Got in from an 8pm showing last night for the new Godzilla movie, the theater was practically empty. I think that the announcement of advance showings on Thursday just struck some people by surprise. I imagine it will be much busier tonight, anyways I wanted to sleep on it and reflect on the movie before throwing my rambling opinion to the mix. I'd like to hear full opinion of the movie, so spoilers will probably abound in the topic.

Toho sent Godzilla out on a bang, Godzilla: Final Wars was an incredible movie. I would go so far to say it could be one of my favorite Godzilla films, it had so many monsters and threw the best aspects of past Godzilla movies into a giant blender for the greatest monster brawls all in one. This was in 2004, it was time for Godzilla to rest, has he woken up 10 years later with the same bang?

YES!, as I walked out of the movie I felt content, I was happy with damn near everything about the film. I knew if I thought long enough I could find nerdy things to complain about, but after seeing how wrong Godzilla was treated in his previous american release, this film did more than enough things right to be worthy of calling itself a Godzilla movie. I have seen reviews expressing frustration over the human characters and their motivations. I didn't have this problem, when the movie is firing on all cylinders and destruction is at 100% I consistently felt like the main characters were in real danger, and they had compelling reasons and conflict to make me care.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson knocks it out of the park, he is living with the incredible burden having lost both his mother and father all related to the climatic appearance of TWO monsters that are seeking out all sources of radiation as they grow stronger. He has to make the tough choice of throwing himself head first into multiple missions attempting to save the day all while grasping the fact that he may leave his wife and child behind. I'm not saying that I ever felt the tension that he wouldn't make it through the movie, but at the very least a story was created that gave him effective motivations, at least for me.

This movie was stunning, I made sure to keep my expectations before viewing firmly in check to resist having any lingering fanboy-ism damaged by the potential this film had to be a disaster, but I can say without hesitation that I would watch this movie again and be there opening night for more Godzilla movies in this style.

I saw it yesterday after a terrible job interview, so that might have affected my view of the film.

I think I expected something more like Pacific Rim where it was more about the giant monsters fighting, so all of the family drama really came as a shock to me. I felt like it started strong with the mother dying and the conversations and scenes with the father and son trying to come to terms with what happened 15 years ago. Then the monsters start appearing and they look awesome, but they didn't show enough of them for me.

There are a lot of intelligent people in this film who are really thick it seems, they know the Muto can disable electrical devices, it's why they point out the nuclear bomb they have is clockwork. But their plan is to take this out on a boat that they already showed they can power down. The Japanese doctor who has been chasing the monsters for years makes a serious point with the army general about nuclear weapons by handing him a watch from his grandfather who was in Hiroshima in 1945 when the bomb dropped, but it seems to have no impact because he still makes that decision to risk thousands of lives relatively easy. Finally there is the nurse who stays at the hospital purely because her husband says he'll be there, doesn't leave with her patients to be where she will be best suited to help, she stays.

For a film called Godzilla, Godzilla himself wasn't in it a whole lot, there wasn't a whole lot of fighting and the first time Godzilla goes to lock up with Muto someone shuts the door before the punch lands.

I don't think it was a terrible film, I just wanted more spectacle from a film essentially about giant monsters hitting each other. I did however leave really pumped to see the new X-Men film, because the trailer they showed before Godzilla looked great.

I agree. The human subplot started off strong thanks to Bryan Cranston, but it devolved quickly to being uninteresting due to some of the reasons you mentioned. Watanabe's thousand-yard stare throughout the movie was...impressive...lol in that he could keep the exact same dumbfounded look almost all the way through. The couple of times they cut away right before the fighting begins was disappointing in retrospect because those fight scenes could've taken over right when the human story got uninteresting. Godzilla fighting was def. the highlight, but just a general lack of it was a bummer. I probably prefer Pacific Rim as well because it's just a bigger spectacle.

So, the screengrab below is from the teaser trailer with the Oppenheimer speech. It definitely didn't make it into the final film. I wonder what creature(s?) it/they might be?

I loved it, probably way more than I should have. My only complaints would be that once Bryan Cranston's character died, we were left with this bland lead character. I actually had trouble identifying him at some points. In fact, the whole wife/son subplot was a snoozefest but other than that, I think it was really something special. I had the dumbest grin on my face whenever the monsters were fighting during the back third of the movie. And the first third of the movie revolving around Japan and the search for the truth I found great as well. So yeah, the middle third could have been better but overall, pretty great film.

Remember when the EMP blast when off and like 7 military planes fell out of the sky?


All you motherfuckers were talking about for the whole movie were how you needed to work around all your electrical equipment failing, you even got a clockwork nuke for the purpose, and yet you still wanted to crowd the sky with like dozens of airplanes.

You're all so stupid.