GODZILLA ~ Directed By Gareth Edwards ~ Release May 15, 2014

[Wiegert]

Suspense of disbelief is essential if you want to enjoy any big monster/kaiju movie. Start nit-picking and you're only going to ruin it for yourself.


In the case of Godzilla, I knew what exactly they were going for with it. The only real let-down being the bait-and-switch they pulled with Bryan Cranston's character. Focusing on the human side of the story would have been so much more satisfying if the characters they focused on were properly interesting characters like Joe and Ishiro. Instead we got one big name killed off before the hour mark when the trailers and promos built him up to have a far bigger role, and Watanabe was relegated to a bit-part role with one memorable line. While Ford got a little too much screen-time given how dull he was for most of the movie.

It almost seemed like they were obliged to switched from the colossal battles many of us waited for in the last hour (and we did expect the human side to take a back seat for a bit by that point), in favour of Ford and co transporting/trying to defuse the nuke. But the few parts where Godzilla did show up were spine-tinglingly epic. Atomic breath never looked so magnificent.

One other thing I didn't expect were the MUTO's getting what felt like twice as much screen-time as Godzilla. Though the secrecy surrounding them in the build-up to the release threw me off a bit, so I assumed they would be an even more hazy presence than Godzilla himself.

 

[sems4arsenal]

Looks like I'll probably see it on thursday

should be better than this

 

[PletdeKoe]

I've just seen it and have to say I liked a lot of it and disliked a lot of it.

Overall an average movie but still very enjoyable.

I like the fact you guys are arguing about what can or cannot given the material.... It is a giant monster! That cannot be in the first place. Just don't think to much of it and enjoy the ride.
6/10

 

[Pagey279]

I really enjoyed it for the most part, a very good action movie which for me lived up to the hype. 8/10

Here's the niggles:
Some have said they created the sense of suspense very well, and I guess they did. But for me they took it too far, it took a good 80 minutes to even see Godzilla in his entirety. Even then the camera cut away at crucial parts, trying to heighten the suspense but in the end it just became frustrating. The film was about Godzilla but instead we got to see a hell of a lot of some expressionless, emotionless side character that wasn't even that integral to the plot, just there as a filler.
Having said that when we did get to see the monsters kicking the crap out of each other it was beautifully done, as were the bridge scene's.

 

[McLaren]

Regarding Avery Johnson's character, this is what a friend had to say. Everyone's right, he had a poker face the whole movie, but he seemed accepting of it.

I get what you're saying about Aaron Taylor Johnson being the weak link of the film...while being the star. And I don't disagree.

I also think that was his character...to be somewhat numb seeing as what he went through in his childhood. Someone always at a distance with emotion stuffed deep down, but always trying do to the right thing with his actions. And because I thought of it in those terms, it never bothered me and felt right.

 

[DK]

McLaren's friend had a good point, given that he told his Dad to get over the loss of his wife. Maybe he hides his grief.

My thoughts (spoilers below!):

I was really disappointed when Bryan Cranston's character was killed. Consider how hyped up Cranston's role in this was, I was left in a state of disbelief after seeing his character die.

One thing that impressed me was how realistic the US military's response was. This is something they've never faced before (if you exclude the bomb tests in their attempt to kill Godzilla in the 50s), so they were really in a state of panic.

The best part had to be the soundtrack and the sound effects. Everything seemed so loud, from the jets, the various characters shouting, and of course the iconic scream of Godzilla.

It's not the most cerebral thing you could watch, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. 8.5/10.

 

[Furinkazen]

McLaren's friend had a good point, given that he told his Dad to get over the loss of his wife. Maybe he hides his grief.

My thoughts (spoilers below!):

I was really disappointed when Bryan Cranston's character was killed. Consider how hyped up Cranston's role in this was, I was left in a state of disbelief after seeing his character die.

One thing that impressed me was how realistic the US military's response was. This is something they've never faced before (if you exclude the bomb tests in their attempt to kill Godzilla in the 50s), so they were really in a state of panic.

The best part had to be the soundtrack and the sound effects. Everything seemed so loud, from the jets, the various characters shouting, and of course the iconic scream of Godzilla.

It's not the most cerebral thing you could watch, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. 8.5/10.

They actually managed to film a couple scenes on a real US warship. Certainly adds very well to the atmosphere.

 

[V8-Johnboy]

Watched it today not bad although predictable 8/10.

 

[The Bman]

I saw it about 6 hours ago. It was good, but it felt incomplete.

 

[Villain]

Saw it on Wednesday. It was cool, but I was expecting to be hit harder by the massive amounts of human loss. 7/10.

 

[Exorcet]

I was put off as soon as I saw fighters flying at 1000 ft, trying to attack with guns, and being nullified by EMP's. Ignoring that the movie made no attempt at being believable, I didn't like the fight scenes either.

 

[FoolKiller]

Ignoring that the movie made no attempt at being believable,

Believability complaints in regards to monster movies always make me giggle. The moment a writer gets the audience to buy into a giant monster they sort of get carte blanche to bend physics a bit. If you get caught up on details after accepting the main premise you won't be able to enjoy anything in the film.

How to watch a Godzilla film: "GOJIRA!!!!"
*flick* <logic sensors off>

 

[Exorcet]

If it's not believable I don't see a point. It's not a documentary or even a realistic what if, but I get the feeling that people wouldn't want to see this:

because it looks ridiculous. The complete disregard for realistic military tactics has the same effect. Godzillia might as well have had a magic wand and turned his enemies in flowers. It would been more believable than the typical Hollywood suicide pilot that failed basic training and yet is given the latest fighter in the US arsenal.

Maybe it's down to me just because I have more interest in these things than most people, but I find the cheap movie military scenes to be complete deal breakers. The point is supposed to be that Godzilla is so strong that conventional means are useless against him, but instead it looks like he gets away with what he does because everyone who is after him is immensely incompetent. Not only that, but the movie versions of military tactics are just boring to watch compared to reality.

I get that it's supposed to be a fun movie, hence logic switch off, but some things are too blatant to ignore. I have no issue with a super monster that came from no where that has laser breath but I still expect gravity to pull things down and not up.

 

[Igano]

I don't think with real gravity these monsters could exist

 

[DK]

I don't think with real gravity these monsters could exist

I take it you've seen that vSauce3 video?

 

[PletdeKoe]

I find this thread very unrealistic. A film is for entertainment. Wachting something real or learn something is what documentaries and school is for.

I would love to be able to major with a phd about the truthfullness of godzilla

 

[Exorcet]

Documentaries are also entertainment. There is no divide whatsoever between realism/learning/education and entertainment. In some cases realism/learning/education enhance entertainment.

 

[FoolKiller]

The complete disregard for realistic military tactics has the same effect. Godzillia might as well have had a magic wand and turned his enemies in flowers. It would been more believable than the typical Hollywood suicide pilot that failed basic training and yet is given the latest fighter in the US arsenal.

Granted, that is a way too common movie thing. But even though military tactics was my biggest issue, it didn't pull me out of the film. Humans talking was an interlude to monster fights. Let's be honest, (spoiler)
did anyone actually expect the humans to be what stopped the monsters? The nuke stuff was added just because you know it would be on the table. How they went about it seemed lame, but it was a side story that didn't affect the main plot.

Maybe it's down to me just because I have more interest in these things than most people, but I find the cheap movie military scenes to be complete deal breakers. The point is supposed to be that Godzilla is so strong that conventional means are useless against him, but instead it looks like he gets away with what he does because everyone who is after him is immensely incompetent. Not only that, but the movie versions of military tactics are just boring to watch compared to reality.

There is a reason why war is dumbed down for movies. Most instances are intended to be watchable by kids under 18. Unfortunately, that means the tactics have to play dumb too, so that no one gets brutally slaughtered.

Where believability bothers me is when they break their own rules within a story. Transformers, or most any Michael Bay film comes to mind. The occasional Trek-physics violations in the new Star Trek is another. I'll let a movie set it's own rules, but they have to stick to them. It's why I love The Avengers franchise. The military looks incompetent, but it was that way across the board. Stick to your own rules and alternate reality takes hold.

I get that it's supposed to be a fun movie, hence logic switch off, but some things are too blatant to ignore. I have no issue with a super monster that came from no where that has laser breath but I still expect gravity to pull things down and not up.

But Bryan Cranston looking the exact same age after 15 years didn't bother you?

 

[Exorcet]

Granted, that is a way too common movie thing. But even though military tactics was my biggest issue, it didn't pull me out of the film. Humans talking was an interlude to monster fights. Let's be honest, (spoiler)

spoiler I didn't expect the military to necessarily find success against anything. I just wanted a convincing defeat. The nuke backstory didn't bother me. They just touched on it briefly and didn't go into enough detail to really mess that part up. The fighting that takes place during the events of the movie aren't the same though. /spoiler

There is a reason why war is dumbed down for movies. Most instances are intended to be watchable by kids under 18. Unfortunately, that means the tactics have to play dumb too, so that no one gets brutally slaughtered.

They could have done a lot more without turning up gore or making it too complex to follow. I don't expect the writer to get a degree in military history, but they could have done a little bit of research of modern weapons use. It would have added the believability I want, it wouldn't be too complex or violent for the most militarily unfamiliar viewer, and it could have given those viewers something new to look at.

The F-35 was one of the biggest representations of technology in the film. In reality it's a classified weapons system so there was no way to make a 100% accurate representation of the plane. On the other hand, the tactics employed in the movie were basically WWI era. Even without research, it I don't think it would be a stretch for anyone to imagine the plane using bombs or missiles in an attempt to take out Godzilla/etc rather that flying around like a stunt plane. With a tiny bit of research, you would probably settle on laser guided bombs being a good weapon to use on Godzilla and that these weapons could easily be deployed from 10's of thousands of feet and a few miles out. I know some people like to say that sounds boring, but I don't agree. You could play with cluttered computer screens like Hollywood loves to do (and the F-35 even has a touchscreen cockpit). LGB's can be illuminated by ground forces so you can have the brave soldier illuminating the monster from some perilous location. You can also do all sorts of camera positioning/CGI and special effects on the bomb as it falls, explodes, and dramatically reveals an unharmed godzilla or a debris cloud broken by atomic breath that leads to crashing planes. It's definitely no worse than just watching pilots obliviously fly their jets into the ground.

One other things I can be nitpicky about was

spoiler how the Navy escorted/monitored Godzilla as he traveled. Why would you park your ships next to a monster you don't understand or trust? There's no reason to be that close. These weren't major scenes though so while it bothers me a tad I can let it go.



Maybe I could also forgive the initial encounter with the MUTO. No one has seen an EMP spitting monster the size of a building before. Somehow it generates EMP's stronger than the ones that aircraft/tanks/etc are designed to take, we don't know how, but it does. The military learns about what it can do the hard way. After that though, they should have kept it in mind. There's no excuse for the dozens of jets falling out of the sky at the end, especially when a transport plane just flies over the EMP's height and drops paratroopers. Why can't the fighters fly over 30,000 feet (a given for almost anything today) and drop bombs or something?


You also have the naval scene where they try to keep Godzilla out of the city with a blockade. They almost end up destroying the bridge they were meant to protect. Granted you could consider it a panic situation, but they had set up the ships ahead of time. Some positioning or rules of engagement that took the bridge/city behind them into account would have been nice. /spoiler

Where believability bothers me is when they break their own rules within a story. Transformers, or most any Michael Bay film comes to mind. The occasional Trek-physics violations in the new Star Trek is another. I'll let a movie set it's own rules, but they have to stick to them. It's why I love The Avengers franchise. The military looks incompetent, but it was that way across the board. Stick to your own rules and alternate reality takes hold.

I agree with this. Sticking to your own rules is very important and I don't mind when the writers want to make their own rules. However I think that Godzilla and similar movies do require a certain amount of adherence to reality. After all it's set in our world. It didn't strictly have to be there. Placing it in our world adds to the impact I think. It makes it more personal if what you're seeing is also believable. This makes it necessary to adhere to reality to some degree. It's that adherence that creates fear and awe. When a movie presents a world where anything can happen, you're no longer surprised when anything does happen. That's how it is for me at least.

But Bryan Cranston looking the exact same age after 15 years didn't bother you?

I've seen some people age really well, but no I didn't even pick up on that during the movie. Maybe I sound like I want a movie to be simulated on a supercomputer before being put on film, but that's not it. I consider the military scenes important because they're action scenes in an action movie and because they help establish some of the characters' abilities. They shouldn't be half hearted. It's one thing if they aren't perfect, but the ones in this movie are at the "did not even try" level. It's not unique to this movie at all, like you said, but it bothers me every time.

 

[FoolKiller]

@Exorcet I don't disagree with any of your individual gripes. It just wasn't something that ruined it for me. Even the boring main character was just a minor distraction to what I wanted.

I will say one thing: Occasionally in history we have seen overly cocky military commanders make great blunders when the unexpected occurs.

 

[CodeRedR51]

So I fired up my PS3 last night to get on Netflix and noticed that Godzilla is available on PSN for purchase only right now. I thought maybe I missed the release date, so I went searching the internet to see which store would have a steelbook Bluray version, and realized that the actual release date is September 16th. (Target has the steelbook BTW)

Posted my findings on facebook and a family member let me know that anyone who has Comcast could purchase it on there as well. I guess the digital release is beating the physical release by 3 weeks?

 

[FoolKiller]

Posted my findings on facebook and a family member let me know that anyone who has Comcast could purchase it on there as well. I guess the digital release is beating the physical release by 3 weeks?

Yes. It's the new trend in home video releases this year. They now treat physical copies the way they treated rentals in the 90s.

 

[CoffeeGrunt]

I have to admit, my main issue with this movie was the military in it. The sheer lack of intelligence or tactics is painful. The military seems to deployed meatgrinder tactics by just throwing squadrons of fighter jets, battalions of tanks and platoons of infantry at the MUTO.

Not to mention how hopelessly and hilariously underequipped everyone was. When you have no effect on the target from a tank round, you're not going to get anywhere with a handful of assault rifles, are you? It's like firing sand at an elephant, the sheer scale makes it impossible to win. Not to mention the war machines being shown as completely useless within moments of engagement, (and why do EMP'd Abrams burst into flames? Really?)

I think it could've been so simple to fix this. Show soldiers carrying RPGs into the fight later on. Have a short scene with the admiral in charge receiving a message that HEAT rounds are ineffective, and he curses and tells them to re-arm the next line with SABOT rounds while they have time or something, musing that it might burn through the shell or at least weaken it for follow-up strikes.

Hell, don't Americans have long-range missiles and artillery? While it's roaming through the desert you could've had a badass and sensible scene where they try and drown it in such long-range ordnance before it reaches a population centre, (and then shock, horror, it rises from out of the scorched earth, or even an EMP knocks out any onlookers before it begins its rampage anew.)

As someone who's more a casual enthusiast for military tactics than someone with any measure of real knowledge on the subject, I found it pretty disappointing whenever the military were on the scene. It seems to be a running theme with blockbusters these days, they kneecap the military in order to make mediocre superheroes like Hawkeye seem relevant. (Because America wouldn't have a National Guard regiment and well-trained police units able respond to a terrifying attack in Manhattan with immediate and efficient effectiveness.) Instead we get the Chief Wiggum stereotype of the tubby New York cop who needs Captain America to tell him that evacuating civilians from the alien invasion may be advisable.

I mean seriously, why did SHIELD even need a nuke when the aliens were so hilariously easy-to-defeat. (Hard cornering is OP yo.)

*Sigh.* I should probably stop ranting about stupid aspects of movies.

 

[Sanji Himura]

I'll address your last point, @CoffeeGrunt, since I am a Marvel nut.

Are you familiar with the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum was explaining the plan to "bypass" the invader's shields? It is simple mothership principle, where you have a massive mothership that branches into several "satellite ships" that actually invade the planet, and they break into solitary "fighter units" (all quoted terms are going to be interchangeable). In ID4, it took a computer virus to tear down the invader's shields for the F-16s to shoot down the satellite and fighter ships. To prevent the mothership from bringing back online the shields, they fired a nuke into the control station of the mothership.

In the Avengers, the aliens were easy to defeat, that much is for certain, but they had numbers from a mothership. Earth only had six warriors fighting for Earth's safety in the first Avengers, and to be honest, the council that has control over SHIELD would rather nuke a major population center than to have Earth fall. As Fury was arguing with the council, one of them overrode Fury's authority and launched the nuke anyways. Cue touching scene where Tony calls Pepper, and end of film.

What isn't told is the insurmountable destruction that the aliens would have caused had the nuke not been launched and the portal closed. The aliens would have had an active mothership, and would have piloted their way to Earth anyways. It would have taken them a long time, depending on who you ask, but they had Thanos on their side. He would have found a way to open the gateway to Earth again by way of the Infinity Stones, and the conquest of Earth would have resumed.

Also, let's not forget that the alien mothership is in deep space. Earth technology wouldn't have detected it for ages.

 

[CoffeeGrunt]

@Sanji Himura

Be that as it may, they still kneecapped the American military in order to make the aliens seem like a viable threat. When your villain is slaughtered by hard cornering without it being a B-Movie Comedy, you're in a bad place really. The Avengers was a great movie with fun action scenes, but God the aliens were a laughable bunch, and you have to make the Superheroes seem super next to them, which means your standard human benchmark gets dropped down to knuckle-dragging levels of stupid to compensate.

NYPD Officer: "Duuur, I'm a fat NYPD cop, they would've had me munching a donut in this shot just to really get the stereotype across, but the producer thought that might be too far. Huuur, there be aliens, what do captin murica?"

Captin Murica: "You could probably get the civilians out of here and attempt to bring down a hyper-advanced clone race of warriors with police-grade sidearms, might be cool."

NYPD Officer: "K lol, that sounds real smart."

But seriously, you can respond immediately with a nuke-loaded jet, but not by scrambling every squadron in the State to cut them down as they enter the city? None of the superheroes are ever displayed as having munitions or strength greater than a missile or tank round, and again, it's not like there's been an extreme tightening of American native security in the last 13 years, right?

It's one of those petty niggles I have with movies right now. They seem to always cripple the normal humans to ridiculous levels to make the monsters/heroes seem more competent. Mainly because other than Hulk, Thor and Iron Man, you're dealing with a team of people who don't move very fast on a city-wide scale, and are wielding a pistol, bow and shield. Just saying that there's a half of that team that pulls more than half of the weight...

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

Overall a pretty decent movie. Much better than I expected and I would watch it again.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Millie Bobby Brown the first cast member confirmed for the Godzilla sequel.

 

[JKgo]

...I thought the sequel was not going ahead. Hmm. Five years after the fact, eh. I keep hearing about the shared universe thing with upcoming King Kong movie and can't help but wonder, how will the filmmakers, uh, make up for the size differences between the two? The new Godzilla is so much bigger than its past incarnations. And from what I've seen in the trailers, the new King Kong would be around less than half its size.



Whatever, I'm sure the rights holders will do their thing and make it work.

As for the sequel, not sure I'll see it in the cinemas - the first film, while exciting, the subsequent viewing reveals that it's actually not as good as the memory suggests. Lots of plot holes, and then even worse, there's this whiff of a style-over-substance approach in the way the whole film plays out. Of course, the trailer, when it drops much, much later, might change my mind...