Godzilla (2014) - - - Part 12

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This is the Godzilla we should have gotten in 1998 and didn't. Once again, bad move for Sony, giving up the rights and letting them go to Warner Bros.


Legendary owns the Godzilla rights, not Warner Bros. This is the last picture that Legendary has to fulfill in order to honor their multi-picture financing deal with Warner Bros (which began in 2005 with Batman Begins and ends in 2014 with Godzilla). Legendary financed 75% of this film, with Warner Bros only contributing 25%.
 
****SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WITHOUT COMMON SENSE****

I never said Transformers was a great film. I said that Michael Bay understands what audiences desire. And no matter what equivocation one wishes to propose to argue the semantics of that statement, the fact remains that each and every Transformers movie is a blockbuster smash hit. In fact, I dare say that Transformers has defined the modern cinema blockbuster. Sure you have a human sub plot in each film, but that never detracts from the war between the autobots and decepticons. And since Sam spends the majority of his time in the company of the autobots, it isn't as if the audience misses out on seeing Transformers throughout the film.

Regardless of whether or not one enjoys the scripts or the acting, the general audience is never dissatisfied because the Transformers films give people what they want: the presence of the titular character(s) and plenty of action sequences involving said character(s).

Godzilla is not the type of film in which people go into the theatre thinking, "you know what I want? analytic thought about the arrogance of man, the caveats of technology, the power of nature and broken family relationships." And it would be one thing if the film actually handled those elements well. I'd be more inclined to accept the effort made to produce Godzilla as a disaster movie if I actually felt as though I were watching a disaster movie. Sadly, I didn't.

The disaster element of Godzilla is worse than 2012, but I can enjoy 2012 for being laughably bad because the film never took itself seriously to begin with. In fact, it's hard to call this film a disaster film because no monsters attacked anything until the very very end. Most of the time, the MUTOs were simply walking/flying to their destination in search of nuclear power to feed on. Godzilla was mostly swimming. Most "disaster" moments (save for the Golden Gate Bridge scene) were brief news clips. Most human scenes were arguments about battle tactics, failed phone calls to spouses and puzzled expressions upon the faces of children (lots and lots of shots of children). The movie failed to meet any of its objectives: it fails as a human drama, it fails as a disaster film and it fails as a monster movie.

And no, Godzilla is not involved in "every part of the movie from 45% onward." When Godzilla reaches Hawaii, we see him for maybe a thirty second reveal and the start of a fight that has no follow through because the scene jumps back to Ford's wife at home in San Francisco. When Godzilla reaches San Francisco, we see him walk through the Golden Gate Bridge to escape shell fire from humans. He just ignores them, plows through the bridge, and then the scene switches. Then we see him again for perhaps thirty seconds as he prepares to battle MUTO, which cuts away as Ford's wife runs into the shelter.

When else do we properly experience Godzilla before the final fifteen minutes of the film? We don't. But we do get plenty of birds eye shots of his back while he swims between U.S. naval ships. Godzilla has no real presence until he gets into full combat with the MUTO kaijus. And even then, Godzilla spends half of the fight unconscious or down on the ground getting pummeled.

The most interesting human character, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is killed, unceremoniously, in the first half hour. Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), a brilliant nod to the original 1954 classic, is wasted in this film. His character was initially very intriguing. He is one of the first scientists to encounter the kaijus before anyone knows exactly what is being dealt with. He works for a shadow corporation whose sole duty is to study these creatures and find a way to kill or contain them. And then, oh yeah, in the original film, he is the person who comes up with the Oxygen Destroyer. Very promising, right? Well too bad this version of Dr. Serizawa ends up becoming a human literary device as he spends the rest of the film spouting philosophy and exposition, completely wasting a character, screen time and the immense talents of Ken Watanabe.

There is no redeeming an entire two hour experience based on thirteen minutes of screen time involving the titular character. Not when the rest of the plot is so awful, full of plot holes and sloppy logic, and absolutely useless characters. And not when the final fight is so anti-climactic and generally pretty weak compared to even old rubber suit toho fights. There is exactly one cool moment in the entire fight, which is Big G firing his atomic breath down mother MUTO's throat. That was unexpected, visceral and satisfying. Too bad the rest of the fight was overly dark and uninteresting.

I'd give this film 0/10 if not for the fact that it at least managed to make Godzilla look like a proper Godzilla, something that can't be said for 1998s similarly woeful effort. With all that said though, this film is doing gangbusters at the box office, so there is a very strong chance for a sequel, and sequels always mean an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the first outing. So here is to looking forward.

I was disappointed in the film but overall still enjoyed it enough.

But you made some VERY valid points that I consider hard to argue.
 
Well michael bay knows wha hiss audience wants big dumb action set pieces they can watch while stuffing there faces.

I garuntee you if jaws came out today for the first time ever people would
Complain about the same things as they are about this godzilla. Looking back on it im glad they took there time leading to godzilla. This is the closet to the 70s and 80s style films that took there time and let the story breath then just bombard our senses right out the gate.
 
Still think this movie was awesome second time I watched it assured me, and the more I think about it the more I like it. Made up for TASM2 which was the opposite, liked it at first and the more I think about it the more I dislike it.
 
Yeah, this totally trumps over that POS waste of money TASM2. I'm seeing this again today. :up:
 
Well michael bay knows wha hiss audience wants big dumb action set pieces they can watch while stuffing there faces.

I guarantee you if jaws came out today for the first time ever people would
Complain about the same things as they are about this godzilla.
Looking back on it im glad they took there time leading to godzilla. This is the closet to the 70s and 80s style films that took there time and let the story breath then just bombard our senses right out the gate.

Tell me about it.

"I went to see a movie about a killer shark...only for them NOT to show the shark until the last 30 minutes!"

"This is a movie about a killer shark! Why do we need so much character stuff! Robert Shaw was so hammy and over the top it's ridiculous! I didn't care about Roy Scheiders character at all! He's just a bland everyman character!"

"How cliche is the mayor not wanting to close the beach?!? LAME!"
 
Tell me about it.

"I went to see a movie about a killer shark...only for them NOT to show the shark until the last 30 minutes!"

"This is a movie about a killer shark! Why do we need so much character stuff! Robert Shaw was so hammy and over the top it's ridiculous! I didn't care about Roy Scheiders character at all! He's just a bland everyman character!"

"How cliche is the mayor not wanting to close the beach?!? LAME!"

Lol. Comparing the human scenes without the creature of Jaws and those of Godzilla 2014. Jaws is in my top 10 movies of all time. I never complain of the lack of shark screen time because the human scenes were real, dramatic, funny, tense, and emotional. I enjoy them as much as i enjoy the shark. Lots of people are complaining about lack of Godzilla because whenever Godzilla is not around, we have to endure characters like johnson's Brody.
 
Off to see this here in a few minutes. One of my most anticipated movies this year. Will be back soon with my mini review. :up:
 
Lol. Comparing the human scenes without the creature of Jaws and those of Godzilla 2014. Jaws is in my top 10 movies of all time. I never complain of the lack of shark screen time because the human scenes were real, dramatic, funny, tense, and emotional. I enjoy them as much as i enjoy the shark. Lots of people are complaining about lack of Godzilla because whenever Godzilla is not around, we have to endure characters like johnson's Brody.

Don't waste your time arguing. Let them make their baseless assumptions even though a movie about a killer shark is still relevant nearly 40 years later. Gee, I wonder why that is.
 
People here trying to dismiss Jaws reactions should rewatch Jaws instead.

I'd also recommend checking out the original Godzilla movie.
 
People here trying to dismiss Jaws reactions should rewatch Jaws instead.

I'd also recommend checking out the original Godzilla movie.

Yeah, Jaws is a classic from top to bottom. Scenes with and without the shark are captivating. Godzilla 2014 is captivating when there are monsters, but the human scenes dont have spark in them. Im happy for those who find Taylor Johnson captivating.
 
I don't know about the whole jaws thing I agree the human scenes in jaws are better, yet. ...I still love this movie regardless, just my opinion. Jaws is one of my all time favs too. This movie worked for me either way.
 
Jaws is my favorite movie of all time. I'm not trying to invalidate it. I'm merely calling the situation as I see it.
 
And yet, here you are still talking about it.

Never understood why people who don't like something keep talking about it. Plenty of movies I don't like, but I don't waste time talking about how much I don't like them.

There's nothing keyboard warriors like more than continuously debating why their preferences rank over someone else's.

Technical aspects of any movie aside, when people expected A and they receive B they absolutely love *****ing and moaning about why A would have been a "better" choice.
 
Either way let's open up a thread for the sequel, so the rest can fight about how good or bad this movie is on here :p too soon?
 
You were invested in the human characters in Jaws. They carried the scenes in the absence of the shark. It was even better when they were together on the boat when they all bonded. It was this shark that brought them together. Never had that feeling in Godzilla.
 
Legendary owns the Godzilla rights, not Warner Bros. This is the last picture that Legendary has to fulfill in order to honor their multi-picture financing deal with Warner Bros (which began in 2005 with Batman Begins and ends in 2014 with Godzilla). Legendary financed 75% of this film, with Warner Bros only contributing 25%.

I would be shocked if WB did not have the first chance to distribute it, though. I'm sure WB thought ahead enough to realize Godzilla's franchise potential.
 
Tell me about it.

"I went to see a movie about a killer shark...only for them NOT to show the shark until the last 30 minutes!"

"This is a movie about a killer shark! Why do we need so much character stuff! Robert Shaw was so hammy and over the top it's ridiculous! I didn't care about Roy Scheiders character at all! He's just a bland everyman character!"

"How cliche is the mayor not wanting to close the beach?!? LAME!"


****SPOILER ALERT*****

You either don't get Jaws, or don't understand the issue that people have with Godzilla. And there is an entire world of difference between the two films.

First of all, even though Jaws itself is not seen until the end, the terror it invoked was palpable. The "get out of the water" scene highlights how effective the direction of the film is even without a full reveal of the "monster." We didn't have to see Jaws because we saw the blood in the water, the drowning people, heard the chilling theme and plenty of camera shots from beneath the surface of the ocean, which portrayed Jaws' attacks from its own perspective.

In short, even without seeing Jaw's physical presence, the effect that Jaws had on people and the environment was continually felt. We didn't hear the Jaws theme and see the underwater camera shot from beneath an unsuspecting swimmer, only to have the scene cut away to someone at home drinking coffee. You don't have to sit there and go "what? but I wanted to see what happened to that person during that shark attack." You saw exactly what happened as they flailed their arms, screamed bloody murder and got taken beneath the briny deep as they met their end!

Conversely, when Godzilla and MUTO meet on Hawaii, we get an awesome close up of Godzilla roaring and taking his battle stance. And do we get to see Big G trade blows with flying MUTO before flying MUTO escapes? No. Instead, we get a scene change in which Ford's son watches the action on television. Do we even get to see the fight on the tv screen? Nope...not really...just about four seconds of it before Ford's son tells his air head mother to watch the screen. And do we get to see the fight as she watches? Nope, we just get another cut away as she freaks out.

So Jaws succeeds in letting the viewer know that Jaws is real and the danger that Jaws presents is very real. Godzilla? Makes the titular character nearly invisible. I never feel any urgency about Godzilla's hunt for MUTO. I never even believe that any cities are in peril. The monsters never attack the cities. They just walk through them. They don't make an effort to cause destruction, it is just the byproduct of their size. And it isn't as if the creatures are hard to track. Any one would have ample opportunity to simply clear out of the way.

The plot device is that the EMP the monsters emit makes it impossible to track them via tech, which is complete and utter crap, because a satellites can observe the earth from SPACE! We have telephoto zoom on cameras that ensure that you could be miles from these creatures and still be able to track their movements. The monsters were following a specific path toward nuclear sites. Who was in danger other than people who lacked sufficient common sense to evacuate???

And about the EMP attack: PURE STUPIDITY. In what reality would a primeval creature undergo an evolutionary adaptation that results in emitting EMPs? Because, you know, an EMP attack would have been highly useful for defending itself against all of those prehistoric predators using all of that electronic technology. I am not even sure the writer of this film gave a care. They just made up a bunch of sequences and a sloppy story and handed that in with a smile on their face. It borders on some form of blasphemy to compare Jaws, an amazing, Oscar winning masterpiece that invokes the most powerful elements of a Hitchcockian thriller, to a freaking kaiju disaster film that is filled with utter nonsense.

I am not giving my mere opinion on Godzilla. This film is objectively a POS. One dimensional characters, nonsensical plot elements, unnecessary scene changes during high tension moments. I would not be surprised at all if this film becomes a case study in film theory on how not to direct a narrative. This film is worse than just being a poor Godzilla film. This film is worse than being a poor monster film. It is objectively a horrible movie. It is a failing of the entirety of the medium of film. That is how dreadful Godzilla 2014 is.
 
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Can't wait for a gif of that first full shot of Godzilla
 
Alright...so despite my doubts I saw the movie over the weekend and well....





I LOVED IT!!!! :) So glad I saw it. I was a huge fan of Monsters also and this had that same sort of vibe in how you caught more glimpses of the monsters than full on seeing them...at least till later.

I couldn't be happier with the film and glad for a sequel.
 
I really enjoyed it. That ending, wow.

I was just waiting on some Akira Ifukube playing and I would have lost my s**t. :hehe:
 
Yeah, this totally trumps over that POS waste of money TASM2. I'm seeing this again today. :up:

Funny, I thought Godzilla was a PoS and I thought ASM2 was awesome. Will never watch Godzilla again even on blu ray.
 
****SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WITHOUT COMMON SENSE****

I never said Transformers was a great film. I said that Michael Bay understands what audiences desire. And no matter what equivocation one wishes to propose to argue the semantics of that statement, the fact remains that each and every Transformers movie is a blockbuster smash hit. In fact, I dare say that Transformers has defined the modern cinema blockbuster. Sure you have a human sub plot in each film, but that never detracts from the war between the autobots and decepticons. And since Sam spends the majority of his time in the company of the autobots, it isn't as if the audience misses out on seeing Transformers throughout the film.

Regardless of whether or not one enjoys the scripts or the acting, the general audience is never dissatisfied because the Transformers films give people what they want: the presence of the titular character(s) and plenty of action sequences involving said character(s).

Godzilla is not the type of film in which people go into the theatre thinking, "you know what I want? analytic thought about the arrogance of man, the caveats of technology, the power of nature and broken family relationships." And it would be one thing if the film actually handled those elements well. I'd be more inclined to accept the effort made to produce Godzilla as a disaster movie if I actually felt as though I were watching a disaster movie. Sadly, I didn't.

The disaster element of Godzilla is worse than 2012, but I can enjoy 2012 for being laughably bad because the film never took itself seriously to begin with. In fact, it's hard to call this film a disaster film because no monsters attacked anything until the very very end. Most of the time, the MUTOs were simply walking/flying to their destination in search of nuclear power to feed on. Godzilla was mostly swimming. Most "disaster" moments (save for the Golden Gate Bridge scene) were brief news clips. Most human scenes were arguments about battle tactics, failed phone calls to spouses and puzzled expressions upon the faces of children (lots and lots of shots of children). The movie failed to meet any of its objectives: it fails as a human drama, it fails as a disaster film and it fails as a monster movie.

And no, Godzilla is not involved in "every part of the movie from 45% onward." When Godzilla reaches Hawaii, we see him for maybe a thirty second reveal and the start of a fight that has no follow through because the scene jumps back to Ford's wife at home in San Francisco. When Godzilla reaches San Francisco, we see him walk through the Golden Gate Bridge to escape shell fire from humans. He just ignores them, plows through the bridge, and then the scene switches. Then we see him again for perhaps thirty seconds as he prepares to battle MUTO, which cuts away as Ford's wife runs into the shelter.

When else do we properly experience Godzilla before the final fifteen minutes of the film? We don't. But we do get plenty of birds eye shots of his back while he swims between U.S. naval ships. Godzilla has no real presence until he gets into full combat with the MUTO kaijus. And even then, Godzilla spends half of the fight unconscious or down on the ground getting pummeled.

The most interesting human character, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is killed, unceremoniously, in the first half hour. Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), a brilliant nod to the original 1954 classic, is wasted in this film. His character was initially very intriguing. He is one of the first scientists to encounter the kaijus before anyone knows exactly what is being dealt with. He works for a shadow corporation whose sole duty is to study these creatures and find a way to kill or contain them. And then, oh yeah, in the original film, he is the person who comes up with the Oxygen Destroyer. Very promising, right? Well too bad this version of Dr. Serizawa ends up becoming a human literary device as he spends the rest of the film spouting philosophy and exposition, completely wasting a character, screen time and the immense talents of Ken Watanabe.

There is no redeeming an entire two hour experience based on thirteen minutes of screen time involving the titular character. Not when the rest of the plot is so awful, full of plot holes and sloppy logic, and absolutely useless characters. And not when the final fight is so anti-climactic and generally pretty weak compared to even old rubber suit toho fights. There is exactly one cool moment in the entire fight, which is Big G firing his atomic breath down mother MUTO's throat. That was unexpected, visceral and satisfying. Too bad the rest of the fight was overly dark and uninteresting.

I'd give this film 0/10 if not for the fact that it at least managed to make Godzilla look like a proper Godzilla, something that can't be said for 1998s similarly woeful effort. With all that said though, this film is doing gangbusters at the box office, so there is a very strong chance for a sequel, and sequels always mean an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the first outing. So here is to looking forward.

100% agree. Pretty much word for word how I felt about the movie right down to the only thing I enjoyed being the first use of the flame breath.
 
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