Review of Godzilla (2014) by Muan142 — 16 May 2014

The last ten or twenty minutes would make a good intro to a good Godzilla movie. This, while not being the worst Godzilla movie, certainly not worse than the 1996 one, is certainly not one of the better ones. Three big things are wrong with it. The first is that Godzilla is depicted not as the terrifying embodiment of the atomic threat and enemy of both sides but rather as a somewhat apathetic superhero and defender of mankind. This has been done in a lot of Godzilla movies and it has never been much good. At the end for instance, when Godzilla defeats the monsters in San Fransisco, he goes to sleep. If this were a good godzilla movie he would rampage on and level San Fransisco, but this is superhero Godzilla so he takes a nap and then heads off into the sea.

Second, the humans do nothing and can do nothing. I'd also point out they are uninteresting, but in order for them to be interesting in any Godzilla movie they need some sort of potency. They need to be capable of affecting the monsters. Most Godzilla movies also have impotent humans, but then most Godzilla movies aren't that great. Humans take up a ton of screen time in this version and they are boring as hell. Godzilla won't hurt them because he's in superhero mode, so we aren't really scared for them and they can't hurt any of the monsters. They humans essentially do nothing. I'm almost convinced they added in the whole monster eggs sub plot just to give the main character something to do. And I still don't know his name!

Lastly, too little screen time for Godzilla. There are theoretically two or three times that there could have or should have been a monster fight scene in the move but where instead the camera just cuts away. A lot of people compare this to Jaws and talk about building tension. The problem here is that we see plenty of footage of the monsters who kill people. Godzilla just isn't one of them. He's not Jaws, he's superman and a superman movie with about ten minutes of superman in it just at the end is kinda terrible. It's exacerbated by the fact that instead of Godzilla footage we have scene after scene about the human characters who nobody can care about and who cannot possibly have any affect on the plot.

On the bright side, this is the best-looking Godzilla movie of all time. One shot of Godzilla literally riding a tsunami had me convinced for a second that this movie was about to get awesome. Also, San Fransisco gets torn apart, so at least it has a happy ending. There are a lot of smaller technical and plot related issues. I honestly think Toho was just thrilled to finally have a great budget for a Godzilla flick and let the Americans decide the plot points. Rent it on Netflix or something but seeing it in theaters is kind of a waste of money. My theater has really comfy seats though so I still enjoyed it.