Anyone see Godzilla 2014? What did you think?

@lydian_sel said:

I really disliked it. There is so much going on in that film that isn't giant monsters fighting. The movie continually does this thing where there will be a tv in the background of a shot showing insane monster fights, but when there is a scene actually focused on the monsters fighting it's pretty lackluster.

And the enemy monsters kinda look like that Electric Dog pokemon...

I really don't think they learnt enough from the Roland Emmerich Godzilla. Also, what's with all the kids in this movie?

For my money Pacific Rim was a significantly better film. And it wasn't afraid of throwing some lights around either, Godzilla is a really dark film, not dark in tone, dark as in what the fuck is actually happening I can't quite see.

All the.....two kids? (and one in the prologue for like 30 seconds)

I loved it. I liked the fact that Gareth Edwards showed some restraint. The human stuff was fine too aside from there not being enough Bryan Cranston. When the monsters did throw down is was rad as hell. When Godzillas spikes started glowing I almost audibly squeed.

I really liked it. The best thing about it was it really was a classic Godzilla plot. Monster shows up, terrorizes people, Godzilla shows up, fights monster, collateral damage ensures, Godzilla wins, leaves.

It still has the "realistic" special effects most movies suffer from in the past couple of decades: darkness, smoke, blurry shaky camera. Just show me the things you are spending multimillion dollars creating! But I'm fairly resigned to that now, and this movie wasn't the worst offender.

I liked it!

I think it would have been better had they decided to stick with Cranston as the lead as we had a lot more emotional investment in his story than in Johnson's character.

I still liked the movie enough anyway. Every moment Godzilla and the MUTOs were on screen had so much weight. And Cranston did a good job carrying the film before the monsters showed up.

I genuinely enjoyed it.

Also, is it weird that I thought the MUTOs were adorable and I felt bad for them? :(

Its sad that you can't make a big budget movie without catering to families and kids. Still enjoyed that parts that didn't have brave American soldiers running around. It still had its purpose of showing how humanity can't cope with disasters and just has to endure them until it ends.

I thought it was perfect. It was clear watching it that Edwards and crew understand what makes a classical Godzilla film tick, and they delivered on that premise perfectly.

Not only was that movie a love-letter to the original, but I can think of no better apology for the 1998 Roland Emmerich train-wreck than this film.

It was good, but it wasn't great.

The main problem is everything in it that is not Godzilla, which is too much and too boring.

I loved it. My favorite parts? The final kill, and his 15 second straight roar. I did not like how Godzilla felt like a supporting character, and how so many intense built-up scenes would cut out of nowhere to the human story.

He's gonna bite the fuck out of---oh I guess we're following this chick again.

Wow this movie sucked.

There was MAYBE ten minutes of Godzilla, total, in a movie that's two hours long. The rest of the time is filled with boring-ass white people doing a bunch of boring-ass white people things. The only two interesting people, the characters played by Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe, are almost completely absent from the film in favor of following around boring-ass stock military guy and his family that doesn't matter because something needs to be at stake other than humanity facing something it doesn't understand, can't hope to defeat through traditional means, and faces extinction because of its own hubris.

But then again, maybe I'm asking for too much.

I'd like to bring something up that's been floating around this thread. "The original..." argument doesn't hold up here due to the very nature of what Godzilla is in these two movie. In the classic, Godzilla is the villain. In this reboot, he's the hero. We also have sixty years of seeing Godzilla. He's not a mystery anymore. He know who Godzilla is, what he does and how he does it. Hiding it isn't building "suspense." It's a two hour cock tease with a lot of blue balling up until the end. And by that point, it's almost too little too late.

The ending blast was pretty fucking awesome though.

You would think that a movie called ''Godzilla'' would focus on the monster, but no lets show this boring cliche human side of the story. The only interesting character was the guy from breaking bad, everybody else was meh. I fucking hated that they kept hyping up these fights with teases and didn't show anything. Then your left with this big ass showdown at the end, and even that was kinda meh. The only cool thing about the fight was Godzilla's breath blast. Other then that I didn't find it to be epic at all.

Just watched it. Big disappointment. Bryan Cranston is barely in it. Godzilla is barely in it. It's not particularly fun. Not particularly tense. I couldn't care less about the characters it's centered on, which takes up the majority of the movie.

Finally the monster fight was rad, but also gave me a fucking headache. I hate 3D movies. What a blight.

Maybe that's because you were watching it on a tiny screen in crappy camcorder quality...

Having seen it twice on the big screen, to me it's one of the more impressive experiences I've had in a cinema, almost up there with Jurassic Park in terms of creature, sound and special effects design.

That's true for most part, but overall I still found the movie disappointing for me. Then again its more enjoyable compared to the older Godzilla movies.

After watching this vid. I was reminded why I could never get into the Godzilla series. I'm sure it was epic for its time, but man this looks silly as fuck compared to the remake.

Overall, while I liked the movie, I just couldn't get into Aaron Taylor-Johnson in this movie. I didn't really like him that much. He was just so bland and awful.

Cranston and Watanabe were pretty good, though. And the monster fight scenes were alright (when they were shown completely).

THIS, THIS, and THIS. I believe fans of the original (myself included) are going to love the movie and modern movie fans are going to find it very slow and all around a big tease. I'll agree that the human element post-Cranston is generally mediocre if generous, but the way they handled Godzilla I thought was excellent.

I am surprised nobody has mentioned the new origin story for Godzilla (as well as the other monsters in the movie). Anybody's thoughts on that?

Lol. They weren't not showing him because they didn't want you to see what he looked like. Of course people know what Godzilla looks like, but what is the point of just showing him for the sake of showing him? Building up tension and some sort of suspense is to me what makes movies good. Whether you felt that was done good in this movie is one thing, but clearly the director wasn't going for Godzilla throwing monsters around destroying cities for 2 hours because that would be boring.

I would say it is arguable that maybe they could have shown a little more, but by the end I was personally satisfied with the last fight. It was the only fight fully shown because it was the actual defining fight in the whole movie. The other fights would have been filler if they showed more and just pleasing the audience with the pretty cgi for the sake of it. It would have been less of a wow factor when it came to the full fight at the end, you wouldn't be as enthralled seeing the monsters fight, causing the devastation and how good the special effects were.

I would have to say my biggest pet peeve of complaints comes with Bryan Cranston. I think the guy is awesome too but him not being in it enough is a very weak complaint considering I am not going into a Godzilla movie to see specific actors.

Was it fun? Yes it was fun

Was it better than the 1998 movie? Much better than the 1998 movie

Did it look good? Yes

Was it a good movie to watch in the cinema? Yes

Is the movie great? No it isn't great.

This movie is a spectacle, looks great on a big screen and the 3D adds a lot of depth to some real nice environments. The scenes with the monsters were almost always handled incredibly well and some scenes had a great sense of scale to them. The movie lacked 'suspense' shots with these monsters though and as I found them way more intimidating and the scale way more effective when you had moment like the bridge scene (with the 2 soldiers laying down and the monster pacing around them) I was disappointed that they weren't more frequent. Watching them lumber around town was fun but I really wanted my 'monster stalking around' kind of scenes.

The story is crap and the characters are all bland and completely worthless, none of them ever felt stupid at least, but they are nothing more than a foil for the monsters. The death of the father (notice how I'm not using names here, I can't remember anyone) was completely shrugged off and character interactions on a whole were.... well they weren't there once the father son relationship ended. The movie hit a lull but was never dull, it's a dumb movie with some fun scenes... it's not a film I'd recommend outside of a cinema environment... it's all about the spectacle and the film becomes worthless without it.

I have plenty of criticisms for this movie but I still enjoyed it and the 2 hours blew by. Want an action flick with monsters? Then this will do everything you need, but the moment you want anything more than that you'll probably leave disappointed.

@viciousbearmauling: yes i saw it,their characters http://bit.ly/1lD9Ak8 are awesome and like model, , , http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/anyone-see-godzilla-2014-what-did-you-think?

http://www.extremetech.com/

I think Godzilla should've eaten the MUTOs, or at least the last scene should've been Zilla dragging the MUTO carcass out to sea. That would've given Zilla a reason for being there... yummy irradiated MUTO MEAT!

@sanious:

Lol. They weren't not showing him because they didn't want you to see what he looked like. Of course people know what Godzilla looks like, but what is the point of just showing him for the sake of showing him? Building up tension and some sort of suspense is to me what makes movies good. Whether you felt that was done good in this movie is one thing, but clearly the director wasn't going for Godzilla throwing monsters around destroying cities for 2 hours because that would be boring.

The point of showing him just to show him? That shouldn't ever be the case. The point of showing him is to establish a character. They talk about him being an apex hunter yet we never see him doing any apex hunting. The screen cuts to Boring-ass McBoring and the rest of the McBoring family accompanied by Captain Boring and the United States Armed Boring. There are lines that talk up Godzilla, but that's all it is: talk. They never do what a visual medium is the best at doing: showing. Show me Godzilla being a bad ass. It doesn't have to be a long fight, just enough for establish the character's dominance in the scene and creating that suspense for when it's go time for real. After all, they show the monster in Hawaii when he does his signature roar. You see him detailed and centered. There he is. But right before any action takes place we need to check in with the humans for some reason. It totally kills the mood that they established. Everything from watching the legs of this gargantuan lizard stomp up the island to the confrontation between him and the MUTO are signaling to the audience, "It's go time." But no. We get blue balled. No watching the initial fight between the two. No watching Godzilla try and shake off the joints. No anything. Because we have some people that are completely irrelevant to the story to check back with.

Seriously. What would've happened without stock military guy being there? Nothing. Nothing would've changed.

As for your last sentence: since when is a good action scene boring? I don't remember hearing anyone being bored with any of the fights in Pacific Rim, or the Avengers, or any other movie that had a good series of action scenes.

It would have been less of a wow factor when it came to the full fight at the end, you wouldn't be as enthralled seeing the monsters fight, causing the devastation and how good the special effects were

I wasn't enthralled with the fight anyways. There was no fight. It was a bunch of black blobs doing something, then Godzilla getting the shit kicked out of him (par for the course), then getting up to be OP. Granted those three moves were fun to watch, but they came one right after the other without much else going on. The lead up was terrible. There was no comeback, no round two, no sense how much danger Godzilla is in when he's being pummeled or how powerful he is when in a one-on-one engagement. It's like playing the game segment in a trailer (which would be seconds long), then being thrown into a boss fight. There's no build up, there's nothing to hang expectations on and because of this the suspense isn't there. It's just a drawn out snore fest.

I would have to say my biggest pet peeve of complaints comes with Bryan Cranston. I think the guy is awesome too but him not being in it enough is a very weak complaint considering I am not going into a Godzilla movie to see specific actors.

How about wanting to see interesting characters solve problems and engage in the story in a meaningful way? The actor is just there to give the performance. It can be filled by anyone capable of displaying an emotion. So, again, I think you missed the point on why I mentioned certain actors (I forgot their character names).

Overall we're gonna to have to agree to disagree, because otherwise we're just endlessly going to go back and forth. But as for this, when it becomes over saturated with the action. Good action can be good action, but when there's too much of it, it looses its flare, its momentum. And for me, currect mainstream action has become that because it has become out how over the top the action can be either from scene to scene in a movie or just action movies in general.

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For anyone that is interested in reading this, here is an opinion piece that takes a look into Godzilla. I think it is a pretty good piece.

Destroy All Monsters: Men Plan; GODZILLA Laughs

I enjoyed it but I wouldn't say I loved it. I would recommend it.

You may be right. I never saw the original Godzilla. The 1998 one is the first one I saw and I thought it was a much better movie than this new one. I can see why long-time fans would think the 1998 one is awful, because it doesn't stay true to the Godzilla roots.

So yeah, it's probably a Godzilla movie for the fans of the original. That said, I've heard almost all of them saying they found a large part of the movie tedious as well. They just thought it was a better Godzilla movie than the 1998 version.

I think we can all agree that the movie is at least not great. It's probably a good Godzilla movie and a pretty mediocre movie if you're not a fan of the originals.

I refuse to believe you actually exist

All of my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I always enjoy the dumb military stuff for some reason (like seeing how the military reacted were always my favorite parts of Transformers movies) so that didn't put me off too much. I'm going to be drawing on comparisons to Pacific Rim for the most part here, because these are essentially the same movies in my opinion and I've never watched any of the old Godzilla movies.

Yeah, the main character hams it up. Of course he does, it's a giant monster action movie. Godzilla is super self-serious, but I almost preferred this to Pacific Rim's approach, which just had me groaning the whole time. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Pacific Rim, but the general cheesiness of the exposition was probably my least favorite aspect of that movie.

The giant monster combat was alright. I think Pacific Rim takes the trophy here, just because there wasn't enough of it in Godzilla. While I disliked the general dumbness of Pacific Rim's dialogue, I just loved how they took the dumbness about as far as they possibly could with the monster combat (elbow rockets). I would say that I couldn't tell what was going on in Godzilla sometimes, but that was more than likely due to having to sit in the fucking front row of the entire IMAX theatre. I remember having trouble discerning what was going on when I first saw Pacific Rim, but after watching it a few times on my TV at home that ceased to be an issue. I expect it to be the same way with Godzilla. I think it has something to do with not really liking 3D effects, which was compounded immensely by having to sit in the front row.

While I understand their design choice of withholding most of the monster on monster combat until the final parts of the movie (and when you finally do get a solid dose it's very satisfying), I wish they had taken the military on monster combat further. They kind of explained this with the whole EMP sphere of influence thing, but I quite disliked that concept and would rather see the military really try to open up (in vain of course) and take down the MUTOs on their own. Show me them throwing AC130s, A10s, tank battalions, everything towards the MUTOs before Godzilla has to come in and save the day. Like in the beginning of Pacific Rim, after the appearance of the first kaiju, when they said it took 5 days to take it down. I want to see THAT movie. Godzilla was a pretty good compromise, though.

I think the coolest scene in the movie was the HALO drop, which was kind of ruined by being a part of most of the promotional content for the movie. The first person cam showing the monsters fighting below them as they dropped was just absolutely insane.

All in all, I liked it. I would say I loved Pacific Rim, while I only liked Godzilla. I'm excited to hear that a sequel was already approved.

I never saw the original like I said. So it's no surprise that I didn't care that the 1998 one didn't follow the Godzilla-formula. With that taken out of it, it is obviously the better movie. 95% of 2014 is stuff that was boring me to death. It was one giant tease, with so little pay-off that it didn't make up for all the stuff I had to sit through watching.

When you don't know the original Godzilla story, it really is different how you look at these films. In fact, I only knew that Godzilla was 'the good guy' in the originals after I watched this 2014 one. I never knew before.

I highly recommend you rewatch that movie now, it thought it was pretty good too until I realized I only cared about the last 15 minutes and it was trying to cash in on Jurassic Park for most of the movie.

All your criticism comes from you wanting the movie to be something different than it was though. Which is completely fine and valid. When I went in to 2014, I was expecting to see a lot of Godzilla and epic fights. You didn't get what you expected/wanted, neither did I. I had no expectations of 1998 and it was a pretty good movie for what it was. I had a bunch of expectations of 2014 and none of them were met. It might be a good movie, but it's not what I wanted out of it, so I was very disappointed.

@zevvion said:

Nooo, really, go back and rewatch that film. Even if it wasn't called Godzilla, it's a terrible, terrible film. The fact that it's called Godzilla makes it even more insulting.

But also youre expectations were for something the movie was never trying to be about, it was trying to be more like the original Godzilla which was a character drama centered around a giant monster attacking Tokyo. It was never meant to be all about the action, and the movie "Monsters" which the director did before this was almost the same thing

@connerthekewlkid: Yes, that was my point.

@zevvion: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't think it's fair to count an extra with one speaking line who is on screen for again 30 seconds.

Also to people complaining about the amount of Godzilla? There's about equal time as there was Godzilla in Final Wars which is about as Godzilla-ass Godzilla movie you can get.

I said I liked the 1998 one better. The guy quoting me basically said my opinion was wrong and surely if I watch it again I will side with his opinion that it was not a good movie. My point was he may not like the 1998 one for the reasons he stated, but that doesn't mean I have to hate it or like the 2014 one better. I dislike the 2014 one coming from the same angle as he dislikes 1998.

I thought the movie was rather boring to be honest. The entire first hour was a waste of time: did anyone not roll their eyes when the wife dies up against the glass in the power plant? Could a movie death be any more contrived? Also, what was up with the train/bridge scene? You have this massive warhead and you send it by train with 4 marines to guard it? Even when you know the monsters can detect nuclear sources? And then you arm the bomb on the boat in the harbor!? Everything around the Godzilla was so dam stupid.

The EMP wouldn't allow them to carry it any other way, so they used the train, and I assume most of the Military was trying to keep the monster at bay

This is going to be loaded with spoilers, so don't be dumb.

My feelings towards it outweigh the negatives in the film, and there were some. I thought the way the second MUTO was brought in was rushed, lazy, and poorly constructed. Like, I'm not sure I follow the logic of what the movie was trying to tell me there. Like, they had another one of those MUTO pods locked up a couple miles from Las Vegas completely unsupervised? I don't. That felt like "hey, we need a more threatening monster, and I forgot to foreshadow this one." Also, the human stuff, although it ultimately worked, felt pretty uninspired. Military guy likes his family, can't see them. Military wife misses her husband. Crazy, widowed husband goes crazy, but isn't actually crazy. Scientist guy is smarter than military guy.

Having said that, I actually really loved the movie. Don't get me wrong, there's a difference between loving something and thinking it's perfectly constructed. It has flaws, I realize that. I'm not here to say whether it's a good movie, and I think it falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of quality. But, if you're asking if I enjoyed it? I fucking did.

Two things I really liked. I really liked the treatment of Godzilla, the animal. Godzilla in this movie felt more like an animal than any Godzilla movie I've seen before. He wasn't benevolent or malevolent. He didn't come to a city just to fuck it up. That always bothered me about Godzilla, and other giant monster films. Animals traditionally hate human civilization, why the fuck would they intentionally head into a massive city just to destroy it? What the fuck is Godzilla getting by fucking up Manhattan? The way Godzilla moves, and fights, and looks are all way more natural and animal than ever before. The way he sort of lumbers back into the ocean after waking up just looked really natural to me. He ignored the humans because they aren't interesting to him. They don't pose a threat or a substantial amount of food. Like an elephant walking by ants (spare me your elephants are afraid of mice stuff, please).

The other things is how fucking positive the movie is. I hate how profoundly stupid people act in most of these types of movies, but Edwards gave us more credit. There is panic and hysteria, but otherwise we keep our shit together and let the events play out to the best of our ability. Hey, here's this other giant monster, that for all intents and purposes wants to fucking help us, let's let it do that maybe. I fully expected the military to try to kill Godzilla when it was weak, despite it trying to help us. Anyway, my favorite bit is the totally accurate media in the movie tagging it with "SAVIOR OF THE CITY!?!" It was weirdly feelgood for a movie about giant monsters killing each other.

But after the train crashes they come in and pick up the bomb on a helicopter............

......and put it right on a boat which can be shut down by the EMP, which is exactly what happens after they arm the bomb in the harbor. Not sure if there is anyway to spin that entire sequence without using the word "dumb" in some fashion.