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I've always been a Godzilla fan. For as long as I can remember Godzilla was just about my favorite character from cinema. I had a Halloween costume as him for one year. Which is why that 1998 abomination of a film really missed what makes Godzilla great. This new film did a far finer job of bringing Godzilla back to life again for American audiences. The effects are solid and the cinematography is top notch. I will readily admit the acting suffers heavily once Bryan Cranston's character bites it, although he had little meaningful left to do by time he goes, however no one is ever so atrocious as to damage your enjoyment of the film. The majority of the character drama is a sensible family reconnection tale, which is fitting for a story about monsters that act more like natural disasters. My biggest issue with the film is probably that it's a bit too human centric. Godzilla is in the film, but he doesn't really star in the film until the final third of it really. Which isn't the most awful thing, but the other monsters (Muto) get a lot more screen time that I'd have rather seen devoted to the big man. Ultimately Godzilla does what Godzilla does and all of that is awesome, he's a really great interpretation of the design from back in the day and the film is full of little tidbits that harken back to his earlier films. There are just a couple sequences where I know they could have shown more giant monsters fighting, they didn't and so that's really my only major disappointment with the film. I hope there is an extended cut with a few of those bits added in. Godzilla is clearly cast as a hero in this film, and I'm honestly okay with that for a new film series moving forward. Not to say that he's really here to protect human interests, or that the other monsters were necessarily "evil" (they weren't), but he undeniably arrives in time to save the day and then wander back to the ocean as he's done so many times before. They've set up the Godzilla character with plenty of reason to come back for a sequel to face yet greater threats to the earth and his position as King of the Monsters. They can bring it on, I'll go watch em. King Gidoraha would be a good next villain imo. 4/5 stars. 5th star withheld for too much people, not enough monster action.
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May 26, 2014 18:05
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This film is filled with plodding, stiff caricatures dressed in unbelievable suits playing out ridiculous set pieces. Also, Godzilla is in it. So, TL;DR right off the bat: This film is leagues better than the massive turd Roland Emmerich and Matthew Broderick squeezed out back in '98, but it's far from perfect. Godzilla 2014 is kind of schizophrenic. It tries and mostly succeeds at being an homage to Ye Olde Days of those low budget Toho films featuring guys in rubber suits stomping on scale models of Tokyo that we all enjoyed on TBS back in the day. However it also tries to be a family drama about Bryan Cranston, and Cranston's far more wooden and less interesting lantern jawed son. Oh, and Lantern Jawed Son's generic blonde wife and generic cute kid. The early portions of the film are it's strongest in terms of story. Ken Watanabe gets to exercise some moderately interesting acting chops, and Cranston does his usual scenery-chewing as a caring-father-cum-nuclear-engineer overseeing a nuclear plant on the brink of a Fukushima style disaster. Cranston carries the first hour or so of the film with his performance. However after he's killed during the reveal of the first of Godzilla's enemy monsters things get to be much less interesting. The second half of the film can't decide if it wants to be human drama set against a background of giant monsters punching each other in the face, or if it wants to be a monster battle royale with flimsy human interest stories as the setups for the monster brawls. Either way it fails. Don't get me wrong, the last hour or so certainly delivers on skyscraper-sized beasts throwing down Wrestlemania style, however it's interspersed with a rather boring human drama about Lantern Jawed Son trying to rescue his generic Blonde Wife and Cute Kid from the impending monster threat. What follows is basically the latter half of Will Smith's Independence Day character arc with none of Smith's charm or acting ability. Ultimately the film wraps up to a more or less neat if somewhat unsatisfying conclusion. Director Gareth Edwards' only prior Godzilla relevant resume entry was the lovable indy film Monsters. Edwards shows he does have some true talent, as there are some truly fresh, excellent 'giant monsters duking it out' set-pieces in the latter half of the film. However this is not enough to save the film from sinking into banality as it ultimately becomes an absolutely generic story about Lantern Jawed Son saving Pretty Blonde Wife and Cute Kid from the evil monster threat. 3.5/5 stars. It's a decent homage to the original Toho films, and a good enough creature feature, but the last half of the flick needs to either try way harder to be a human drama set against a backdrop of Giant Monster Wrestlemania, or get the gently caress out of the way of the aforementioned Giant Monster Wrestlemania and let the spectacle happen.
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May 27, 2014 05:31
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Godzilla is on this movie for about 9 minutes, and they are indeed awesome and entertaining 9 minutes. Pity they had to stick in 5 hours of people looking concerned and kick-rear end making bland, empty stares. By no stretch of the imagination is this movie bad or in the same level as the Roland Emmerich abomination, but you'll wish the good parts would've lasted longer. 3/5
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Oct 19, 2014 15:09
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Finally got around to watch this and felt like I had to officially register my disappointment on the internet immediately. It's easily the worst 2014 film I've seen thus far. Was I ever right to skip this turd. This is a film about a tedious, generic soldier guy (ARE TROOPS) with a tedious, generic family, excepting Bryan Cranston, who made the best out of nothing to work with. Unfortunately the best you can make with nothing is nothing. I cannot conceive of how impossibly loving stupid a person would have to be to feel any emotional attachment to any human character in this film whatsoever. And it's about them. The film should have been named Sergeant Microphallus. There did seem to be pretty good chemistry between the mum and dad giant mantis monsters. Every time (until the last 20 minutes of an absolutely interminable 1h55) something is about to happen with a giant monster the film cuts away. It's like Austin Powers. Giant monster fight begins > cut away to generic family member's surprised expression. I personally timed it at 55 minutes before the first sighting of Godzilla, who is a total bitch in this movie. He fights a monster half his size and it basically wrecks him every time until he eventually kills it in one hit because the CGI budget was running out. The final fights are absolute dogshit, I have no idea how the makers could have learned so little from the fights in Pacific Rim. There's no ebb and flow or tension in the fights, with very little appearance of impact or consequences - the giant mantis monsters appear to stab Godzilla literally dozens of times, which seems to have no effect on him whatsoever. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure this is the worst film I've seen since Red Riding Hood in 2011, but at least that film's ridiculousness earned it some laughs. This is just as bad, but played absolutely stone-faced. 1/5 stars
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Jan 15, 2015 01:36
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