Review of Godzilla (2014) by Austerus — 18 May 2014
It is difficult to put the awfulness of the movie in words. I think the main problem is that the producers tried too hard to make this movie more than it is.
What the movie is: an excuse to show CGI monsters fighting. From this perspective, it works. The CGI is nice, even beautiful to look at. Plenty of eye candy in the monster fights. The only complain I have in this perspective is the unimaginative monster design. Godzilla is fine (moves like a chubby teddy bear) but the others are not very interesting.
What the movie isn't: dramatic. There's no drama there simply because the human characters are totally inconsequential. There's no reason to care for them, their actions have no impact on the events unfolding and while that may help the point that humans are just pawns in a bigger game, it also made me feel that the time spent with human characters was a waste.
There's no tension building, the story just drags on to the moment everyone is waiting: the unveiling of the monsters. And one they're on screen, they quickly go off screen to make some room for the inconsequential human characters.
Speaking of inconsequential, the movie spends time introducing us to to the main character's father and mother, the latter dying while the former becomes obsessed with unraveling a supposed cover-up. Why? The entire setup has no consequence over the story. His father blabbers about 'echolocation' which leads to the army discovering a second creature en route to ... Vegas? They discover it about 5 minutes before entering the city. That would have happened with or without his father. The main character's participation is also no triggered by the introduction: he's an army man, he could have simply stayed home and join the battle there.
We could spend weeks discussing the movie's shortcomings. The producers don't bother much with physics and making a difference between radiation and nuclear fuel, although the movie's setup is based on that. A nuke explodes 2 kilometers (yes, in the end the bomb with 5 minutes to go is left moving on a small boat at about 13-14knots, meaning it was about 2km away from the harbor when it goes off and there seems to be no effect, no blast, hitting the city, nuclear fallout, etc.
The movie has about 15 minutes of worthwhile scenes and over an hour of pure annoyance. Can't recommend it.
This review of Godzilla (2014) was written by Austerus on 18 May 2014.
Godzilla has generally received positive reviews.
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