This is not a review of the movie for what it is: a high-budget, low-concept monster flick. I like it, but that apparently puts me in a small minority. This is review of how it presents issues of structural engineering concern, and the answer is “badly.” I’m going to focus on two aspects: buildings damaged by one of the three monsters, and the Golden Gate Bridge, which was damaged by the navy and Godzilla. In order for this to not be a complete exercise in futility, I’m going to accept the reality of the monsters, as shown, as a given. This ignores the square-cube law, and basically says that there are living creatures with flexible skins stronger than our structural materials.
Godzilla and the two “MUTOs” he’s fighting are big enough and strong enough to walk through skyscrapers, demolishing the part that they come in contact with. Having had a childhood full of old Warner Brothers cartoons, this reminds me of the third Law of Cartoon Motion more than anything else, but it’s structurally problematic. If the force of the monsters’ contact with the buildings, which creates a massive horizontal force, is enough to destroy the part of the building the creature hits, why is the rest of the building undamaged? At the very least, it would undergo sideway greater than it was designed for, which would cause secondary damage to the part remaining. I’d except to see X-cracking in the masonry walls, broken windows, possibly permanent deformation in the columns that results in the remaining portion leaning…but no. The part that’s not demolished looks perfectly normal. We see this again and again, in the fight scenes in Honolulu, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.
The fight in and around San Franscisco has a dramatic moment with (the protagonist) Ford Brody’s son on a school bus trapped on the Golden Gate Bridge as Godzilla arrives. He (the monster, not the son) emerges from the water next to the bridge, creating havoc with the rather closely-spaced navy ships waiting for him; the ships fire missiles that badly damage one of the bridge’s cables, effectively cutting it. And nothing happens. The Golden Gate has two suspension cables, and losing one would be a catastrophic event. Even if the bridge were lightly loaded at the moment, its dead weight would be too much for the stiffening truss on the now-cableless side to carry. At the least, the deck would sag toward that side; at worst the deck would hang vertically from the remaining cable. In this scene, the deck is not lightly loaded: traffic is stopped so that tanks could be maneuvered onto the bridge to fire at Godzilla, so the live load on the deck probably is close to the design maximum.
Godzilla, possibly a bit upset about having missiles fired at him, stands up (feet on the floor of the bay) and rips the second cable in half by walking through it and the bridge deck. Again, nothing happens. The deck on either side of the hole he made is still level and still in line with the towers. You’d think that the force required to destroy all that steel would have caused some deformation in the direction of his path, but no. Much later in the movie, Brody is on a boat headed out to sea, lying on his back staring up, as the boat passes the bridge. Except for the gaps in the deck, the trusses, and the cables, the bridge looks normal.
I demand that my unrealistic entertainment be more realistic, not in its plot, characters, or suspension of the laws of nature, but in its representation of structural overload and failure.
