The Sword and Laser discussion
TV, Movies and Games
>
Godzilla (2014)
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
This however took itself way too seriously and focused way too much on the humans. Yet this killed it at the box office. Kind of makes me sad. I'd prefer a PR2 over another Godzilla movie.
A Godzilla that focused on the humans could have worked-- a dark disaster movie ala the original. Or a fun Godzilla beats up evil monsters could have been good. This tried to be both, which really makes nonsense. Worse, it tried to be both with what might be the worst lead actor I have seen in an action flick in decades. Man random army dude was terrible.
I went in with no expectations and enjoyed the movie. I didn't even mind Godzilla being a little chunky. The main issue was that the human component of the film was uneven. Aaron Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen were wasted. Johnson's character is pretty much lifeless, a counter balance to Cranston's stellar performance.
The giant monsters looked cool, I liked seeing them fight. I'm happy they are fast tracking a sequel but I was hoping this success would light a fire under legendary's ass and get them to go forward with PR2.
I liked the movie. I agreed with the decision to treat this more like a disaster movie than a monster movie, I thought it made the scenes with the monsters more exciting.I was a little disappointed by which humans they chose to focus on. I had hoped it would be Brian Cranston and Ken Watanabe trying to warn people to no avail about the imminent monster attack.
Also, before Pacific Rim 2, or Godzilla 2, we have to sit through Power Rangers 1. Which studios apparently see as equivalent to these two franchises.
I've seen a lot of people comparing Godzilla with Pacific Rim and calling PR the dumb one. That puzzles me, because Godzilla is just so relentlessly stupid that I actually felt a little insulted by it.If we accept certain impossible scenarios as given -- giant monsters and magic technology -- then the two movies are a wash. But Godzilla sets up its world and the creatures' motivations and explains same at least three times, yet constantly violates its own rules.
I'll buy into anything as long as you don't violate your internal consistency.
The MUTOs seek out radioactive stuff and eat it. They are able to sense a single nuclear missile across half the country. Yet the female was inside America's nuclear waste facility! Why did she leave? That place is exactly what she's looking for!
And why did the male MUTO ignore all the nuclear power plants he flew by to get at those missiles? That's like passing up piles of steaks to get a Chicken McNugget. Not to mention the aircraft carrier, which is powered by two nuclear reactors, has nuclear-tipped missiles and literally tons of depleted-uranium bullets. That sucker is a floating smorgasbord.
At least Pacific Rim, for as silly and aimed-at-12-year-olds as it is, had an interesting backstory and unraveled the mystery of the monsters over the course of the film instead of relying on a single repeated infodump.
I guess I'm saying I want my silly movies to not also be dumb.
I've found this extremely helpful when talking about why Godzilla is kind of dumb fun but PR, though silly, was a pretty intelligent film: http://stormingtheivorytower.blogspot...
I do agree that even for a Godzilla movie, the motivations of the monsters and internal logic were garbage. Plus, the absolute and complete uselessness of any plans the military had were - baffling. "We tried to bomb Godzilla already - didn't work. Those guys actually EAT radioactivity"
"Use a bigger bomb."
Oh, and bring it by TRAIN so it can be attacked, instead of, you know, helicopters, which we do after the train is trashed. Or, you know, on a way around the area where the MUTOs are, ore from the other direction, or - ANYTHING other than straight through their known path of destruction.
And please, can we cut the "monster suprises the hero by being behind him" crap? The size of the monsters was really impressive. That a thing like that sneaks up to you is - beyond perposterous.
Jacob wrote: "I went in with no expectations and enjoyed the movie. I didn't even mind Godzilla being a little chunky. The main issue was that the human component of the film was uneven. Aaron Johnson and Eliz..."
Even my 13 year old son said it was too bad that Brian Cranston character was not it the whole movie. That he brought a lot of emotional depth. This from a teenage boy. I think that was the most disappointing part for me. The "random army dude" that was picked to play the "main" character sucked. Sucked any life out of the movie. BUT. Its Godzilla. How can we not love Godzilla. And the destruction of San Francisco was awesome.
Yeah this didn't work for me either. I wish that they had spent more effort fleshing out the main players, cleaning out some of the nonesne from the plot, and polishing up the dialogue. Either that or just have more scenes of Godzilla tearing into things. It was just so... dull.
Jennifer wrote: "And the destruction of San Francisco was awesome. "I thought Pacific Rim did it better.
Pacific Rim was good, dumb fun. Godzilla was smarter in its execution, smarter in its direction. The idea of Godzilla being an apex predator was quite welcome, and allowed Godzilla to be kind of a hero while still being a huge threat. The idea that there are things on the earth that humans need to just get out of the way of is a nice counterpoint to the usual dumb summer fare that has the human race beating back the alien/monster/robot invaders via some lame third act deus ex machina. In this film you know what Godzilla is about from the first time you see him. He's there to hunt, and you know in the end he is going to clean house and go home. The film's real triumph is the tense, well-sustained build-up to that last awesome fight. The payoff was worth it.Pacific Rim, for comparison, had one awesome fight about halfway through the movie and after that it treads water. I actually fell asleep near the end! But I like it more with repeat viewings.
Every good entertainer knows to save the best for last. District 9 does that. So does Godzilla. Both are very different films, but ground themselves better than anything I've seen in the interim.
People complaining about Godzilla being fat are just stupid. Go google a picture of a crocodile or any other massive reptile. Educate yourself. Godzilla looks great. More like a mobile mountain. Unstoppable.
People complaining about the film lacking human drama have some good points. Sadly, the studios backing huge tentpole movies tend to play it safe here with tried and true plot arcs - fathers and sons, army dudes just trying to get back to their families, etc. Go see the director's first film, Monsters, and you'll see what could have been...
I'm a Pacific Rim fan, absolutely. But Godzilla is better. Godzilla lacks the imagination of PR, but if we're judging the films based on how successful they are in what they attempt, then Godzilla beats PR hands down.
Tom wrote: "People complaining about Godzilla being fat are just stupid. Go google a picture of a crocodile or any other massive reptile. Educate yourself."Of course, Godzilla isn't a crocodile. There's that. But I've never seen a croc jiggle the way that tubbo did.
I left the movie with the impression that Godzilla's look might have been meant to emulate the Japanese human equivalent for intimidation, the Sumo wrestler.
The giant diaper does support your thesis.
I didn't like how Elizabeth Olsen's character seems to be there to cry and give the dude someone to worry about - what a waste.
Walter wrote: "I left the movie with the impression that Godzilla's look might have been meant to emulate the Japanese human equivalent for intimidation, the Sumo wrestler."Good point, didn't pick up on that. Sumo wrestlers, Samoan wrestlers, NFL linebackers.....all people that may indeed be fat, but only a fool would mess with. I'm glad they beefed up Godzilla. Hopefully in the next one they can have him fighting something equally massive.
The train of thought "people who think the design looks bad are uneducated because things exist that look just as bad in real life" is kind of hilarious.
Rob wrote: "The train of thought "people who think the design looks bad are uneducated because things exist that look just as bad in real life" is kind of hilarious."Don't quote things that were never said or written, that's not how quotes work. Go help yourself to a big bowl of education.
I love fat Godzilla, a true hero for the American people.
Rob wrote: "I'd prefer a PR2 over another Godzilla movie."You'll be pleased to know that Paciifc Rim 2 has just been announced. http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/26/584...
Mod
You'll be pleased to know that Paciifc Rim 2 has just been announced. http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/26/584...-..."
Yeah I saw that. Very happy.
Even recalibrating the Stupid-o-meter for "giant monsters" doesn't stop it from being silly. I actually laughed out loud at one point, not out of delight but because it was all so ridiculous.
I'm onboard with kaiju. I thought Pacific Rim was pretty silly, too, but I enjoyed it. In Godzilla I just kept mocking it.
The Japanese are making fun of Godzilla's girth, calling him "the fat American Godzilla." And they're totally right. I don't want to body-shame a 100-story-tall lizard, but he's gone pear-shaped in his old age.
I didn't think it was possible to make Pacific Rim look like a work of brilliance, but Godzilla manages just that. Considering that director Gareth Edwards' first movie was the excellent Monsters, I was quite surprised. More money clearly doesn't equal better. If you really want to see it, wait for the DVD. It's a rental at best.
Some observations about the movie under spoiler tags.
(view spoiler)[Delivering exposition gets you killed. Bryan Cranston is in the movie for all of 15 minutes. He delivers some infodumps and then gets killed. Juliette Binoche is in the movie for maybe 3 minutes. She delivers some exposition and then dies. Sergeant Gonzales delivers exposition and then dies. The only person immune to "monologuing kills" is Ken Watanabe, and that's probably because he mostly speaks in cryptic phrases and half-sentences.
Godzilla still has his super radioactive breath, which he uses to finish off the bad kaiju, and it's so damn effective I wondered why it wasn't his opening move. "You no unnerstan! Fire breath not opener! Fire breath finisher only! We have rules!"
I lost count of how many times Godzilla saved the day just in the nick of time. Five or six, at least. And he's clearly seen Jurassic Park, because he has mastered that whole "gargantuan creature tip-toes around when he needs to" thing the T. rex did. Maybe he's just a giant ninja.
It's not much of a feminist movie. The women actually have jobs -- Ford's mom is a nuclear science something-or-other (I guess), but she just runs around and screams for her 3 minutes of screen time, and Ford's wife, played by Elizabeth Olsen, is a nurse whose entire job is doing the job of an orderly. (Seriously. We only ever see her pushing beds around.) Then she mostly cries a lot and wrings her hands.
The main character, Ford, must be so named because he is Built Ford Tough. That guy must be made out of rubber or something, because he survives one ridiculous thing after another, any one of which would kill or cripple a normal human being. Falling twenty stories into the water? Death. Getting blown up and thrown through the air 40 feet? Paralyzed. Nearly falling out of a crushed train? Limping for a week. By the time we get to the end of the movie and we see him survive being in the vicinity of a nuclear blast, you have to figure that's par for the course for him. I suspect only the heat death of the universe will kill him.
I have no idea why they bothered to try explaining anything. Kaiju are already impossible, stop justifying it! They give this whole speech about how these ancient monsters ate all the radioactive ore in primordial times, so they evolved to be burrowing creatures who dug down to be near the core of the Earth and the source of radioactivity.
If that's the case, why does one monster have wings? Is the center of the Earth hollow?
And they keep giving off EMPs, which has the effect of being a constant Plot Switch. Your communications have failed because of the EMP. Oh wait, they're back! The EMP behaves like some sort of suppression field, which is pretty much the sort of thing I expected from this movie, but it's used so idiotically and obviously just for plot convenience that it became annoying.
Also, most military hardware is hardened against EMPs, so the helicopters and airplanes wouldn't be falling out of the sky when they were hit by them. Especially the planes, because even without power they still glide. These planes act like someone cut their strings.
Lots of cool visuals, very little cool writing. (hide spoiler)]