Throughout its first act, “Godzilla” dangles a near-perfect conflict before our very eyes. It’s Cranston that brings us into the action as Joe, a scientist monitoring a nuclear power plant in Japan. He loses his wife Sandra (an utterly wasted Juliette Binoche) when a newly-hatched kaiju triggers a reactor meltdown, and he dedicates the rest of his life to uncovering the source of the tragedy.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see much of that from Joe’s perspective. “Godzilla” jumps forward 15 years, leaving Joe’s son Ford (Taylor-Johnson) to fill us in on the exploits of his now-estranged dad. Joe has unwittingly uncovered a decades-spanning conspiracy involving Godzilla and other creatures dubbed “MUTO” (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), but no one really believes him until a new MUTO emerges in Japan. He and Ford just happen to be there investigating, and Joe is unfortunately killed during yet another natural disaster.
Joe’s death is certainly meant to be tragic, but it also takes some major wind out of this story’s sails. Cranston seems to agree. He hasn’t been shy about his disappointment concerning “Godzilla,” or his character’s death. “That character dying at that time was a mistake,” he told the Nerdist podcast in 2015. “I knew it when I read [the script]. When I read it I said, ‘Oh, [at] page 50 this character who was the emotional core at the center, that was guiding the audience in the story up to that point — he dies?’ What a waste.”