I’m a fan of Kaiju in general, I absolutely love Pacific Rim and hated the western world’s first attempts at Godzilla movies (they were not good). But they tried again back in 2014 and I gave it a shot at the cinema because Ken Watanabe and it seemed a bit more ‘accurate’ to my image of the Big Guy.
As a movie it wasn’t perfect and characterisation felt a bit flat so when I did a rewatch over New Year I was steered in the direction of the novelisation as added a bit of needed depth to the story. And it’s a perfectly serviceable movie adaptation that was never going to win awards for the writing (it’s very much ‘Event A happens and Person B thinks this so they go and do Thing C’) but does still manage to give a bit more weight to the characters. In particular the characters of Ford (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) get more background and a better view into their heads as events happen around them.
I think strangely in writing as well we get more of a sense of the scale of destruction than in the movie. The attack on Las Vegas merits more time in the book with also the horror-comic elements of Vegas casino goers not even realising there’s been an incident as they sit at their tables and gamble away. San Francisco also has greater focus with some additional scenes of Godzilla moving to Alcatraz as he’s attacked by the navy (and it corrects the film error about the types of ships that would be operating in those circumstances).
So generally it’s not a book that I think works on its own but as an extension to a film it provides a richer detail level and acts as a good support to the story.
EDIT: Just to add that I’m counting this as my first passport review – Greg Cox is a new author to me and he’s not done a bad job here so I’ll consider other books by him
