Review of Godzilla (2014) by Mantoast — 20 May 2014

As someone who's first Godzilla film was this one, I was severely disappointed.

Fresh out of Pacific Rim, where the battles were intense and the chaos was satisfying, this one seemed lacking and confused in aim. The film suffers immediately with the cliched military man and his 'save my family' story we've seen a million times. The only good acting was from Bryan Cranston, but he's not even in the movie for long. Oddly enough, the movie seems devout on maintaining focus on Aaron Taylor-Johnson and not, well you know, Godzilla!? Every bit of tension in the film is either without a satisfying payoff, or is cut short with a transition to Mr and Mrs. Cliche. Three times too many you expect Godzilla to do his thing, but nope, just a tease. It's frustrating to endure as you are expected to just shrug off potential epic monster battles.

Many are comparing this film to Pacific Rim, saying the action there was frequent but the story was lacking and Godzilla is the opposite. I agree with this, but even in this regard I prefer Pacific Rim far more. It's a monster film, so it's fair to expect it to be about monsters wrecking cities and not whether one guy saves his family. The film plays with your expectations like crazy, ultimately driving you crazy.

To its credit, the visuals are amazing and the cinematics spectacular. Godzilla himself looks and moves exactly as you would expect. The new kaiju are sinister looking and cool as hell, but it feels as though they steal the show from The King of Monsters, especially when Godzilla is way too late to the party. In the couple of fight scenes that he's in you barely feel the need to root for him because the film's excuse for him being there is simply ridiculous. I feel the story is the worst part about the film despite it being the main focus, and the action alone fails to carry the entire movie.

Great visuals with a brilliant Godzilla rendition, but the story is cliched and a chore to watch, while the action struggles to generate any tension and even when it does it always falls flat. Usually I wouldn't recommend a film I dislike, but audiences seem to be completely split down the middle (even some extreme Godzilla fans dislike it) so I would say watch it as a gamble just to see whether or not you like it. If you expect action and epic destruction though, go see Pacific Rim instead.