Skip to main content

So How Was Godzilla?

By

Although Godzilla crosses paths with nuclear energy twice during his current rampage, the use of it is fairly innocuous. In the first instance, a giant insect called a MUTO causes a nuclear plant to shake apart, but it expels no radiation because the creature absorbs it all while mutating in its cocoon. In the second, and cleverest, use, the mate of the first MUTO has been captured and stowed in Yucca Mountain. Although it’s said that the Nevada repository holds used fuel, it of course doesn’t – yet.

I’d prefer to believe that, in the movie’s terms, Yucca Mountain was created specifically and exclusively to contain the big bug. It would fit the secretive nature of the authorities in the film – which have already explained away nuclear test bombing in the 50s as a means of sealing giant creatures in their underwater world – so why not?

As for the movie itself, well, maybe it’s that I don’t see many summer blockbusters, but the screenplay is flat out awful – which wouldn’t matter much if the story didn’t spend its first hour with barely characterized human beings who spout reams of exposition. A lot of good actors racked up  nice paydays for not doing very much besides try out their concerned faces and unreel big blocks of text. I wonder why the production would spend the money when hungrier performers could have done as well and not effected the film’s promotion.

When the bugs and Godzilla – who is the good guy here, though he still causes a lot of property damage – show up, we realize that the beige, dusty look of many of the earlier scenes is a way to make the special effects look less cartoony when they take over the movie. It works well enough, though it gives the movie a polluted aura that doesn’t really fit it. This is one brown monster movie.

But really, it’s all about roaring and squashing people underfoot and monster tangles. If I was 13, I would have loved it – though I would have gotten plenty bored with the first hour and decamped for popcorn.

What did you think?

Labels:

Comments

jimwg said…
Today on Retro-TV I caught an early Gene Roddenberry (who ought know better) pilot called "Genesis II" where actor Alex Cord somehow "rearranges the fuel elements" of a nuclear power plant to explode like a A-bomb to keep it away from baddies in the future. Ditto for a film earlier called the "The Savage Bees" with Richard Wildmark where a bee-attacked nuclear plant control room makes it explode. I think there's a "Nuclear Tornado" flick out there too. How many other similar inaccurate but seemingly credible portrayals of nuclear energy gone wild out there forms the base of the public's fears toward nuclear power I wonder!

James Greenidge
Queens NY
May 25, 2014 at 2:20 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

By
Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...
4 comments
Read more