Alliteration: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. Google

My expectations for this remake isn’t spectacularly high — no thanks to my hazy memory of its 1998 version. But what got me inside the cinema, after years of abandon, was my younger sister’s curiosity.

She never saw the first one; she was still ‘under construction’ back then (i.e., she was born on year 2000). To fill her in, I resorted to animatedly retelling what I remember of the spiked monster. That it was huge like a dinosaur. That it went to the city looking for its babies — rather, eggs. And that it stepped on streets and cities, but wasn’t necessarily human-vore.

It was just there — inside the heart of an unfamiliar city — a place far from its inhabited island. And that was basically that. Despite my pale description, she caught the whiff. She went to pester mom, and as the cliché goes: the rest was history.

Divided by a glass

I don’t suppose Godzilla is the sort of film that should leave me tearing up. Check IMDb: it puts the film under categories, Action, Adventure, and Sci-Fi!

But it did make my chest constrict.

Nobody expected an early loss. But young Ford’s mom did — and what’s worse is seeing it all unfold right before your eyes, well, dad’s eyes to be exact.

Mom is on the other side, slowly dying off the radiation smog. Dad, on the other hand, wants to open it badly — but he didn’t. Pressure and pain riddled on his face. But mom, she understood.

This is raw human emotion; the term, ‘dying,’ hardly gives the pain justice.

And that’s the first glass-scene. It is the first in a series of alliteration — a repetitive display of glass. The viewing glass will be the recurring theme from then on.

There’s glass in between mom and dad; glass that divides the techies from the pulsating radar-shell that houses the MUTO. Glass that play window for the train in Hawaii; shattered glass thanks to the three giants, and glass in between Elle and Sam (Ford’s family).

Now, what’s with the glass-scenes?

The first in the series of glass-alliteration had been packed with so much emotion (thanks to the realisation of death right at the other side of the glass).

It’s like a hungover. It won’t leave you.

If you missed that because your popcorn spilled, or your coke did, then your lost, which means the hypothesised effects of the glass-scenes are ineffective to you.

But if you did not and if you felt it (that issue of death) then you’re in for an emotional ride. All throughout the movie, with the glass-scenes scattered and associated with various emotions — from bewildered to uncertainty — you will bring with you what you felt in the first glass scene.

It’s like a hungover: it won’t leave you. Take for instance that scene between Elle and Sam. Elle had to send Sam on the bus for safety while she stays to wait for husband, Ford. The uncertainty she felt with them separated by the glass-bus door was there. And it did recall that horrible first glass-scene between Ford’s mom and dad.

Now, enough with the glass. Watch it, and saunter through these broken shards. It’s an amusing instrument that will remind you of our inevitable fragility.