Anyone Here Not Like The New Godzilla Film?

I liked it for the most part, particularly the way Godzilla was presented as being a force of good from the very beginning. I just wish they had focused more on him than what the boring humans were doing, or even the random destruction caused by the bad guys.

When people go to see a movie like this, they really want to see monsters duking it out, not boring people being boring with the monsters just being a glorified backdrop. One day Hollywood will finally figure that out.

 

Welcome to the post-Transformers future.

At least Godzilla doesn't talk, so there's some excuse for needing other characters involved.

 

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all. Seeing CGI battling CGI isn't all that entertaining. We need strong characters to actually care about during the monster rampage and the lack of that was the key problem with Godzilla. Bryan Cranston's character was fantastic and they could have set up a great character arc where he goes from trying to kill Godzilla to accepting his wife's death and seeing Godzilla as a force for good. Maybe be sacrifices his life to save Godzilla at the end of the movie. That would have been predictable, but the execution is always the most important part. Instead the writer decided to be "edgy" and killed the only interesting character in the entire movie 1/3 of the way through the film and replaced him with some generic G.I. Joe. So much wasted potential.

 

Godzilla didn't have anything to do with his wife's death. The male MUTO was the one who destroyed the Janjira nuclear planet and killed Cranston's character's wife.

 

His wife was killed by a giant monster. Another giant monster is rampaging around the world fighting two other giant monsters. It makes sense for Cranston to join the "kill them all" side rather than the "let them fight" side.

 

It is if the CGI characters are given enough personality and you can root for them. I mean, lots of people still enjoy the old Godzilla movies and the reason is that there is something to be said for the art-form of choreography of men in rubber suits, and they weren't really as expressive as CGI can be. It really is like watching a wrestling match. It's not high-brow entertainment but it is fun.

 

What does one have to do with the other? (You realize practically every action movie made in the last umpteen years is essentially CGI fighting CGI, right? And yeah, there's a bit of hyperbole there, but the point stands.)

 

You claimed that people don't care about the characters and just want to see monsters duking it out. I disagreed with that. There's nothing wrong with CGI action scenes, but that can never be the focus of a good movie. The characters have to be there to drive the action.

 

The movie made $528m worldwide on a reported $160m budget, in part by showing as little effects-heavy destruction as possible. (How they still managed to spend so much is mysterious indeed, but that's modern-day movies for ya...) Sure, a bunch of people groused, but it's a solid business strategy to only provide a sample of your most expensive effects elements in a first movie, and then offer the goods the next time around (Bay's Transformers and Ninja Turtles also brought in much moola using this method).

 

Actually, I said no one cares about the inconsequential humans in a movie like Godzilla. They're main motivation to be there is to see some big ass monsters tear up cities and crack each other's skulls.

Don't believe? Without looking it up, name three characters that were in the movie. I guarantee you that only the most hardcore monster movie fanboy will know that, and only because they live for useless trivia such as that. As opposed to say a movie where the human characters actually were the main reason people were there, such as I dunno, the Avengers or Star Trek.

If you honestly believe otherwise, there isn't really anything to discuss. You're certainly not going to change my opinion in that regard.

 

The reason you can't remember the characters' names is because they weren't that memorable (although, I can never remember character names to begin with in films), not just because it was a Godzilla film. Having a great Godzilla film does not mean that there can't be great characters, too.

 

Well, there's Kick-Ass, Malcolm's dad, ... some guy... who played ... you are right, these characters were totally forgettable.

 

I actually looked up my review from last year which pretty much says what I said upthread...only in a lot more detail. I do think I summed up my feelings quite well in the final sentence though, it's a film that's too sill to be taken seriously, yet too serious to be any fun at all.

 

I never felt he was presented as a force of good...or evil.

He's a force of nature, and a man-made one at that.

 

Bryan Cranston as actor overshadowes his characters. I can't remember the names of some of teh characters played by Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson and a number of other actors. Adn I do think that a large number of people were far more interested in Godzilla instead of the characters in the movie. It's like withj the comic based movies, people are more interested in whether or not the actor looks like the charcater their playing and how close their costume is to their comic counterpart.

 

I can't name three characters in Godzilla because the movie didn't have three good characters. Godzilla sucked because it didn't have good characters. That's my entire point. If Godzilla was a good movie I would be able to name three characters.

 

Once Godzilla shows that he's on a mission to kill the other monsters and not to just wreak general death and destruction on cities the public starts cheering for him like he's their savior. He's a good guy, regardless of whether he's acting on base instinct or some rudimentary sense of compassion to protect us ant-like humans.

 

Godzilla's actions in the movie doesn't deter the military from trying to use a nuclear weapon to destroy him. And I don't think Godzilla was trying to protect anybody, he was causing just as much damage as the MUTOs, he was acting like an alpha male.