Reading reviews of Godzilla, it’s strange that one of the most frequently repeated criticisms is the lack of the hulking near-dinosaur himself. The apparent scarcity of the eponymous monster has been taken everywhere as an indictment of the film; people paid good money to see the whacking huge lizard smash stuff, so it’s only right if he’s on screen the whole time. But actually, what the director Gareth Edwards has done is to understand perfectly that monster movies are not really about the monsters at all. It’s all about the anticipation.
Evidently, if you were expecting a lot of Godzilla, you clearly hadn’t seen the trailer. It strayed far from the Michael Bay school of thought that a trailer has to be an extended montage of stuff exploding and being crushed, or being crushed and then exploding. Instead, there were fleeting, teasing glimpses of the beast, vistas of abandoned cars, smouldering wreckages, ominously imposing footprints, and distant, echoing roars. What Edwards was doing was highlighting what it is that is great about the monster movie genre; rarely is the monster itself the most enjoyable part, instead focusing on the tension, the excitement and anticipation of the big reveal.
If you look back at the catalogue of famous monster movies, they’re all about the buildup. Edwards is in fact partly copying the original Godzilla from 1954, which had equally little of the lizard himself. Although partly artistically motivated, it was largely reptile-free due to the cost of his scenes, even though back then it was just a man in a latex suit hitting cardboard models of skyscrapers. Nonetheless, it proved from early on in cinema’s history that less really was more when it came to monsters.
Ridley Scott’s original Alien also had a trailer that featured none of the iconic xenomorphs themselves. And arguably the best bits of Alien, the ones that everyone remembers and rightly praises for their brilliant maintenance of tension, are the ones without the aliens. It’s all about the wailing, haunting emergency siren, the bleeps on the motion detectors in the vents, the screams and the unexpected shock of that scene. And what makes Alien so remarkable is that even with a science fiction creation as brilliant as H. R. Giger’s xenomorph, it is in their absence that the truly fantastic moments occur.
If you need an example of when more really is not more, look no further than Guillermo Del Toro’s abortive Pacific Rim. Instead of following the example of monster movies past, Del Toro flipped the genre on its head, pointlessly having the monsters on screen most of the time. That is why Pacific Rim was dreadful – there was neither care not attention placed on the introduction of the monsters and so you just didn’t care. Watching a massive robot hit an alien giant with a cargo ship just isn’t entertaining if it’s done in an abrupt and thoughtless manner. I realize few people would label Pacific Rim a classic monster movie, but it is an example of a recent and extravagant failed attempt.
All the great monster movies pride themselves on the tension and expectation. Jaws is fantastic because of its infamous use of sound and passing glimpses. Indeed, Jaws is not really about the giant shark at all rather than the omnipresent dread the shark represents. Cloverfield even based its entire premise around the importance of anticipation, using the Blair Witch-esque found footage formula to make the lack of monsters more realistic. Even in something like Jurassic Park, though probably closer to action film, that nail-bitingly brilliant scene in the kitchen with the raptors actually features very little dinosaur.
That doesn’t mean the monsters are valueless. In fact, there’s probably nothing worse than a grand buildup only to be greeted with some mediocre, CGI jellyfish-lion hybrid. But the anticipation is what makes monster movies so unique and thrilling; breathlessly waiting to see, in all its glory, that monstrosity that has been thus far only indirectly present. So, don’t worry if your viewing of Godzilla is light on lizard action. Far from being a reason to criticise the film, it’s a sign that Edwards hasn’t forgotten what made monster movies great to begin with.
