Anyone see Godzilla 2014? What did you think?

Oh, it's out?

I do want to go see that...

It's more or less what I expected from a Godzilla movie. I liked it.

I loved it!!!!!! Gojira looks SO good with modern effects.

Okay, my post movie hype is wearing down so I figured I'd share some things I didn't like.

• Like all monster movies, the characters are incredibly shallow and cliche. I wasn't even entirely sure on what the main characters name was by the end of the movie. They really don't give you any reason to give a shit about the characters. (Not uncommon I guess, given nobody watches Godzilla movies for deep characters and clever plots.)
• There's a lot less Bryan Cranston in this movie than the trailers want you to think.
• and that's really it, actually.

Things I liked:

• Godzilla's new design is potentially my favorite
• The "villain" monster was cool too
• How Godzilla defeats the bad monster by blowing his insides out with his fire.
• Bryan Cranston is somewhat present

Not sure why people disliked the 1998 Godzilla. I always hear from people that it was terrible but to a 11 year old back then I thought that movie was pretty good. From what I remember of the original Japanese Godzilla films I saw they only got good when Godzilla was fighting other monsters everything else was kinda bland.

The problem with Godzilla 1998 was that it was a Jurassic Park clone using the Godzilla name for marketing. As a movie I didn't think it was that bad, but it wasn't Godzilla.

Just got back from the midnight show. Godzilla might be my favorite movie.

I wish I'd loved it. Problem is that it's mostly told from the military perspective, and I can't imagine a less interesting way to show that story.

Maybe, I was reading a few reviews, I loved reading "the action was clear to view." that seems rare compared to the past couple of years in movie effects work. But personally I'm a fan of the older Godzilla films, so I'd love to have some camp, like the Aliens from Planet X or the Twins who sing to Mothra.

I just got back from midnight showing as well. I really enjoyed it. You can tell its made by the same guy who did Monsters and i liked how they didnt show much of monsters fighting until the end. The characters are shallow and some stuff happens just for the sake of it happening, but i really enjoy seeing the monster stuff from the bystanders point of view.

I fucking love the way this film was photographed. It's all mostly shot with a perspectivist's philosophy, so instead of these huge, panning money shots you're getting personalized and strikingly-scaled looks at these immense monoliths.

The character stuff isn't rocket science, but it isn't downright poor. It's just workmanlike. Seems clear the emphasis was to put off showing Godzilla himself until it was absolutely necessary to.

I remember liking the movie quite a bit when it first came out, now the last 40 minutes are the best part. The best thing about it is that Toho made it canon by calling it Zilla. Since then, Zilla has been in a Godzilla movie, several games, and most recently in 2004 a Godzilla comic book.

Looks great, Bryan Cranston elevates the material while he's in it. Far too serious for its own good. I cracked up every time someone in that movie said "Godzilla" without a trace of irony. The second half of that movie is obnoxiously grey as well.

For a film that has been marketed on it's connection to the source material, it all comes off as cynical.

@lydian_sel: Electrike? Lol that's an interesting comparison. I guess I see the resemblance, but to me they looked more like the Knights from Halo 4. (Or some kind of Forerunner or whatever those guys were called.)

I still haven't seen Pacific Rim, but I know Del Toro was pushing for a Pacific Rim/Godzilla crossover. Maybe that would be more up your alley?

May I ask what a Godzilla movie is? I love, and still love, the '98 movie and don't understand the hate and the only other Godzilla movie I've seen is a 50's one at 4 AM and don't remember it at all. How are they different?

The thing I don't understand is people complaining about the movie taking itself seriously. If you've seen the original Godzilla, you'd know that movie was very serious. It only got campy after a couple of entries into the series, and I never liked those. The serious Godzilla films were always the best.

@nightriff: Godzilla movies, barring the very first, are mostly about Godzilla fighting other monsters/giant robots and toppling buildings while man sort of struggles to stay out of the crossfire and make the most of a shitty situation (without being too serious about it, typically). It's kind of a unique genre. Once you make the movie just about Godzilla (or any other singular monster) it basically turns the whole thing into a disaster movie, which, given Emmerich's filmography, makes his involvement in that interpretation unsurprising.

It's supposed to be nice and sunny and warm on Monday/Tuesday. Will likely make my first Summer Day outing of it. A day at the lake, sunbathing and swimming, and then watching Godzilla, pleasures all around. Good times.

@veektarius said:

That makes a lot of sense I can understand how they are different, thanks for the breakdown.

It was pretty alright. It is an experience movie. If you don't go see it in the theater, you would be fine never seeing it. It was more fun than it had a right to be, while still suffering from some staggering oversights and blunders. If your town lost power over 24 hours ago, why are there still people working in a high rise office during the end of the world?

Overall, the movie overcomes the inevitable stupidity that is inherent to these types of films and emerges as fun popcorn entertainment. 3/5

I liked it. Everything Godzilla related was fantastic and the special effects were great. The military perspective was kind of boring though and the main protagonist was pretty bland.

I posted this in my own topic, but it got deleted (understandably since there are so many that I didn't see), but here goes:

While I'm more of a King Kong fan, I love me some Godzilla. But since King Kong only had one good movie (I think the remake wasn't very good), I spent most of my time watching Godzilla as a kid. I love watching those puppet and rubber suit creatures battle it out. A guilty pleasure? Sure! But it was still a good investment of time for me and taught me that it's okay to root for the beast, even though King Kong did that first.

I thought this kind of monster fighting genre was dead, until Pacific Rim came out and blew me away with it's crazy silliness and cool monster vs. giant robot battles. This I felt was the pinnacle of modern day monster disaster movies, I felt nothing could surpass it. Then Godzilla (2014) was announced and my optimism for these kinds of movies getting popular again was on the rise.

So....is Godzilla good as Pacific Rim. Nope. Nada. No.

The problem is that the human drama that makes up the majority of the first 2 acts of the film is terrible. It's your typical family-crisis disaster movie where the hero is an American family man who has a personal grudge against the monster for killing his parents and separating the rest of his loving family. Very predictable disaster movie stuff that sounds like a rejected script from any of Roland Emmerich's disaster films, though here, played as safe and as serious as could be. The acting is flat and boring too, which doesn't help sell any of it.

If there is a word that I can describe Godzilla as (well two words put into one) is: mildly-schizophrenic. It wants to have this serious family drama while having this kind of light-hearted, somewhat funny but not quite, tone and have giant monsters fighting in a big city. The stuff that does involve Godzilla fighting two (yup two) monsters in the city (San Francisco and a little bit in Honolulu) is fun to watch, in fact very exciting, but there's so little of it, which upsets me.

So in my short generalized impressions of the movie, should you see it? If you're a hardcore Godzilla fan and loved Pacific Rim enough that you can deal with a thin plot and boring characters, go for it. I don't regret spending time with it, per-se, but I didn't find it wholely satisfying either, at least until the end. The movie might've done better if it was filmed more in Godzilla's PoV, with the backstory reduced more to the background. That way we can focus more on the monster fighting.

5/10

I don't mean to pick apart your opinion too much, but I think it's odd you enjoyed Pacific Rim more then this, since while the human element was bland in Godzilla, in Rim it was hard to even take seriously.

But yeah, I loved the movie, but there were two failings. The human element was meh, and there was just a little too little Godzilla. The monster scenes that were in the movie WERE amazing, I just wish there was a little more of them, especially the big G himself.

That's kinda the point. It was silly and had fleshed out, eccentric characters. Well, as fleshed out as can be in a monster movie. The human element in Godzilla was just bad.

I wasn't really into it. It spent a TON of time on the human stuff, which mainly just consisted of sketchy exposition and barely existent motivations. Honestly(though I'm sure many will find this blasphemous), I felt infinitely more attached to what was going on in Cloverfield. Sure, similar arc, but far more emotive. Ford Brody was just stoic throughout the entire movie, and felt like he slid more and more into the background as it went on so that military generals could give more exposition. This would all be fine if it was mainly focused on the monster stuff(which was fine at the very end), but it only consists of about 10% of the movie, so the humans and their half-hearted drama gets all of the spotlight and attention. If you're going to make your movie all about their characters, at least make them someone you can really latch on to.

As a side note, Elisabeth Olsen continues to be really hot.

I like that the majority of votes is no vote haha

Also, to the OP, I didn't realize that all of America had to redeem itself for Godzilla (1998). I didn't ask Roland Emmerich to not understand how to make a Godzilla movie. Why was Roland Emmerich making a Godzilla movie to begin with? Just because he made disaster movies? I don't think they are the same so whoever greenlit that is an idiot.

I also have no interest in seeing the new Godzilla. Give me a dude in a rubber suit in black and white any day. Way better films.

I have low expectations for a "new Godzilla" movie. Most movies these days are total garbage so I don't expect much from this film.

Incredibly frustrating. It teases you with great monster action, but every time it starts up it turns the camera away to boring characters looking afraid or bewildered for excruciatingly long periods of time. There's a good movie in there...but it refuses to show it to you because it would rather show you the guy from Kick Ass looking confused.

I was really tired, so what I got out of it was a lot of grey and a lot of people brooding and a little of cool monster stuff. Was not a fan. I knew going in that the monster stuff would be a lot of teasing, but I thought that would mean the human element would be good enough to justify that. Not so.

My only beef with Godzilla is you get three incredible actors in Ken Wantanabe, Bryan Cranston, and Elisabeth Olsen and you decide to spend the majority of screen time on Aaron Taylor-Johnson who was even as the lead was the weakest part of Kick-Ass.

I definitely agree with this. It especially be came annoying at the end because Watanabe's character brings up his aversion to the nuclear option (which is a core part of the original Japanese franchise in the wake of Hiroshima/Nagasaki) and they just brush it aside and never bring it up again.

In the end though I really enjoyed it. It paid enough homage to the original franchise, including a monster design more in line with the original, while also taking some chances to thrust the franchise into the modern world. It certainly wasn't the perfect Godzilla film but as a starting point for what will surely be a new franchise its a good baseline.

1.5 hours of Godzilla reminded me of the Sylar/Peter fights that happened behind closed doors in Heroes. Then the movie actually started.

I thought it was fine and liked it, though was kinda bummed about Bryan Cranston not being in it as much as I thought he'd be.

I just got back from seeing it and I couldn't agree more with these two posts. What bewilders me most about all the cuts away from the monster bashing is that is something that is usually used in this kind of film to obscure the monster until the filmmaker wants to have the big reveal at the end... except that the first time Godzilla actually shows up we get a full pan up his entire body, showing off everything.

I can't help but wonder if there is an uncut version of the film somewhere with all the action left in, but the director decided to cut it because it took away from the (absolutely not at all) riveting human element. :/

Nope. I thought this movie was not good. I just came back from seeing it.

Let me be nuanced in saying I understand what the movie was going for. It went for clever set pieces where one shot showed something huge, then they translated it fluently into something small or vice versa. It did that well. I also understand it went for more of a 'what you don't see makes it better' thing. In going for that, everything was well put on screen and whatnot.

Now, all that said, all that stuff is incredibly annoying to me. I want to see the action, I don't want to see it covered up. You first see Godzilla halfway into the movie. Literally halfway and not a second sooner. Then, you only see him for literally 2 seconds. Then the next scene you see him on TV, filmed in with a shaky air borne camera. After that it jumps ahead in time. You didn't see anything of that fight. It was all 'implied'. Again, slight nuance: I know that is what they were going for, but I just really don't like that stuff.

The entire movie is like that. And then there is the dumb audio implications. They try to hammer home so much that Godzilla is 'the good guy' with the music and audio, it just becomes annoying. Each time he got hit when the two MOTO's teamed up on him, there was this nasty ear numbing 90's-ey dramatic tone blasting. Come on. You already made me well aware that I'm watching a movie, you don't have to beat me over the head with it. Also, the 'Saving Private Ryan' intentional sound outages where you only hear Godzilla when he falls through buildings just didn't fit in the slightest.

Lastly, I felt that at times the scale was horribly done. Godzilla, in one scene appearing 4 times as large as the male MOTO, in the other he only seems like twice his size at most. Then back to 4 times again.

I really didn't like it that much. But again, it's the style of the movie that I already don't really like. The actual movie might be good, it's just wasted on me. I'll take Pacific Rim over it. That style suits me a lot more.

(By the way, if you were one of the people who complained about Pacific Rim not being action packed enough, I can tell you right now you're not going to like Godzilla, even if you only watch the last 20 minutes).

I liked it a lot. The human drama was pretty shallow, but the monsters fighting was epic.

I also love people who complain about barely seeing Godzilla for most of the running time, and that it took itself too seriously. That's basically admitting that they've never seen the original, or most of the sequels.

I liked it a lot. I think it has its issues, primarily in the main actor being bad and there not being enough Godzilla, but overall I really liked it.

Also, I really like the idea that (SPOILER) Godzilla is this monster that lives in the ocean and comes up solely to fight other monsters. I think that's hilarious, and that's the vibe I had at the ending when he was going back to sea, rather than wrecking stuff like Godzilla usually does.

Right. Because if the original barely showed Godzilla, then this film by definition must do the same and because it does the same it can't possibly be bad. Right?

Godzilla was barely shown in the film while he was the only interesting thing about the movie. The entire story that was playing out on the forefront was pretty bad. None of the human drama felt enticing or actually dramatic, with the very exception of Bryan's performance. Which leads all the focus away from that, let's call it what it was, boring stuff and towards Godzilla. Who, again, was barely shown. You're basically just looking on your watch waiting until the next time they're going to show Godzilla.

It was bad.

I just got back from it and I wasn't super impressed. I was really disappointed in that Joe Brody was not the main character. I mean the marketing made Bryan Cranston out to be the lead of the film. I liked Sarazowa a lot though as a character. He was by far the most interesting character in the film. Didn't really care for the monster stuff. It all felt like I'd seen it before in other films. Everything about the film really felt like It'd been before.

It's especially funny given the context of the much darker tone the movie generally goes for. It still ends up feeling pretty silly and confused about what kind of movie it wants to be.

Also, on a similar note...I can't be the only one who found the end of the movie to be really funny. I mean the VERY last scene, when Godzilla just walks back into the ocean. It shows that, then there's like 2 seconds of silence, and then BOOM, black credits screen with blaring dramatic music. The timing of that had me laughing my ass off.

I had pretty high expectations for this movie, and it lived up to them for the most part. Definitely worth seeing.

Man I did not like this movie at all. The human drama stuff was bland and ran on waaay too long (also MILITARY HOOAH), the buildup to the Godzilla reveal felt incredibly wasted, Ken Watanabe spends the entirety of the movie in a comatose state staring blankly at something just off-screen and occasionally providing trailer quotes, the kaiju battles are mostly off-screen or underwhelming and the ending almost turned the whole thing into a weird comedy.

I could go on, but really, if you've seen Pacific Rim or Cloverfield or any other disaster/'kaiju' movie before this then you have seen this movie. Cranston is pretty good, but put next to Aaron Blankslate-Johnson he just ends up looking kinda goofy.

Completely agree. And I'd like to elaborate on your last argument that I never once believed that Aaron was Cranston's son. 'Dad'. He said it so extremely unconvincingly every single time. Literally as if someone told him to say it. I did like Aaron in Kick-Ass. Not sure what happened, maybe he was intimidated or something, but he wasn't up to his best performance.

Adding in that pretty much 70% of the movie revolves around him and yeah, disappointing movie for many reasons.

I got back from this a few hours ago. Ultimately I did like it but it didn't live up to expectations. It was either too serious or not serious enough, depending on what you want from a Godzilla movie. This would be better if they didn't take the whole "less you see of him, the scarier he is" attitude toward Godzilla. I know what Godzilla is and looks like, he's not a fucking Xenomorph, I'm not here to be terrified. I'm here to see towering and invincible monsters level cities. And they do that toward the end, but it still cuts away from the action to focus on human characters far too often for my tastes. As soon as Godzilla starts fighting a Muto, the camera moves to something else that I don't care about until the later parts of the movie.

I enjoyed what I saw of the action a lot. I think there are some good moments of tension to be had here. But it's not as focused on either being cheesy or being serious as it should be. Pacific Rim was a better movie partly because del Toro knew precisely the sort of tone to apply, and it works wonderfully.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I thought it was pretty fucking awesome. There were a few scenes where the whole audience started cheering and clapping in the theater I was at.

They should rename this movie two hour cock tease.

The first half was really good, all the military stuff in the second half was boring but the finale was great, so overall I really liked it!

I think Cloverfield already took that one.

Whenever any monsters or Bryan Cranston were on screen, the film was excellent. Unfortunately, there is not enough of them, leaving a lot of screen time for human characters that are more than a little bit dull. However, I was never bored, it didn't feel too long and the action when it came was cracking. I really like what Gareth Edwards went for and if he'd had a more charismatic leading man that Aaron Taylor Johnson (would have been very happy if his and Elizabeth Olsen's roles had been reversed) then I think he would have pulled off something special.

Pretty much the vibe I get.

I like the movie a lot and am glad it isn't something like PR. Which is different and more about making the fights look cool and over the top as possible. No offense the PR because I liked it, but it is a big dumb action monster movie. Not to say Godzilla is some smart behemoth of a movie, but there is a difference in tone and the way both movies carry themselves. Especially in Godzilla where the fights felt like fights actual monsters would have if they actually existed. And the fact that the monsters aren't there to just destroy the city/people. They felt like huge insects to me, that were trying to exist just as that. I guess ultimately they would be destroying cities and wiping out mankind anyway.

The Human stuff definitely wasn't great in this movie, but it never actually is in most movies of this type. The fault in that I guess lies in the fact of how much time you spend with the humans, but I didn't have a huge problem with it. I usually end up hating characters in movies and it annoys me when they're on screen, I didn't hate any character in this movie.

I haven't seen it yet but I've heard good things. It can't be any worse than the last American remake (which I kind of enjoyed in a weird way).