Why?

Six long decades ago, Godzilla roared and stomped on Japanese screens for the first time. What began as a haunting and imaginative reaction to nuclear paranoia later transformed into an ongoing, camp-centric series of over-the-top creature features. The second major bid to launch an American version of the character, directed by Gareth Edwards, is deadly serious and, sadly, a bit of a failure.

Edwards last directed Monsters, an inexpensive romantic drama set around the Mexico-United States border in the aftermath of an alien invasion. Monsters is a film I love. With a subtle hand and an emphasis on war-zone atmosphere, it conjures a genuine sense of awe and fear around its amorous protagonists without relying on mega-budget spectacle. Edwards' intelligence and taste are not absent in their entirety from his Godzilla. He tries to stage set pieces in such a way as to tease the audience, slowly revealing the scope of the action and the nature of the threat, forcing us to anticipate and savor the climax rather than simply dialing the volume to a punishing eleven and holding steady. As respectable as this idea is in theory, however, it can also misfire because the many, many minutes in which Godzilla is not destroying metropolises or tearing into enemy dinosaurs must be shaded with potent drama, mystery, and suspense. There has to be a point to care beyond the promise of the next eruption of computer-generated wizardry. Alas, Edwards and his team's grip on character development and storytelling is not up to par, resulting in a laxly-paced picture which flirts with downright tedium.

Another notable shortcoming: this incarnation of Godzilla devotes an extensive amount of time and attention to its human characters, yet none of them emerge as colorful or interesting. None of them are figures in whom we can invest in any profound way. We have the generic, pouting American soldier (the by-default protagonist). Then there is his generic, concerned wife, in the film to be put in danger briefly near the end. Present, too, is the generic, inscrutable Japanese scientist; he, of course, recites explanatory dialogue when required to move the lumbering plot forward. An ace cast of fresh faces and prestigious international stars, including Sally Hawkins, Elizabeth Olsen, and Ken Watanabe, is untested. It is a nightmare to see so many talented people squandered. Many of them might as well have stayed home and delivered their performance by telephone. Only Bryan Cranston, as a nuclear physicist transformed by tragedy into an obsessive conspiracy theorist, is given a role to rip into, one involving notes of genuine anger and melancholy, but the part is unfortunately brief.

C

There is a strange quality to this film I cannot put into words precisely, but I want to. During the third act, for instance, it goes, "We are going to draw them to a single location and detonate a nuclear bomb. Oh, no, now we have to jump out of an airplane at 30,000 feet, find one of the bombs, and defuse it. Oh, no, the bomb is damaged, so we have to lift it, lumber to the water, and throw it in. Oh, let's use this boat to go out into the ocean and get rid of the bomb there. Shit, the boat is not starting! Let's hot-wire it!" And so on and so on. Hectic incidents pile up upon hectic incidents, but I found it hard to give a shit or become involved in the intensity of the situation. The airplane-jump is epic and frightening in the teaser trailer, yet slightly bland in the actual film.

Disappointed.....

Where to start

Did I miss something or did we see a very similar story/scenario from the 1998 U.S. version of Godzilla there are a lot of parallels seen in the 14' version . At least the 98 film was a somewhat fun summer popcorn movie. Unfortunately the 2014 for me could have been so much better than just designing a better looking Godzilla and adding better actors to play out scenes we really don't care much about. What is it about today's movies in general that require us to suspend our belief way to much in the way we would actually be handling these type of crisis? Last but not least if Godzilla is in the title of the Movie why the heck didn't we get more than 5 minutes of screen time with him ripping shit up but we got tons of time with the other two blah monsters?

C-

I, too, found the "M.U.T.O.s" bland.

In general, I see this film as failing where Spielberg's War of the Worlds succeeded. This botches the macro/micro blend. It never captures a real sense of post-9/11 crisis anxiety, even though it clearly hopes to. It also cannot help itself but always put the Aaron Taylor-Johnson character at the very center of the action even though he is just one man trying to return to his family. They want him to be this, but also Will Smith in Independence Day. It does not fly.

We really only have 1 EOD trooper in the entire U.S. military?

I believe you already know the answer.

Also why put them on a train to begin with??? They came in on a helicopter, and ended up flying it in either way. Why not just fly it to the water. The dumbest plot hole in a series of terrible ideas. But then of course I think of even the point of Cranston, and how his floppy disks survived 15 years of laying out in the open of an eroded house.

I honestly don't know which film to hate more, this or the 98 version. At least the 98 version had the excuse of making Godzilla look really bad. In this case, they had not only an awesome looking Godzilla, but two formidable monsters, and they sideline them for the entire film.

I was literally screaming the same thing , also there are hundreds of nuclear plants if these things feed off of radiation wouldn't they be attracted to them more so than 1 nuclear war head? heck wouldn't they also be targeting missile silos as well with thousands of warheads.

They were not attracted to radiation. They were attracted to places significant to the fascinating Brody family.

I know, they were in Nevada underground Nuclear facility, and it was filled with NUCLEAR WASTE and god knows what else from Area 51 esque shit, and she ignored all of it and just breaks out to walk through Caesar's Palace?

We need a thread, 25 dumbest thing about Godzilla. I am shocked at this 71% RT rating. Godzilla breathing fire (Which I admit is the biggest money shot for me in probably 2 years) had quite the blinding effect

on the dumbest thread.

Maybe it's because I dialed down my expectations quite a bit after those negative reviews hit, but damn I had a blast with this.

I understand the complaints about Godzilla not being in it that much, but I was still very satisfied by the end of it. There's more than enough Muto carnage and I think this film did a solid job of establishing them as the villain's.

Also, some of the set pieces here are fantastic and I get why so many people compare it to Jurassic Park. Many of the scenes with the Muto's felt very much like classic Speilberg even if the movie is lacking in every other department.

Edwards got the monsters right IMO.

As for the rest of the movie more Cranston wouldn't have hurt, but I didn't mind ATJ or any of the other characters although they didn't have much to do.

Saw this elsewhere, but it's true:

If you leave the movie wishing you had gotten more Godzilla, that is a good thing for sequels.

It's a fucking monster movie. There are going to be things you have to accept. Same folks calling TDK or films like it an all time great overlook similar amounts of stupidity.

They explain that these creatures are from a primordial time in which they fed on radiation, then when the planet changed they dug deep toward the planet's core to feed off that radiation. Now the nuclear experiments have brought them back to the surface. Okay, let's let that go even though it's ridiculous. It's also explained that Godzilla is an alpha predator that is hunting the MUTO's. Okay, makes sense.

At no time during this film did Godzilla show any attraction to radiation at all. Then, he hunts down the MUTO's, and kills them, and that's it. He doesn't eat them. Isn't that the reason for hunting them? In fact, as far as I can tell, he doesn't eat anything the entire movie. No wonder when he's done with the female MUTO's (which was an awesome scene by the way), he just lies down and goes to sleep.

Yeah, I was surprised by how underwhelming this was.

You're a fool, Bradboy.

I was let down. 98 version was much more entertaining. This godzilla just looked visually bad, like a big fat.dino.

C

It was so annoying how everytime Godzilla was finally on screen and in action, they felt the urge to cut away.

Maybe it was my high expectations, but I was disappointed. Admittedly I did have chills in the scene where Godzilla began to charge his atomic breath and you see his scales start to glow up his back.

Let's briefly mention the cheesy bit with the Asian child caught on the train and then abruptly reunited with his parents. As if the Aaron Taylor-Johnson character could not just impress us by surviving the train disaster; he needed to be extra-heroic and guide a lost child through it to safety, too.

I swear some people go into a movie just looking for things to complain about.
It's a Godzilla movie.......people need to learn to enjoy themselves every once and while.

Can't wait for someone to say the new Star Wars movie sucks because it's not realistic enough....

But this film also fails if you see it through a simple lens of, "BEER! POPCORN! NACHOS! MONSTER MASH! ROWR!" It does not scratch this itch, either. It does not even try, honestly. It has loftier and more elegant goals, but it does not realize them entirely.

It's a Godzilla film with no Godzilla, The fiat commercial that is out features almost the same amount of screen time.

I was glad they implemented the less is more concept. If it was all Godzilla and barely any humans, it would of gotten boring after 20 mins, then the too much special effects-michael bay shit would start up. At least they tried to do something different....