Okay, so let's expand on my earlier message.
There be some SPOILERS in this, so read on with careful regard.
For starters, I really like to emphasize that the movie isn't necessarily a bad movie, it's just really disappointing. Like Iron Man 3 disappointing. That's not a bad movie per sé, but some of the choices they made were dubious and ass backwards so a movie that was on its way to become epic ended up being just okay, and that feeling was made worse because you could see exactly where it went wrong and how easy it would've been to avoid that. Godzilla is just like that, it's a movie that has tons of potential but at so many points they take the wrong direction that it's just irritating.
The biggest problem is the approach to Godzilla, who they refuse to really show off until the last twenty minutes in some half baked attempt to keep his appearance mysterious. And when I say "refuse", I mean that literally. Because they pull some of most teeth-grinding teasing in movie history. To showcase, Godzilla first appears in the movie at just over the one hour mark (I clocked it). A Muto has crossed the Pacific and arrives in Honolulu. The city's power is out, completely dark. Godzilla rises from the ocean, chasing after the Muto. We see only parts of him. A leg. An arm. The scales on his back. The lights come on. The city screams in panic as they first see the Muto wreaking havoc in the city. A large series of explosions at the airport light up Godzilla. The Muto screams and looks at Godzilla, who roars back. The build-up is perfect, the audience is dead silent, everyone's in suspense because Godzilla is about to fukk shyt up. And then... They cut to Elizabeth Olson's character and her son in San Fransisco, watching the attack on the news. That's right! The first fight between Godzilla and the Muto, the first actual action scene in the movie, is reduced to five seconds of news footage before we cut back to some military guy declaring the Muto flew off and Godzilla went after him. A cold breeze drifted through the theater, I felt something reach out and rest its hand on my shoulder. It was the spirit of
@track 1 and he whispered two small words into my ear:
"Walk away...".
But I did not walk, and was forced to see how for the next twenty minutes, the filmmakers went out of their way to still not show us anything of Godzilla or the Muto(s) in action. Las Vegas gets destroyed. We see a Muto crush maybe two buildings, then it cuts to the aftermath. Remember how the trailer showed all those destroyed cities and you couldn't wait to see how Godzilla and the other monsters rampaged through that shyt? They don't fukking show it! Those aftermath images are literally the only thing we get! Yeah, plus like 30 seconds of shaky cam news footage/satellite images. You are watching a monster movie where they keep stalling on showing the monster. You are watching a disaster movie where they keep skipping over the disaster. We see Godzilla in full view at his first appearance and yet for the next half hour they go back to hiding him, going back to only non-revealing close-ups, going back to only showing him from characters' P.O.V. or cutting away really fast all because they want to save him for the final fight. Which I should add, is the only fukking fight in the movie! Even though he confronts/fights the Muto's on two separate occasions before it. Sure, we see him crushing through a bridge here. We see a Muto destroy a train there. But why the fukking stalling? Why have fights happen and not show them to us? Why do we have to sit through this Cloverfield-bullshyt of seeing some military guys walk on a train track while in the far distance you see dozens of explosions and cannons going off. Why the fukk are we watching this fukking bridge inspection when we could be watching that epic battle shyt? If it was for build-up or to make way for interesting human drama it might've made sense but most of it is such straight forward cliché fare that it becomes inexcusable.
Then there's the final action scene, the only action scene I like to once again add, and you can thank the heavens they at least pull that off. Although as a Godzilla fan I wasn't entirely happy with how much he was struggling in the fight, especially since we've not seen him in action before this so they could've made him shine more. Roughly half the fight consists of Godzilla fighting one Muto, then the other Muto attacks him from behind. Godzilla turns around and fights that Muto, then the other Muto attacks him from behind and repeat. At least the fight was intense enough that I felt myself rooting for Godzilla, even if it was more in the context of a supporter seeing his favorite team struggle when it isn't necessary.
"For crying out loud, Godzilla! I know you're outnumbered and all, but is it that fukking hard to watch your back! You know there's two of them!" At least the other half of the fight are epic money shots that live up to and embrace everything Godzilla should be. Too bad the movie only realized how epic Godzilla is supposed to be until the last sixth (!) of the movie.
With those biggest complaints out of the way, cliff note remarks!
Bryan Cranston is absolutely wasted in this flick. Which is really bad because for as long as he's in the movie, he's the most interesting thing in the movie. Overacting like a motherfukker, but at least he is involved. The rest of the cast is basically just a bunch of boring people with no distinguishable personality standing around and talking like they're watching golf. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the worst offender. A fukking monster is destroying a power plant while you're trapped in a van and he's shouting for help like a college guy getting locked in a car as a prank by his frat brothers.
"Hey come on, you guys! Let me out. This seriously isn't funny, you guys!"
He also survives more disaster than the whole family of 2012 put together. At least they had the excuse that the whole world was ending so it wasn't like there was some place they wouldn't get into some shyt, but this guy somehow manages to stay in the exact course of rampage for the entire movie. At one point he gets so full circle that he ends up back with the same characters he was sent out of harms way by an hour earlier in the movie, and they don't even acknowledge the fact that he somehow is still stuck in this mess.
The whole "Godzilla is a force of nature fighting against the troubles of man" is barely touched upon. There's like three lines referring to it, mostly by Ken Watanabe's apology Japanese character who at one point just goes something like
"When the world goes out of balance, that balance must be restored. I think Godzilla is the one to restore that balance." without providing any evidence to back up that claim, or even explain why he thinks that a gigantic dinosaur the miltary has been trying to kill since they first encountered it in the 50's is here to protect us. This whole concept is even more silly because in this continuity, this is mankind's first real confrontation with Godzilla. The government knew of his existence but only tried to kill it since they first encountered him (he wasn't created by man's folly in this, he's literally a large prehistoric dinosaur).
Speaking of the government trying to kill Godzilla, you gotta love how they shyt on Ken Watanabe's Japanese apology character too. At one point he tells the army admiral he's a survivor of Hiroshima, and literally two minutes later some general tells him that even though it didn't work in the 50's, nukes will most likely kill the monsters now because they're dropping megaton bombs which are far more destructive than those kiloton bombs they used back in '45. Because that's something you totally say to a guy who lost his father in that blast.
Did I mention this movie holds off on giving us our well deserved Godzilla action until the last fight for no good reason? I did mention that? Well, I think it could be mentioned again.
or is it Zilla 98 all over again
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