icemann on 16/5/2014 at 13:16
Surprised to not see a thread here on this one (unless I missed it somehow).
Anyways. Went to see it tonight and my opinion was mixed on it:
Whilst Bryan Cranstan is his usual awesome self (ever since that episode he did for X-Files back in the early 90s anyway) but the first half of the movie is just plain boring. I know they needed to set up characters which is fine, but other than Cranstan their all just annoying whiny people with no real standouts.
And then in the second half:
You FINALLY see a fricken monster, but don't see Godzilla till ages later, and then when you DO see both monsters in the same place, they don't even show the damn fucking fight. They just transition off to the next scene. And they do this till almost the end of the movie, and instead keep focusing on the annoying human characters. WHAT THE FUCK. I will say that once they actually bother to show the damn fights the movie gets alot better, and the overall destruction shown is excellent. Godzilla himself looks pretty awesome on the overall whole also and that yell he does is fucking awesome.
A 6/10 for me.
SubJeff on 16/5/2014 at 13:30
Very disappointed.
I was really looking forward to this and the trailer makes it look awesome. But it's dull dull dull. The first third of the film was the best bit for me, in contrast to your opinion icemann.
Godzilla is designed well except for the Peter Griffin pot belly but the way this film was laid out was all wrong. No one was scared of Godzilla, per se, and his motives make him pretty uninteresting. The human stories are all crushingly dull except Cranstons (and not his sons) and the twisted origins of Godzilla, whilst allowing for those awesome 1950s footage bits, supplant the reason for his original artistic creation.
This film should have been called Kaiju Devastatron X: MOTU Attack and then Godzilla arriving would have been a nice surprise. He has a cameo role anyway, really.
I got tickets to iMAX 3D, had perfect seats, was stoked to be going. I think I liked the Shockwave reveal in the Transformers trailer better than Godzilla.
2/5 - Broderick version has 10x more devastation dread.
Scots Taffer on 16/5/2014 at 15:17
As Shug said when it ended: "Duped by 15 minutes of Bryan Cranston."
So true.
Muzman on 16/5/2014 at 17:14
Such mixed to bad reaction from the geek/movie circles on this. It's interesting since the critical reaction and the exit polls have been really good.
I hope it does well anyway. I reckon Edwards is a good guy to have making big movies.
(I really can't countenance this talk that '98 was better or more anything. That was one of the most boring and annoying films I've ever seen)
icemann on 16/5/2014 at 18:16
I hated the 98 movie. Only good bit was the camera guy bit with the foot dropping down on him. Rest was meh.
As for the new movie, I hated the son character. In comparison to Cranston he was always complaining all the time, and just not that interesting. And yet they made him the focus of the damn movie. Gah. If it had been Cranston I think it would have been a better.
I'd recommend having a watch of comprehensive reviews of the entire original Godzilla franchise (the Japanese made ones). James Rolfe of AVGN fame, did a great video a while back which covered everything other than his (Godzilla's) appearance in the Japan only tv show "Zone Fighter", which he covered a few days ago. Quite interesting. They (Toho, creators of the original series) even did a few movies after the 98 American movie and had Japanese Godzilla vs the American one. You can guess who got completely slaughtered.
Sure their so B-Grade and fake looking its not funny, but there's a charm to them.
SubJeff on 16/5/2014 at 20:17
Not saying you, but in reply to Muz, I think people are still loving it because of the hype and other people. No one wants to be the downer of the group and people don't want to go against the flow.
It just didn't stand up to a forensic analysis though. I'd like to hear the explanations of the people who loved it. Most of the reason will boil down to "it's subjective", I guarantee it. I'm happy to say "it just wasn't for me" with some films but not this.
Muzman on 16/5/2014 at 20:30
Yeah. And it's good to moderate my expectations a bit too, for all that.
Plucking a (possibly imaginary) signal from the noise I sort of get the impression that it's almost shockingly straightforward for right now (where, say, something like Pacific Rim was a bit of a crazy jumble) and people actually respect that in a world of twists and just cramming in more and more stuff into every other movie.
It's refreshingly old school and could do well with young and old and not so great with those inbewteen.
Completely bogus predict-o-tron BS there. But it's late and I'm in a speculative mood.
SubJeff on 16/5/2014 at 21:28
Nah, it's a jumble. A bad one.
Fafhrd on 17/5/2014 at 00:44
I don't know what movie the haters saw, but it wasn't the Godzilla I saw. Case in point:
Quote:
I hated the son character. In comparison to Cranston he was
always complaining all the time,
No he wasn't. Not even a little bit.
This one does a deft and incredible job balancing the slow building dread of the '54 version with the monster vs monster mayhem of the latter era Toho Godzillas. Essentially shooting it as a disaster movie and letting the action be predominantly from a human perspective gives the monsters and destruction a sense of scale that is frequently lacking in giant monster movies (even Pacific Rim, which I unabashedly love), and there are some straight-up iconic shots and moments throughout this (Godzilla swimming across the Pacific, flanked and followed by a fleet of American warships being one of the best, but there are so many more that I don't want to spoil.) Also, treating all the monsters as just giant animals that are only aware of humans when we attack them allows them to have character beyond 'Giant Monster Smash!'
The
worst that can be said about the human characters is that they're serviceable. And the idea that Aaron Taylor-Johnson's character is some sort of Macho American Military Dude archetype is laughable. His only goal in the entire film is getting to his family and making sure they're safe. His interest in the monsters only extends as far as that.
This is exactly the Godzilla movie you should expect the director of Monsters to make, and I'd like to see more, though it's also a perfect one-off.
Pyrian on 17/5/2014 at 03:28
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
The
worst that can be said about the human characters is that they're serviceable.
Damning with faint praise; how many millions can you throw at a movie without bothering about basic charisma and script issues? And they're
most of the movie. Bulk of the movie: serviceable. But dull.
Still, I didn't fork out for IMAX 3D because I gave a damn about the human characters, and the effects were well worth it as far as I'm concerned, even if they only constituted a small portion of the movie. Heck, even the HALO drop was epic.
