Breaking Bad and Godzilla Reviews

I know I have severe delay, Godzilla has long screened in Europe and the US, but it just started here ten days ago. That’s my excuse for Godzilla. For finishing Breaking Bad only now, I have no excuse but I’m gonna do a review nevertheless Since, another coincidence, both beasts star Bryan Cranston.

Godzilla

I did a funny thing for Godzilla, I more or less deliberately watched it dubbed in Japanese. It was screening in Shibuya, where I work, only in Japanese, which is quite a rare thing, by the way, usually they offer both, dubbed in Japanese and original at the same cinema. But, Toho cinemas, belong to the Toho group, which also happens to be a production studio and which also happens to own the Godzilla franchise. So maybe there was some strategy or deliberation behind the Toho cinemas in Shibuya showing the Godzilla movie only in Japanese.

It was wonderfully awkward to see Walter While talk Japanese.

Dubbed movies always make me cringe, no matter whether it’s English to German or Japanese, but since the Japanese language is so quite different from English, the mouth movements horribly mismatch.

I liked the beginning of the movie best with its scenes in the nuclear power plant in the fictitious Japanese city Janjira (there is no town like that in Japan), with its nice jabs at the Fukushima disaster. Later on tsunnami images of Hawaii of course also remind us at least here in Japan of the tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima reactors).

After the Bryan Cranston character was dead things went downhill. His son just could not carry the movie. For me he was too “normal”, too colorless, just your common soldier with a pretty wife and cute kid, who is oh so righteous and thoroughly good and oh so ready to sacrifice himself for his people and his country.

I am not sure why Ken Watanabe is currently more or less the best known Japanese actor outside of Japan. He always makes the same face and is pretty boring. There are numerous other Japanese actors who are leagues better than him, for example Toshiyuki Nishida or Koichi Sato or Naoko Takenaka to throw just a few names around – maybe their English is not good and that’s why they don’t get to work with non-Japanese directors???

Back to Godzilla. He looked fat… while I liked his looks in general, especially the ragged rocky island image of the horns on his back, he was a bit too plumb. The two Muto creatures he fights were interesting, if anatomically a bit impossible, I guess. At least they looked like that to me. To have them around made a nice opportunity for Godzilla to survive and be sort of a hero after all. I would have liked that hero aspect of Godzilla to be less emphasized and it kinda made me laugh at the end when Ken Watanabe and Juliette Binoche almost cry for Gojira as he lies passed out in the streets of what was formerly San Francisco and they think he’s dead. I personally could not detect a decent reason for Gojira to fight those two. They’ve done him nothing wrong. Why should he care? If he at least had them for food, but he just throws the last Muto’s head away after killing it. Sure, one shouldn’t argue with logic in a Godzilla movie, but nevertheless. So, all in all there were some good scenes, especially in the beginning but all in all I’ll rather stick with the original.

Breaking Bad

Now that series is some great TV. I loved every bit of it until the end of season 4. That should have been the end, well, but it couldn’t be, I know. I think Gustavo Fring is one of the greatest characters ever created. What an awesome villain and how masterly performed by Giancarlo Esposito. Another hilarious character that will forever stick in my mind is Saul Goodman, what a slimy, nasty fellow, just awesome. The great strength of Breaking Bad is its incredible collection of quirky and yet believable characters. All of them, Marie, Hank, Walter Junior and of course Skyler, Walter White and Jesse are rich and quirky and believable characters. That combined with a thrilling story makes some knock out entertainment.

Where things fell a little bit apart for me were in season five the hole that the death of Gus Fring left behind. It was clear they had to get to Walter somehow in the end, but the late introduction of this Todd dude and his white trash uncle were no replacement for the chill and thrill of Gus Fring.

I also found the argument why Walter wanted to brew again, because he was excellent at something rather weak.

For me the story ended with the demise of the big bad guy = Gus Fring and the end of Walter was lacking motivation in a way. I admire the consequence though of the white trash uncle indeed shooting Hank. I don’t think that in a, for example, 1990ties US TV series stuff like that would have happened.

My respect for the writers for creating such great characters – there is a lot to learn from the writing point of view from Breaking Bad and fanfares for Gus and Saul, please.