Godzilla (2014)

[Henry88]

Quint from AICN's review.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/67271

This part stuck out:

If you don't think I'm trustworthy enough to vouch for Godzilla being treated right, let me end this with a little anecdote from the after party.

I ended up talking with producer Thomas Tull and while I was thanking him for helping me out with the tickets a Japanese man came up and Tull immediately looked nervous. "So, what did you think?" The man answered that he and his colleagues were amazed with the movie and couldn't believe how perfectly Godzilla was captured. "This is the Godzilla from my childhood." He said this with a hand over his heart, I swear to God. Tull looked taken aback, both relieved and amazed at the same time. After the man left, Tull leaned over to me and said, "He's the head of Toho."

[Henry88]

This is a review of one of the other forums I am on, he got to  see it early.

Spoiler

First, It was real fun to see all the images and videos in context in the film, made me think "I remember seeing the missile train and the mess on the lake beach pics"

I thought it was fantastic and that's not a fan opinion, that was me clearing my head of everything and taking each component into consideration, so I'm not really going super spoiler, but look at it from my perspective.

Strong Points:

Characters: Cranston was strong....we knew this and perhaps to the detriment of other characters in the film, but I viewed this differently in that they used him to really draw people into the world and the pain of someone suffering from a traumatic loss. Not totally original, we've seen obsessed characters like this before but he's like a starting pitcher in baseball, generally the best of the best and the longer they can go in the game the better. In this case, he went about 4 innings and got pulled.

ATJ: He was not bad at all, like a long relief pitcher, nothing flashy, job is to get to the end of the game without messing things up, so he did just fine with what he was given and really the story didn't need much but a guide to the final battle. Yeah there may have been too much coincidence for some people but really that happens in many adventure/action movies. I also think he acted as his character was designed, to be more of an anchor, nothing flashy, just doing what he has to do to get the job done and get back to his family. He and the other characters gave us the story and got us to the final battle where we got the fireball relief pitcher.

Elizabeth Olsen: She was kept to a minimum, but did a good job playing her character, she was believable and i thought better than what could have been written in that sometimes these people are made to me more than they are (suddenly heroic and badass) She's a wife, mother and nurse and acted as such, I had no problem with her performance.

Juliette Binoche: Not much to her part, but there was an academy award winner in the film.

Ken Watanabe: I think I liked him the most, the reason being is that I got his character more than most reviews I read and I really believe would be the only real character that I think can be in the total trilogy. The reason is that he's really Godzilla in this movie, he's Godzilla's back story, narrator and admirer. You learn about all the creatures through him and he genuinely doesn't show any darkness you'd expect from a Monarch employee. Maybe a bit short sited in regards to the MUTO's threat, when they realized the MUTO absorbing the radiation led to saving lives after the reactor disaster they acted like I think most government agencies would and focus more on what it was doing than the threat it could eventually pose. Serizawa could be the thread that leads us through the entire trilogy and have the other cast revolve with each film. The difficulty with carrying characters through these films as it was shown by Toho is that really there are 3 kinds of people that can repeatedly show up in the films: Military obsessed with destroying the creatures, Scientists wanting to study/destroy them and reporters. Therefore there is no reason to continue with the Brody family, their story is closed and that's fine.

Sally Hawkins: She's a fine flunkie to Serizawa, could be in further films, did nothing wrong and could have even been left out to give Serizawa more lines and screentime.

David Straithaim: He played a no nonsense character, not some dopey military guy or one who shouts all the time (GINO) just as you'd really expect the guy in charge to be. I liked his character and it served it's purpose just fine.

MUTO's: Great new characters with more personality than I'd expect. The female was the brute we all heard she was going to be...actually more massive than I thought, and the male was the cheap shot artist using speed, agility and flight to do his best to fight Godzilla and defend his mate. They had an attack plan for Godzilla that you felt was one that had played out when they roamed the earth. I didn't even mind that they had a bit more time than Godzilla, being new and the real threat, they needed to be a bit more visible so everyone could get them and visually understand them.

Godzilla: I really loved how he was executed visually and how he truly was indifferent to the humans so long as they weren't shooting him. Shots of him swimming alongside the naval ships was great, he never retreated but you never got the feeling that he was menacing the humans...his job was to kick the "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" out of the MUTOS, buildings and ships be damned. He was a brute, and very Toho like would go after the female and get blind sided by the male, As for the Atomic breath, I loved it, great representation because I really do not like the breath that annihilates everything, On other monsters it should be painful and do damage but not blow them up and the fatality shot in the end was "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" awesome, you really thought "Ahh this was instinct." The way it could have been conveyed better is simple, had he used his breath and hit a building and we saw the damage it caused to something like that, it would have made the firepower understandable and the durability of the MUTO's understandable. I hope they do not change it. The fact that a building knocked him silly was fine, he was exhausted by the battle and him passing out after the fight was done is really nothing new in this series, time and again we see Godzilla fight, fall and rise again to win the battle. He gave it everything he had and we got that (and the characters too) sure it makes him more heroic than anti hero but that's what a trilogy needs IMO.

The cinematography was beautiful, I really liked the diverse looks and there were just some beautiful shots we don't see in this found footage, grainy, shaky cam, lens flare world. Nice panning shots and wide shots where you actually see the action. Because of this I really think makes people think the monster battle footage could have been longer because we could actually SEE what was happening. They even took some elevated human vantage points to give us a real Toho feel and that was awesome.

The crowd loved it, and the reactions were similar to what the others experienced with cheers and a couple chuckles in the same places (thankfully no stupid humor was shoehorned in) I really liked the TV shots, the fight in Honolulu got a chuckle (dinosaurs) and the casino folk not seeing the female thrashing the city till it smashed the casino roof.

The Future: They really left it wide open to anything being possible with this film and still have a real source. Godzilla has a purpose that people in that world understand, it allows for other creatures and characters to be created.

Here's how I see it playing it out: Second movie follows Serizawa's study of Godzilla while Monarch looks into other finds they've uncovered over the years they can exploit becoming the evil organization we thought they would be and secretly creating monsters to do their dirty work and perhaps the massive monster battle in the 3rd act where Godzilla and a creation of Serizawa go toe to toe with the evil Monarch's creatures. Or not, just thinking on the fly.

So I give it 4.5 out of 5 bluehairs, and I thank Gareth and Legendary for a really fun movie.

Oh and the airport scene was quite different than the SDCC footage, it was a longer fight with MUTO before Godzilla appears and the scene ends. MUTO also looked quite different from the early footage. Not to mention the fact they used many lines in the trailers that were not in the film (7 year old son asked about the pre HALO jump speech) So it's cool in a sense they let the non fan know things with scenes not in the movie therefore not having too much "I've seen that" issues.

[Henry88]

Box Office: 'Godzilla' Opens No. 1 Wednesday in France With $1.6 Million
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-godzilla-opens-no-704546

and   grossing $1.2m  in Australia

'Godzilla' Invades Weekend Box Office for Potential $70 Million Opening
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/godzilla-invades-weekend-box-office-for-potential-70-million-opening-1201182786/

[wurwolf]

Jesus christ that fucking movie

I FUCKING LOVED IT

The best movie I have seen in a long time, just really beautifully done. I'm not great at reviews but my husband said this on Facebook, and it pretty much sums up my thoughts, too:

Godzilla is a near perfect blockbuster movie experience. The pseudo-science, human elements and big destruction set pieces didn't cause any eyerolls. The monster fights were absolutely fantastic. And such a great use of depth and perspective. I never lost track of where things, monsters and people were in relation to each other. I think this is the truest and most pure distillation of the Spielberg influence that I've ever seen. So much fun and really should be seen on the biggest and loudest screen you can find.

[Relaxing Dragon]

Just got back. This movie was everything that Cloverfield wanted to be and more. It's a human perspective on events far larger than us, except when it's a smooth, almost somber look at gods fighting one another.

I still need time to put my thoughts together, but yeah, this one's a keeper.

[eegah]

Good, but not great. The monster fighting scenes were awesome, but they didn't spend much time with those.
On numerous occasions, they would start fighting and almost immediately the camera would pan away and go onto something else, or fast-forward to when it was over. Everyone in the theater would groan "awwwwww...".


I'm always annoyed at the personal side of end-of-the-world type movies, as if the personal lives of a handful of people are more important than the actual lives of millions. That angle didn't do it for me in this one either (although the Bryan Cranston parts were really good).

[wurwolf]

The next day, and still all I can think about is Godzilla.

I liked that they kept the feel of the original Godzilla movies, but updated it with today's technology.

I guess in retrospect the monster fighting scenes could have been a little longer, but it wasn't anything that I noticed during the movie. As far as I know no one in my theater reacted negatively to any part of the movie at all (or, if they did, they kept it to themselves). I do really like the use of perspective in this movie, that the fight scenes were occasionally viewed on television or over a character's shoulder. There was one point where a character is running in the direction of a fight scene and I found myself shifting in my seat and trying to look around him.

There were only two things that really bugged me about this movie -- one was the fact that two blue-eyed people produced a brown-eyed kid that looked more like tiny Tony Soprano than their son. I'm guessing he was someone's son or nephew. That really took me out of the movie, but at least the kid was just window-dressing and not some plucky sidekick. I would have hated that.

The other thing that bothered me, and this was only in the most minor of ways, was Ken Watanabe's performance. I normally love him but I don't feel as though his character really registered with me because his only expressions were bewilderment and shock throughout about 95% of the movie. It felt one-note and fell a little flat for me, but it wasn't enough to make me dislike the movie by any means. In comparison, Bryan Cranston's performance was incredible and I feel as though I could empathize with him and everything he was going through.

I loved the nods to the original Godzilla -- Monarch, the psuedo-science, the little Japanese boy in shorts and logo-free cap and t-shirt (my head canon is that he is named Kenny), the fact that they kept so much of the origin story. I loved Godzilla swimming with the aircraft carrier. I loved that all of this carnage and destruction had a price, that even Godzilla rising from the water resulted in a tsunami, and that the toll on humanity was real and obvious. I loved that humanity was merely a spectator in this battle of gods, and that in pretty much any attack on the three monsters by humans the damage was negligible.

[Henry88]

Box Office: 'Godzilla' Roars to $9.3 Million at Latenight Shows in U.S
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=godzilla2012.htm
https://movies.yahoo.com/news/box-office-godzilla-roars-9-3-million-latenight-141732848.html

[Darth Geek]

I'm always annoyed at the personal side of end-of-the-world type movies, as if the personal lives of a handful of people are more important than the actual lives of millions.

Yes, this always annoys me too. Especially in Emmerich type end of the world movies where you have WAAAY too big of a cast.

Frankly, I'd love a version of these kinds of monster movies that was essentially from the point of view of the monsters. Humans are never seen as more than tiny little ants. Has anybody ever made a movie like that?

[ScottotD]

grossing $1.2m  in Australia

I was part of that!

[The Lurker]

Part of it seems to come naturally with the group focus.  I guess they want you to have some people to root for.

[Henry88]

$58,525,000
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=godzilla2012.htm

[NRRork]

I've heard it's okay. I think I'll wait for Blu-Ray. In fact, that's looking to be the story of my summer as far as movies go. I see some I'd like to see, but not badly enough to go to the theater and pay a premium. I get the sense the only times I'm gonna be in a movie theater this summer are for the two upcoming Rifftrax shows.

It's not like when I was a kid and the choice was see in the theater or wait over a year for a panscan VHS copy on a CRT television with monaural sound. Now you just wait three months, kick back on in my easychair and watch it in 1080p with my Skullcandy headphones and I can smoke a huge joint while I watch and pants: optional. Not too many movie theaters have that policy. There was one in the sketchy neighborhood, but you know how the local busybodies can be. . . so it's not there anymore.

[Relaxing Dragon]

I realize that me liking the movie a lot makes me quite biased (well, that and my general see-everything-in-theaters obsession), but I actually really would recommend seeing this one on the big screen. Quite simply, this is a film that really benefits from the largest possible screen. This one more than most, in fact, given how it presents the scale and presence of the big lizard king himself. It's something that can leave one in awe to look at, and is certainly worth $11.50 and two-ish hours of your time.

[mattwnelson]

I saw it in Imax 3d, which I honestly would like to do again. It was really great. And the sheer scale of the spectacle just left a huge grin on my face for most of the picture.