Godzilla Spoilerish Review

[hedrap]

This was a rough watch. The story telling centering around a vigilante sea monster who shows up to fight more evil monsters to balance nature for the betterment of mankind is pretty much the stupidest thing ever. Deep breath....you've got a faceless generic main character (Army Guy) who after 14 months aways from his family and his son who barley knows his father (since he went away when he was 2) come back from deployment overseas and spend one night with his family before getting a phone call from the other side of the world to inform him that his somewhat estranged father with "coo-koo crackpot" theories (actual movie dialog) got arrested for trespassing on a radioactive site looking for clues to what cause an Earth tremor 14 years earlier that caused the death of his wife. Not only does he immediately leave his family to bail his father whom HE barley knows out right after promising his son who does not know him that he's not going anywhere, his wife insists on it. She convinces him. Wouldn't you find it really, really odd if your wife who had not seen you in 14 months decides the morning after you come back home that it's a good idea to go back out for a couple of days and bail out her father-in-law. Really? How is he not thinking she's either having second thoughts about his return or she's got someone on the side. Instead he acquiesces and begrudgingly goes off to save his father whom he views as a nutjub. Laughably this all comes after some random dude in the army tells him to ease back into his old life. Army Man's kid is the only character I can remember by name. It was Ford. There are no kids named Ford. That's not a name, that's a brand of automobile. Meanwhile, Army Man's father is played by Bryan Cranston, one of the most popular actors on the planet who is starring in his first major role since Breaking Bad, one of the most popular shows in the history of Televison and he dies after doing...I don't know rescuing floppy disk from the 90's or something. Whaaa... He died in the movie so early on that by the end you forgot he was even in the film to begin with.

Here's a few subtle changes that keeps the story engaging from a human prespective and the star of the movie alive and well for more than a half an hour at the beginning.....Army guy gets to go home after 14 months of service overseas to his loving, devoted wife and son who barley knows him. BEFORE he leaves for home he gets the call about his father and he stops to bail him out BEFORE he gets to his wife and son. Chaos ensues, Godzilla shows up, army man joins the fight and after persevering throughout the film, is reunited at least with the the family he hasn't scene in 14 months instead of the family he saw for a day, left abruptly and then tried to get back to. The side quest mission they give him on the subway was one of the biggest stretches to involve the main character in something heroic. First off, the odds of that happening are slim to none the scene felt so forced just to give him something to do during the attack. Also imagine if your child did that and out of all the folks aboard the train, the one guy who's clearly an outsider and foreigner, that doesn't even speak the same language as the kid is the one guy who steps up to help him out. You'd think someone else on the train would have said to the one dude on the train that is clearly not like the rest, " I got this." The conclusion of that whole pointless side mission ends with the first of three kids in the movie just blindly drifting away from the adults that tend to them. (The other two being the girl on the beach in Hawaii that first notices Godzilla approaching the shore and the second being his own son when he sees his mother in the distance in the ruins of San Francisco because he's only known you for five days and her for five years.) Same scene shot three times with three different kids. Anyway, as for Bryan Cranston.....the beginning of the film could have started the exact same way only instead of Cranston and family being directly affected, cut that element out and make it that Asian scientist and his family. Heck do it that way you could have done the whole beginning in Japanese with subtitles. Switch asian scientist with Cranston's scientist and make Walter Freakin White the main scientist who saves the world and is on screen for the entire movie.

Meanwhile they cut back to Army Mans wife when ever they felt like not showing the monster. Did anybody realize she was a nurse (because of course, of course she is) until they shows her in her scrubs? About Godzilla... What was he supposed to be. A creature that they've been studying since the 40's that they knew would protect them, one day when other monsters like him decided to show up? I can't even begin to rationalize how they came to that conclusion but the explanation the film gives was about as clear as the metachlorine explanation of the force. How many times did Godzilla heroically? menacingly? (not sure what they were going for) appear out of a smoke cloud, or begin to fight a monster and have it go to an irrelevant cut away scene. Not to mention they spent almost the first hour of a two hour movie not showing him at all. Then there's the other two monsters with their Keymaster, Gate Keeper plot. Did....did no one working on the film realize they were rehashing a main plot point in Ghostbusters only with monsters?

The coolest aspects of the film was the far more interesting reasons for all the nuke testing in the 50's and why the bomb was dropped during WWII. In fact setting the movie during that time and giving it a Mad Man style vibe to it would have made for a pretty memorable and totally different Godzilla movie. Instead we got another generic Godzilla, not as terrible as the Broderik movie but something just as pointless.

Cranston is not estranged from the family. Ford tells his dad his grandson "is jonesing for some grandpa time". Considering this kid is about three, that means the kid has met him in the past year. Otherwise, the kid wouldn't know who he was.

The stretch from Japan to the Yucca mountains is heavily radioactive. The father was booted out of Japan, but was obsessed with the what happened. He's not going to move any farther inland than Frisco, so Ford was raised there. Ford marries and lives there, which puts his family in the path. As for being an EOD he's not some specialized spec ops member. He wasn't even brought in until all the others were killed. As for the kid on the train, Ford's not clearly an outsider. The entire region from Hawaii to Frisco is the largest mix of Japanese, Islanders and white people. Being a single male, yeah, but not because he's clearly different. And he does speak the same language as the kid. I mean, he talks to the kid in Japanese to calm him down.

As for pointless side mission, he's a dad. The boy is roughly the same age as his. That's a natural instinct, especially for a soldier. He also knows what its like as a kid to be separated from your parents when something big goes down. Separation is sort of the running theme from the moment the lockdown doors drop between Binoche and Cranston.

Switching Serizawa and Brody doesn't work. In Japanese culture, Serizawa would have committed suicide. That's why they went with a crazy gaijin - outsider - to stir crap up. Go back and watch the original. That Serizawa had to be dragged into the event, and he still intentionally killed himself. Cranston never had a death wish because he believed in the conspiracy.

What was he supposed to be. A creature that they've been studying since the 40's that they knew would protect them, one day when other monsters like him decided to show up? I can't even begin to rationalize how they came to that conclusion but the explanation the film gives was about as clear as the metachlorine explanation of the force.

He's an alpha predator. It's the pecking order of the animal kingdom. Godzilla wasn't protecting anyone. We're not a threat to him so he's indifferent. When you kill a rat, do you do it to protect insects or because rats can infest your home. Same theory applies. That's why the show they Muto's stomping people. How we treat insects is how they view us. Even when the Muto eyes Ford, that's how people treat a bee or wasp when it won't simply go away.

Godzilla appears because of the echolocation. The Muto's are calling out to find each other. he picks up the frequency because it's based in radiation. That's was part of Crantson's theory. What Cranston didn't know about was Godzilla. Serizawa realized if they are all proto-dinosaurs that feed of radiation, then Godzilla should reappear. They know that, because the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus was launched in 1954, which is shown in the credits. So between the bombing of Japan, the nuclear testing and the nuclear subs, we started generating enough surface nuclear power to draw him out of the trenches nearer the Earth's core.

As for Keymaster/Gatekeeper, please. It basic insect colony, from bees to whatever. Male drones bring back food to serve the queen's hive. Was Aliens ripping off Ghostbusters, because it's the same theory with the Queen Alien. The difference is the Muto's were separated when the military buried one in Yucca, leading to the echo-calls that Godzilla picks up.

I got all this from one viewing and no further reading.

[FETT1]

I went in with high expectations ... Not a GoOD thing to do !!!
Wayyyyy to much human story ... Not enough Godzilla story ! I was losing interest fast ... And the Cloverfield baddies were just that BAD !!! Ugh !
Oh well blah blAh BLaH ....

[noelani72]

is it weird to admit that the #1 reason I went to see this was because it had Walter White in it?
True, I was jones'n for a Cranston fix and a CG Godzilla came in second.
I liked the show.
Felt it was a good popcorn flick.
Not thrilled with the human story of the show, but it is what it is.
Godzilla was dead on cool - really felt true to my childhood memories.
Scale of 1-10 it gets about a 6.

[MegoMoe]

SPOILERLoved the movie and agree with the first two reviews. The human story wasn't strong, but it was leaps and bounds better than most Godzilla movies. Really missed the classic theme. I remember reading a story about script concerns when the movie was being made and that Cranston was not happy. Now that I see the film, it makes me feel some of those rumors were true and that Cranston pushed to have his character die not being sure if the movie was going to be a hit or a disaster. Well, it is clearly going to be a hit, and it is a shame Cranston's character dies because the story suffers after he does. The could have killed him off in the sequel. Regardless, while not perfect, the gets an 8/10 in my book and I definitely look forward to the sequel.
Someone earlier mentioned the "repetitiveness" of a Godzilla film. That is the danger... Can we get a trilogy out of this? Maybe, but if there is any doubt then they should just go straight to the monster island storyline like Destroy All Monsters.

[spacecaps]

This was a rough watch. The story telling centering around a vigilante sea monster who shows up to fight more evil monsters to balance nature for the betterment of mankind is pretty much the stupidest thing ever. Deep breath....you've got a faceless generic main character (Army Guy) who after 14 months aways from his family and his son who barley knows his father (since he went away when he was 2) come back from deployment overseas and spend one night with his family before getting a phone call from the other side of the world to inform him that his somewhat estranged father with "coo-koo crackpot" theories (actual movie dialog) got arrested for trespassing on a radioactive site looking for clues to what cause an Earth tremor 14 years earlier that caused the death of his wife. Not only does he immediately leave his family to bail his father whom HE barley knows out right after promising his son who does not know him that he's not going anywhere, his wife insists on it. She convinces him. Wouldn't you find it really, really odd if your wife who had not seen you in 14 months decides the morning after you come back home that it's a good idea to go back out for a couple of days and bail out her father-in-law. Really? How is he not thinking she's either having second thoughts about his return or she's got someone on the side. Instead he acquiesces and begrudgingly goes off to save his father whom he views as a nutjub. Laughably this all comes after some random dude in the army tells him to ease back into his old life. Army Man's kid is the only character I can remember by name. It was Ford. There are no kids named Ford. That's not a name, that's a brand of automobile. Meanwhile, Army Man's father is played by Bryan Cranston, one of the most popular actors on the planet who is starring in his first major role since Breaking Bad, one of the most popular shows in the history of Televison and he dies after doing...I don't know rescuing floppy disk from the 90's or something. Whaaa... He died in the movie so early on that by the end you forgot he was even in the film to begin with.

Here's a few subtle changes that keeps the story engaging from a human prespective and the star of the movie alive and well for more than a half an hour at the beginning.....Army guy gets to go home after 14 months of service overseas to his loving, devoted wife and son who barley knows him. BEFORE he leaves for home he gets the call about his father and he stops to bail him out BEFORE he gets to his wife and son. Chaos ensues, Godzilla shows up, army man joins the fight and after persevering throughout the film, is reunited at least with the the family he hasn't scene in 14 months instead of the family he saw for a day, left abruptly and then tried to get back to. The side quest mission they give him on the subway was one of the biggest stretches to involve the main character in something heroic. First off, the odds of that happening are slim to none the scene felt so forced just to give him something to do during the attack. Also imagine if your child did that and out of all the folks aboard the train, the one guy who's clearly an outsider and foreigner, that doesn't even speak the same language as the kid is the one guy who steps up to help him out. You'd think someone else on the train would have said to the one dude on the train that is clearly not like the rest, " I got this." The conclusion of that whole pointless side mission ends with the first of three kids in the movie just blindly drifting away from the adults that tend to them. (The other two being the girl on the beach in Hawaii that first notices Godzilla approaching the shore and the second being his own son when he sees his mother in the distance in the ruins of San Francisco because he's only known you for five days and her for five years.) Same scene shot three times with three different kids. Anyway, as for Bryan Cranston.....the beginning of the film could have started the exact same way only instead of Cranston and family being directly affected, cut that element out and make it that Asian scientist and his family. Heck do it that way you could have done the whole beginning in Japanese with subtitles. Switch asian scientist with Cranston's scientist and make Walter Freakin White the main scientist who saves the world and is on screen for the entire movie.

Meanwhile they cut back to Army Mans wife when ever they felt like not showing the monster. Did anybody realize she was a nurse (because of course, of course she is) until they shows her in her scrubs? About Godzilla... What was he supposed to be. A creature that they've been studying since the 40's that they knew would protect them, one day when other monsters like him decided to show up? I can't even begin to rationalize how they came to that conclusion but the explanation the film gives was about as clear as the metachlorine explanation of the force. How many times did Godzilla heroically? menacingly? (not sure what they were going for) appear out of a smoke cloud, or begin to fight a monster and have it go to an irrelevant cut away scene. Not to mention they spent almost the first hour of a two hour movie not showing him at all. Then there's the other two monsters with their Keymaster, Gate Keeper plot. Did....did no one working on the film realize they were rehashing a main plot point in Ghostbusters only with monsters?

The coolest aspects of the film was the far more interesting reasons for all the nuke testing in the 50's and why the bomb was dropped during WWII. In fact setting the movie during that time and giving it a Mad Man style vibe to it would have made for a pretty memorable and totally different Godzilla movie. Instead we got another generic Godzilla, not as terrible as the Broderik movie but something just as pointless.

[madmarva]

I guess what disappointed me was that after Cranston died, the movie just got really familiar. It looked great, but I don't think it will be the movie of the summer, which again may have been an unfair expectation on my part.

[hedrap]

MAD - I do agree with most of that. The main issue with the early fights is a mix of budget and story. Focusing on the fights would devour huge amounts of running time and the VFX cost would be enormous. I can see why it's irks people, especially the first encounter.

I see your point about the suspense. I think it's more due to Godzilla's position as Alpha Predator. It's weird, but younger kids can watch this movie because Godzilla is in it so they have that reassurance of something that can stop the Muto's, which lowers the scare factor. That doesn't exist in Jurassic Park, WotW, Cloverfield, etc... I think that's the 70's Godzilla vibe you were picking up on.

I also agree about the coverup storyline, but I think that's due to the re-writes. For some reason, Darabont and Goyer aren't listed in the credits, but they did massive overhauls. It felt like Cranston was supposed to sacrifice himself at the end like the original, but they jumbled it up.

[madmarva]

The best example would be to watch Beast From 20K Fathoms, then Gojira '54, then Godzilla '98, and then the new one. The distinction is Kaiju movies have monsters with human traits and mystic qualities that originated with Japan. Subtract those, and you're making 50's Monster movies.

Cloverfield is a horror movie with monsters which makes it appear to be a kaiju movie, but is really a variation on War of The Worlds. Meaning you could easily replace the Clover monster with the Tripod machines and aliens from WotW and not have to change any story elements. Clover,. to me, has more in common with Them! or even the Blob than kaiju.

I agree about the Alpha Predator. The website goes into more detail about the holes in the ground, which I think is where they would base Monster Island. It makes it very easy to have Rodan or especially Ghidrah pop up in South America or China. You could even tie the radioactivity in sub-space radiation and attract alien life. They have a lot of room to maneuver. The problem comes with the repetitiveness, which is what hurt the G films originally.

While I have seen more than a few of the Toho films and some Ultra Man episodes, I only became familiar with the term "kiaju" last year in reading about Pacific Rim, but in terms of the monsters fighting, the film delivers.

I just didnt think the human aspect of the film worked all that well. It started out promising with the government coverup angle, but after the reveal of Muto, most of the suspense faded. I did really like the rail bridge sequence.

And yes Cloverfield was essentially a found-video perspective of War of the Worlds, but I found the way Abrams shot it and the story he told created suspense that the Godzilla film just didn't generate. Cloverfield's human backstory wasn't as convoluted or sensational, but it felt more real. In Godzilla, was there ever any doubt that the soldier would be reunited with his family?

I enjoyed the movie for an update of Godzilla with state of the art GGI, but in terms of the story told, it wasn't any more interesting to me than any of the silly wrestling-match Godzilla sequels of the 60s. If making a modern version of those films was the goal, there could have been more monster fights and more personality from the creatures.

I was expecting a bit more, but that may be on me more so than the film maker.

All that said, after watching the movie, I wouldn't mind seeing a remake of King Kong vs. Godzilla, which would be really silly but fun.

[phil]

I found it to be a major disappointment. I liked the Trailers and they convinced me to go see it. I did like the design of Godzilla.

[ODBJBG]

Largely non-spoiler review here: Godzilla 2014 Review

[hedrap]

Banner - I can agree with that. Edwards had mentioned he was really influenced by Jaws and I kept thinking that in the way he show the family. There's a lot of 1:1 comparison scenes.

Mad - To me, the difference is that Kaiju is distinct from Monster and Horror films, sort of like how Superhero overlaps Sci-fi and Action.

The best example would be to watch Beast From 20K Fathoms, then Gojira '54, then Godzilla '98, and then the new one. The distinction is Kaiju movies have monsters with human traits and mystic qualities that originated with Japan. Subtract those, and you're making 50's Monster movies.

Cloverfield is a horror movie with monsters which makes it appear to be a kaiju movie, but is really a variation on War of The Worlds. Meaning you could easily replace the Clover monster with the Tripod machines and aliens from WotW and not have to change any story elements. Clover,. to me, has more in common with Them! or even the Blob than kaiju.

I agree about the Alpha Predator. The website goes into more detail about the holes in the ground, which I think is where they would base Monster Island. It makes it very easy to have Rodan or especially Ghidrah pop up in South America or China. You could even tie the radioactivity in sub-space radiation and attract alien life. They have a lot of room to maneuver. The problem comes with the repetitiveness, which is what hurt the G films originally.

[madmarva]

I'm not a Godzillia enthusiast. I respect the original film and had fun watching and making fun of many of the sequels over the years , but I am not sentimental or that nostalgic about Godzillia.

The new film more than pays its respects to the source material, almost to a fault. It is not at all silly or fanciful in tone as many of the sequels or othe Toho films. There is a great sequence on a railway bridge that made the film worthwhile to me. But as Bruce Banner noted, the film isn't as quickly paced as most modern fare. Such pacing might have worked well if the audience had any doubt about what was coming, but even if all one knows before going in the theater are the commercials and trailers, Godzillia really offers no surprises. The film did play upon the fears of nuclear meltdown and tsunami, which was effective given the somewhat recent disasters in Fukushima and Sumatra, much like the original film used the reality of the Atomic bomb and the threat of nuclear war.

It's good that there are other monsters for Godzillia to fight, and the alpha predator angle was sorta interesting, but pretty simplistic, although it does set up a sequel pretty easily. Given the logic of this film, a predator like Godzilla will obviously attract an even greater predator. But sometimes simple is best in a movie like this.

The best part of the movie to me, other than the effects, which trully are terrific, was the joke of the other monsters design being a riff on JJ Abrams' Cloverfield beasts/aliens.

Unfortunately, that just reminded me Cloverfield and for that matter Super 8 were better films. Cranston, Taylor-Johnson and Olsen aren't bad in the key human roles just ineffective in putting a family face on the tragedy. Wantanabe fills his purpose in the movie, but in some scenes, his blank stare left me wondering if he knew what was going on.

The effects are super and are the key reason, to me, to see the film. The plot is about the same as any other giant monster plot.

[Bruce Banner]

It's certainly a slow burn film, building up tension at a very ponderous pace before it finally unleashes the Big G in all his glory.

A little too much screen time for the human characters... sure, they have to be there, but more kaiju action would have been preferable.
But when it comes, it's worth the wait.

This movie gets it right in staying faithful to Godzilla's essence as a true force of nature, not just a giant monster.

Agree with the fact that the G design looks good in action. There's a real sense of menace and mass to Godzilla in this movie, which is best showcased during the battle scenes. The "Jaws" like sequences of his spikes slicing the water like shark fins are also effective.

Would have liked to have heard Ifukube's classic Godzilla theme in the score somewhere, even if it was just a nod to it.

Anyway, looking forward to the sequel, where hopefully we'll get more kaiju, more Big G and even more epic scale carnage.
If Toho are still licensing their kaiju on an individual basis, hopefully the movie-makers will take the plunge and give us a few more of our favourite Godzilla friends & foes in the sequel.


_

[hedrap]

First, go see it. It's an 8/10 for Kaiju movies.

Don't sweat the reviews talking about the early battles. There's a logic to it, it just wasn't clearly explained when they easily could have with Wattanabe's character.

Godzilla is pretty close to perfect. It all comes down to preference. He has a very 90's Heisei face and the build is incredibly bulky, but in a sea monster way. He really has a dragon feel to him, which is great.

The Muto are based on Gyaos from Gamera, which is an odd choice, but makes sense since this movie has more in common with Kaneko's 90's Gamera movies than any Godzilla movie. The appearance/battle logic for Godzilla is pretty close to the Gamera.

Saw the 3D IMAX version. IMAX was worth it, 3D was alright. Seems to fade off throughout the duration to where it's not as noticeable by the last act.

Lot of small nods throughout. The first time you see Wantanabe he's dressed how Ishiro Honda used to when directing. A little boy is a nod to the kid in Godzilla's Revenge. A number of shots are pulled from Gojira to 90's Gamera. There's even a brief pull from Rodan.

There's also a few references to Jaws, like the Brody family, and a number of shots from Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

The only weak points for me are the score, which is too modern Hollywood for a Kaiju flick and the Muto designs seem more alien than insect-dinosaur. You could easily believe the Muto's were from space which works against the idea they're parasitic proto-dinosaurs.

It's wide, wide open for a sequel. Ghidrah would be a breeze to fit into this continuity. Most Kaiju could fit and they've even given themselves an opening to include Monster Island.