dance, HBO's Game of Thrones),a  former British MI-6 agent who believes the only way to save the Earth from destruction at the hands of humans is to unleash all the Titans, which would cause worldwide destruction and re-balance the natural order. 

Dr. Russell's ex-husband Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler, Super 8) reluctantly re-teams with Monarch to recover his former wife and daughter, though he feels that all the Titans should be exterminated, not protected, as his son Andrew perished during the final battle from the first film. The terrorist succeed in unleashing the Titans, these include the Godzilla ally Mothra, and his enemies, the volcanic fire-bird Rodan and the three-headed dragon Ghidorah a.k.a. "Monster Zero", with the film culminating in a battle for Titan supremacy between Godzilla and his arch-nemesis Ghidorah. 

This film delivers on the Titan carnage in a way that I think surpasses Godzilla (2014), it's almost overwhelming the amount of giant-sized carnage we get with this entry, and I am alright with that, because I felt we didn't get enough carnage in the first film. The fact that we get three more legendary Toho-Titans should be enough to please fans of the long-running monster series, and I dig the creature design updates, which is a big bonus, as I was not a fan of the MUTOS from Godzilla (2014), I found those angular designs lacking.

The weakest part of the film for me are the human characters, sure it grounds the action to a degree but it just gets in the way of the Titan action in my opinion, with characters that only serve to drop unnecessary exposition, though having someone of the caliber of Bradley Whitford (Get Out) dropping quips does give the film a campy, tongue-in-cheek charm that I didn't mind. Both David Strathairn (L.A. Confidential) and Ken Watanabe (Inception) reprise their roles from he first film, with Watanabe at least getting a bit of substance, briefly exploring Godzilla's Atlantean undersea lair before nuking it! Even the main characters, the Russell family, don't have all that much to do, and what they actually get around to doing isn't all that important, their all plot machinations to get us to the royal monster rumbles, delivering expository dialogue dumps and emotional support when needed, and then falling to the wayside. Another bit of an issue for me is that there are too many characters crowding the film, it wasn't until after I watched the film several times that I realized Zhang Ziyi (House of Flying Daggers) actually played two different characters in the movie. She plays twin sisters Dr. Ilene Chen and Dr. Ling Chen, both working for Monarch at different facilities, but because we bounce around so much from facility to facility I lost track of where we were and who was who. They're supposed to be descendants of the Mothra fairy twins, but they're more an Easter Egg for vintage Toho fans than an actual thing in this film, possibly setting something up for later entries in this Monsterverse. 

That human element aside the film delivers big-time on the carnage and mayhem, the scale of this sucker is epic, with big set-pieces and plenty of non-stop big-monster action,  as a fan of the classic Toho films, this film delivers the most fulfilling American Godzilla film we have had to date.   

Audio/Video: Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) arrives on Blu-ray from Warner Bros. looking gorgeous, every frame is lush and nicely detailed, framed in 2.40:1 widescreen. The image is a bit desaturated at times by design but there are splashes of color that wow with deep black levels and a pleasing amount of shadow detail throughout. I imagine the 4K UltraHD release of this is even more stunning, I might have to upgrade at some point.

Audio comes by way of a robust Dolby Atmos track with a DolbyTrueHD 7.1 core, that really sent a rumble through the house with exciting surround activity during the epic battle sequences. The score from Bear McCreary (10 Cloverfield Lane) gives the film plenty of thematic support when called upon, optional English subtitles are provided. 

We get a bunch of extras on this one, multi-part featuretes exploring the evolution f the titans, the various set pieces, the tech of the Monarch organization, a Millie Bobby Brown featurette, a look at the mythology of monsters, a look at this Monstereverse, deleted scenes and an audio commentary with the director, writer and actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. which gets into the nitty-gritty of the making of the film, pointing out Easter Eggs and touching on scenes that didn't make the final cut. For a new film the extras here are pretty great, well above what we usually see for such a recent film, which I appreciated. 

The 2-disc Blu-ray+DVD+Digital combo arrives in a standard dual-hub Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork, which is mirrored on the accompanying slipcase.  Inside there's a Movies Anywhere HD digital redemption code for the film with the same set of extras, which s cool. 

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary by Director Michael Dougherty, screenwriter Zach Shields and and actor O’Shea Jackson Jr.
- Monsters 101 4-Part Featurette: Godzilla: Nature's Fearsome Guardian  (1 min), Mothra: Queen of the Monsters (2 min), King Ghidorah: The Living Extinction Machine (2 min), Rodan: Airborne God of Fire (1 min)
- Evolution of the Titans 4-Part Featurette: Godzilla 2.0 (9 min), Making Morthra (7 min), Creating Ghidorah (2 min), Re-imagining Rodan (5 min)
- Monarch in Action 5-Part Featurette: The Yunnan Temple (7 min), Castle Bravo (6 min), The Antarctic Base (6 min), The Isla de Mara Volcano (6 min), The Undersea Lair (7 min)
- Millie Bobby Brown: Force of Nature (4 min) 
- Monster Tech: Monarch Joins the Fight (8 min) 
- Monsters Are Real (14 min) 
- Welcome to the Monsterverse (4 min) 
- Deleted Scenes (5 min) 
- Warner Bros. Trailers: Detective Pikachu (3 min), Doctor Sleep (3 min)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters Theatrical Trailers: Life (2 min), Supremacy (2 min), Over the Rainbow (2 min), Wonder Rumble (5 min)

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) on the whole delivered what I was looking for in a Godzilla film, we get plenty of epic titan carnage, cool creature designs, and visually stunning scenes of mass destruction. Sure, it is overstuffed with overly dramatic, often needless, human characters that slow the film down a bit but at the end of the day the mass scale destruction and titan-sized monster carnage left me with a big ol' smile on my face, so this gets a big recommend from me!