Review of Godzilla (2014) by Dillinger P — 08 Jan 2016

Gareth Edwards steps into the fray, after bringing the world the rather gorgeous and retained Monsters, to bring us the worlds most iconic beast Godzilla, what a shame it is to find out that this attempt is completely foul at just about everything it tries to achieve.

Keeping an open mind, after mixed reviews, I fully intended to enjoy Godzilla on the most basic of levels, however Edwards doesn't just miss the runway, he misses the entire airport. You all know the story, the Japanese government try their best to continually cover up the existence of nuclear hungry beasts, that tower over man.

That is until they decide to wake up and cause havoc across the globe in a catastrophic death match. With such a basic premise in mind, Godzilla's writers and indeed Edwards then decide to have an overly long, boring and confusing drama with zero punch, bland acting and an atrocious script.

If you walk into this movie expecting to see monsters kicking the shit out of each other for quite some time and destroying buildings, then this is not the film for you. It's not that Edwards doesn't include this, its that for just under 2 hours Edwards decides that just as our monsters reveal themselves and stand fast for war, he cuts, not to a close up or reaction shot, nope he cuts to the other side of the planet.

This technique completely kills all form of tension, adrenaline and indeed suspense. That's not even the worst of it, the films CGI, and there is a lot of it, its atrocious, its bland, lacking texture and muddy all of the time.

The entire production design is lacking, the film constantly looks murky, overly dark and just fake, which doesn't sit well by the time Edwards finally gets around to showing you the films lead character kicking ass, because you will just be watching grey character animation against a grey back ground with so sense of depth, scale or indeed character.

Maybe I'm being to harsh, what about the wonderful cast the film has? Well without spoiling too much, the best of that roster are barely even in the film, Cranston is the best thing this film has to offer and you will be just as confused as his departure as angered.

Binoche shouldnt have even bothered, she is in it that little, Olsen gets to cry as much as possible and who were left with is Johnson failing miserably to inject life into a terrible character. Oh wait I completely forgot Ken Watanabe is in this film, I think.

.. This film also just revels in convenience, every 5 minutes entire events will just happen because either the plot needs to move forward or indeed you need to get the lead characters from Japan to USA in record time.

Is it all bad, well the film does have maybe a handful of moments that excite, most of which come in the film act, but everything that surrounds these tidbits is just so god awful and boring you cant help be feel underwhelmed by the time they show up.

The film has very little drama, meaning that deciding to focus on it rather than the action is a bad choice, then again if your monsters look this bad, no wonder you dont want to witness them fighting.

Utterly disgusting to look at, boring, lacking any form of fun and choppy, Godzilla is just a yawn inducing mess that no one should have to bare witness to.