Godzilla (2014) - - - - Part 13

[Arach Knight]

Imagine if they made a Batman movie where a rookie cop took up an hour of screen time, Batman appears in full view for 10 seconds, cut to black and back to the cop's story for another 45 minutes, then Batman appeared to take down the villain in a quick 10 minute scene...

Uhhhh...you just summarized The Dark Knight Rises, which focused largely on Blake's detective work as a stand in for Jim Gordon. Batman made a brief appearance during the first thirty minutes of the film, but was not really seen again until the final half hour. In fact, other than Bruce's attempts to climb out of the Lazarus Pit, much of his absence was filled by scenes of Gordon's unit, Blake's detective work and Bane's speeches. Most people (not me) consider The Dark Knight Rises to be one of the best comic book films of all time. It certainly out grossed The Dark Knight (which I felt was the better film).

 

[DeadPresident]

How anyone can defend a movie where the titular character is in it for less than 15 minutes screentime is beyond me. The movie was different in all the wrong ways: Bland human characters, writing filled with plot holes, and barely showing the reason people went to see the movie in the first place (Godzilla).

My favorite Godzilla films are the original Japanese version and the Heisei series. Those movies do have alot of human involvement but Godzilla never takes a back seat to their story as he does in this film. THAT is my main problem in the film. Imagine if they made a Batman movie where a rookie cop took up an hour of screen time, Batman appears in full view for 10 seconds, cut to black and back to the cop's story for another 45 minutes, then Batman appeared to take down the villain in a quick 10 minute scene...Fans would be ENRAGED if that happened yet when it happens to Godzilla and fans like me are angry about it we are seen as "not getting it". Get what exactly? The movie is marketed as a Godzilla film where the monster takes center stage in just about every commercial spot so going into it people expect to see Godzilla destroying things and kicking ass, we didn't get that.

So stop with the insults and acting like most of us "didn't get" the movie, we got the movie but we didn't like what we got.

Have it your way man.

I take that as a sign that someone's doing something right.

You mean if the execution opposes the status quo?

 

[Arach Knight]

Godzilla has seen limited and little screen-time before, even in Toho films. This isn't anything new.

I spent yesterday afternoon watching Destroy All Monsters, vs. King Ghidorah and Against MechaGodzilla. Those three Godzilla films respectively represent each Godzilla era; Showa, Hesei and Millennium. Even when Godzilla is not the sole antagonist (Destroy All Monsters) he is on screen often, but in terms of screen time and the ratio of scenes sans Big G and scenes with Big G.

I know that is not the case for each and every film, but by and large, any long term Godzilla fan is well within their right to complain about the dearth of Godzilla scenes in this version of the film. Of the twenty-eight feature films in the Godzilla series, a large number of them feature Godzilla at least once every 25 minutes or so.

With that said, people are well within their right to enjoy the slow build reveal. Though I find the plot to G2K14 to be rather boring, albeit more grounded, compared to classic Toho films, I can understand why people enjoy having one major show down. The film may have been better off having no teaser scenes and merely having the final show down. That would be just as irritating to those complaining about the lack of Godzilla, but it would have been in better service to the film's direction.

 

[Defacto]

I just saw Godzilla. Too much cliche and boring characters (the main couple mainly) and not enough Godzilla. Godzilla was beautiful and the fights were very nice, but the main character and his wife didn't make me feel anything for them. They did try very hard to make one care for them, but it was just so bland.
I loved the Godzilla, I really wish they had given him a bit more screentime.

 

[Rock Sexton]

LMAO ... this is great. VICE posted an article about "What the f- is going on in Godzilla?"

I personally would like to add: Why the hell did they keep trying to fire regular automatic weapons at the MUTOs and Godzilla. You'd think word would've gotten out that their hides are impenetrable by bullets.

–Why is this movie marketed around Bryan Cranston?

–Could they not have built a more secure enclosure around the giant monster that eats radiation? Like a 100-foot thick concrete shell or something? They had 15 years.

–Why is that Japanese quarantine zone city so ****ed up after 15 years if there was no actual radiation? Wouldn't leaving a city untouched for that long not really do anything?

–Why is it so easy to get into the quarantined area?

–Why not just kick Cranston and Generic Action Hero Guy out instead of driving them to go see the secret radioactive monster bunker?

–How did the "Happy Birthday Dad" sign survive whatever destroyed the house?

–Also why is the "Happy Birthday Dad" sign hanging on the wall? They left the house before they could hang it up. Did he hang it up after coming home from watching his wife die horribly as some kind of sick joke on himself? Weird, dude. Really weird.

–Why did Godzilla only cause a tsunami that one time? Did he get better at swimming? Did he see the tsunami news footage and think, "My bad"?

–This movie has a scene with Bryan Cranston on a bridge in a nuclear facility, a scene on a train bridge, a scene on the Golden Gate Bridge, and a scene on a sky-train (which is essentially a bridge.) Why did so much movie take place on bridges? Is this a metaphor I'm not getting?

–If the warheads can be transported by helicopter, why not just do that in the first place? Fixing them both to something as linear as a train track seems kinda dumb.

–Why is Juliette Binoche in this movie?

–Why is Elizabeth Olsen in this movie?

–Why is Sally Hawkins in this movie? Did she even have any lines?

–Does that nuclear waste storage place inside the mountain not have any kind of monitoring systems to let them know that a massive chunk of the building has been ripped open? That seems like an oversight.

–Also, how did they not see/hear/feel the 300-foot tall monster while they were driving across the desert?

–Why didn't the Golden Gate Bridge collapse after Godzilla severed the cables? What are those cables for if not support?

–After establishing that the MUTOs can disable electrical devices, why do they continue to devise plans to stop them that use electricity? If fighter jets didn't work on them in Hawaii, they're not going to work on them in San Francisco, either.

–Like, why did they use a boat that's powered by electricity for their big final plan even after the countless moments where the MUTOs use their fancy EMP powers to disable human defenses? Aren't there tons of boats that aren't reliant on electricity?

–Why didn't the kids get off the school bus and run instead of sitting there waiting for Godzilla to destroy the bridge they were sitting on?

–Why was it safer for the school bus full of kids to even be on the bridge in the first place? Weren't the underground subway stations easily the best place to hide from a bunch of giant monsters?

–Why did everyone buy that the first big MUTO attack was some kind of natural disaster? Does social media not exist in the film's universe?

–Isn't Ken Watanabe a scientist? Why is he so quick to shrug off any course of action with a "Don't worry about it, nature will sort itself out." What is he basing that on? When has nature ever "sorted itself out"? Why is he being kept around? Can't someone more helpful be brought in to consult?

–Why is there a skyscraper full of office workers watching out of their window mid-way through the giant monster battle? Wouldn't you GTFO as soon as you saw the first building get destroyed? Were they on deadline?

–There's five minutes left on the bomb's timer when they put it on that boat, and the bomb on it has a blast radius of 20 miles. Did that boat travel at a rate of 240 MPH?

–Am I bad at math?

–Why does everyone like Godzilla so much? He presumably just killed tens of thousands of people, but the citizens of San Francisco act like he brought them all cake, and there was enough for everyone to have two slices (which would be very generous of Godzilla).

–If the MUTOs can be impaled like that, why were they not injured more severely while being thrown through skyscrapers over and over again?

–If the Generic Action Hero Guy's only discernible skill is defusing bombs, why is he completely incapable of defusing a bomb when it counts the most? That's his ONLY job.

–Why was the Transamerica Pyramid the only landmark they DIDN'T destroy in San Francisco? Are ancient monsters sentimental?

–What does Godzilla do underwater? Presumably his only interest is fighting other monsters? Must get lonely/boring down there, right?

 

[Arach Knight]

LMAO ... this is great. VICE posted an article about "What the f- is going on in Godzilla?"

I personally would like to add: Why the hell did they keep trying to fire regular automatic weapons at the MUTOs and Godzilla. You'd think word would've gotten out that their hides are impenetrable by bullets.

Probably because no Western director is every likely to include a maser beam, which is a frequent weapon used by the JSDF in several Godzilla films. Maser beams also happen to be one of the few conventional weapons that are capable of momentarily stunning Godzilla. It is a bit too high level sci-fi, where as both American treatments of Godzilla sought to be more grounded (woefully so for the 1998 version).

 

[Dispatch Ninja]

Some of those are valid, but most are nitpicking that you can pretty much do with every movie.

 

[Marvin]

PRim probably would have benefited coming out after this film.

 

[The Dark Defender]

Asking why Binoche and Olsen were in the movie is just plain idiotic, it's fairly obvious why the wives of the two main human figures in the film are in it...and I don't think it was marketed around Cranston at all, it was marketed around its non-human title character.

 

[Keyser Soze]

GODZILLA was quite interesting, in that it tested just how far a film can get through admiration of film-making craft alone, without any real emotional investment in anything that's going on.

Visually, the film is stunning. This is a great showcase for Gareth Edwards as a director, and should see him well placed to work on worthier projects in future. I really loved the approach to the monsters here, the glimpses of them from low angles, through train windows or on television. It's all about grounding this outlandish monster romp in a world recognisable as our own, with little details like the vast refugee camps with dazed, shellshocked survivors adding to this sheen of credibility. And when you have this "man on the ground" aesthetic, it makes Godzilla and the other monsters feel even more monstrous and impossibly vast. In general, there's a real sense of vastness in the cinematography, with massive aerial shots that underline just how small man is in comparison to nature.

But it's in the scripting that GODZILLA falls down. I admire the focus on human characters in theory, but in practice they largely fail to engage. Comparisons to JAWS came from the marketing department, but there's no Brody/Quint/Hooper trio at the heart of this film. Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe are both very good, but are absent for large parts of the film, and that absence is sorely felt. Perhaps a worse transgression is just how limited Godzilla's role is. I'm not talking about him being kept off-screen so we can build up to his full reveal. I'm talking about how little he factors into the story as a whole. It's worrying that you could tell the story of this film without Godzilla - two monsters from the earth's core are traveling across the world to mate with one another, and cause carnage in their wake - and it almost feels like the screenwriters made a standalone monster film and someone suggested they add in Godzilla in a redraft. Of course, what I've seen of the classic Godzilla films suggests they followed a similar pattern, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Sadly, though Gareth Edwards may provide us with some beautifully-crafted sequences, the end result feels like a bunch of great individual scenes that don't really gel together into a fully compelling film.

Monster movies so often seem to disappoint me. I see the trailers, and get all excited about the massive scale and epic scope.... but then when I see the film itself, it too often just feels like empty spectacle. It happened with PACIFIC RIM last year, and while I enjoyed GODZILLA more and would say I quite liked it, it didn't manage to meet my expectations either.

 

[Shifty]

This was outstanding in D-Box, a real thrill ride!

 

[Sithborg]

Well, it looks like either Legendary is going to have to wait a bit for Edwards to direct a sequel or look for someone else. Such an insane rise in a career.

 

[green]

Don't expect that sequel anytime soon.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-spinoff-hires-godzilla-706636

Edwards just got hired to do one of the Start Wars spin-offs.

 

[Breaker]

That would be just as irritating to those complaining about the lack of Godzilla, but it would have been in better service to the film's direction.

I have no real problem with some G-fans expecting more Godzilla, but when they experience films where Godzilla has less than 30-25 minutes on the set. I tend to find it interesting to observe, because they build a tolerance for those movies, and the director's approach and direction in how Godzilla is handled.

But when GODZILLA shows about the same screen time, as Gojira, or near the same time as Final Wars. Suddenly, that tolerance is just gone as if it never existed. I just find it to be a enjoyable study personally t:

Aside from that,

Gareth's direction in handling Godzilla(the monster) was to build him up, tease him and reveal him, but not splash his entire best hits until the third act/final act. This was how he handled his Godzilla and how it unveiled it to us, some may not enjoy this direction(Be it by some extent or throughout most of the ride), but I would say it was a respectful service in giving fans tastes and teases before finally letting them have their nuclear cake.

He wants us to enjoy ourselves, truly he does, he doesn't want to frustrate anyone at all. But he doesn't want to spoil us or anything he has like most summer blockbusters, especially when using his Spielberg methods as his guideline. Although I'm deeply sure he'll look at reactions and views on his direction and try to improve on this method should he return to helm Godzilla's sequels. (Or any film he works on and applies this method with) As a expanding and growing director, he looks like the type of person who really takes his experiences to heart and tries to improve himself upon them.

 

[Victarion]

You mean if the execution opposes the status quo?

Yes. Something more than pointless human characters and silly costumed wrestling matches.

 

[Terminator]

This complaint strikes me as pretty dumb...

–Why did everyone buy that the first big MUTO attack was some kind of natural disaster? Does social media not exist in the film's universe?

Does the writer want AOL chat logs from 2000? It's a nuclear facility, it's not hard to imagine something went wrong.

 

[green]

My only problem with this movie, and really it's a nit pick…maybe I missed something so if so please let me know but why did they bother to have a male and female MUTO?

Spoiler

By the time the two met up the female was laying eggs, not only that but the eggs had living embryos in them.

 

[Sithborg]

This complaint strikes me as pretty damn...



Does the writer want AOL chat logs from 2000? It's a nuclear facility, it's not hard to imagine something went wrong.

I think he might be referring to when the male "hatched". I highly doubt there were that may people with Iphones recording the top secret facility in a believed to be highly radioactive quarantine zone.

 

[Shifty]

With no script I wasn't expect a sequel until 2017 or 2018. WB needs a blockbuster for July 2017 and summer 2018 are wide open. Maybe push a couple of mystery Marvel films off its release date with the opening weekend it had.

 

[Breaker]

My only problem with this movie, and really it's a nit pick…maybe I missed something so if so please let me know but why did they bother to have a male and female MUTO?

Spoiler

By the time the two met up the female was laying eggs, not only that but the eggs had living embryos in them.

The Female Muto had eggs, but they weren't fertilized yet. This is shown during Ford's encounter with the female Muto on the train tracks. When they do meet, we don't see what goes on since the film changes gears onto Godzilla's advancing toward the city and the remaining characters(From Elle Brody trying to get her son to safety by bus, to Dr. Serizawa trying to convince the Navy to not involve themselves in the warfare of nature)

By the time we see the Female Muto again, she's building a nest and her eggs are filled with embryos to lay.

 

[green]

The Female Muto had eggs, but they weren't fertilized yet. This is shown during Ford's encounter with the female Muto on the train tracks. When they do meet, we don't see what goes on since the film changes gears onto Godzilla's advancing toward the city and the remaining characters(From Elle Brody trying to get her son to safety by bus, to Dr. Serizawa trying to convince the Navy to not involve themselves in the warfare of nature)

By the time we see the Female Muto again, she's building a nest and her eggs are filled with embryos to lay.

Makes sense. It just seemed to skate around it. Thanks.

 

[Breaker]

Gareth Edwards is still attached to GODZILLA, and he'll not only cover the sequel but a whole trilogy.

Comingsoon.net covers this
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=118693

 

[Dispatch Ninja]

Gareth Edwards is still attached to GODZILLA, and he'll not only cover the sequel but a whole trilogy.

Comingsoon.net covers this
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=118693

 

[Mr.?]

Oh brother do you hear yourself? You're basically saying if we liked it we are wrong. And that the criticisms you have are fact. Give me a break man geeze.

Didn't say that once I said I don't understand how someone could defend this film when the titular character is barely in it. Not saying you're wrong I just don't understand the decision to defend the film barely having him in it.

 

[Mr.?]

Uhhhh...you just summarized The Dark Knight Rises, which focused largely on Blake's detective work as a stand in for Jim Gordon. Batman made a brief appearance during the first thirty minutes of the film, but was not really seen again until the final half hour. In fact, other than Bruce's attempts to climb out of the Lazarus Pit, much of his absence was filled by scenes of Gordon's unit, Blake's detective work and Bane's speeches. Most people (not me) consider The Dark Knight Rises to be one of the best comic book films of all time. It certainly out grossed The Dark Knight (which I felt was the better film).

Batman was on the screen longer than 13 minutes. If I had to guess how long he was in it I would say at least half an hour maybe 40 minutes, thats three times as long as Godzillas appearance time. Point being Nolan put enough Batman action in their to satisfy me personally but even then I remember people complaining about the lack of Batman.