I saw Godzilla

[Lookingglassman]

Not going to give out any spoilers, but it was not very good. If you are expecting tons of screen time with Godzilla doing his thing then you will be sorely disappointed. It is pretty much 2 1/2 hours of talking and chasing monsters and cut away scenes once you start thinking it will get good. The real action doesn't happen until the last 30-40 minutes.

Matthew Broderick's "Godzilla" showed Godzilla more then this one and that is sad.

 

[Trekker4747]

Matthew Broderick's "Godzilla" showed Godzilla more then this one and that is sad.

That.... that says a LOT. Wow.

Well, I've already got my tickets to see it tomorrow in 3D.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

To be fair Godzilla not appearing much in a Godzilla movie isn't really that surprising since it has happened at least a few times.

 

[JuanBolio]

I was disappointed as well. Good effort. A decent Godzilla movie.... but not the epic likeness of the original I was hoping for.

Good effort, Gareth... but I've seen better from Toho. At least you did better than Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich in 98. I'll reserve final judgement for your director's cut.

 

[TemporalFlux]

What it felt like to me was a theme park ride. Your little car goes along looking at scenery with sound booming at you; then you turn a corner and drive into some action; then the cart turns away and takes you to another room. You know those kinds of rides, right?

That said, I enjoyed it. It was better than Amazing Spider-man 2.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

I thought it was awesome. Reminded me of the old Godzilla flicks from the '80s I watched as a kid. The opening was especially neat. I thought there was just the right amount of monsters stomping on people and fighting each other. Too much more and it becomes Pacific Rim, any less and it's Cloverfield, both of which were boring as fuck. Godzilla 1998 can't touch this film's used TP. The monsters looked great on the big screen, too. Especially the King of Monsters. Definite DVD purchase. Could definitely be a new franchise.

Next Time: Jet Jaguar, useless Death Ray artillery, and B-plots with lost children

 

[Worfmonger]

I loved it. It's tied with Gojira (the Japanese original version without Raymond Burr) as my favorite Godzilla movie ever. Aside from a few minor editing and scripting issues, it was magnificent!

 

[Gryffindorian]

Oh, well. It's gotten good reviews, so I'll see it tomorrow. It's not like I expect Godzilla on every scene, breaking up with his girlfriend over the phone and ending up on a high speed chase.

 

[SG-17]

Matthew Broderick's "Godzilla" showed Godzilla more then this one and that is sad.

No, it is perfect. It is a true Godzilla film, not some action flick with monsters like Pacific Rim. If you went in expecting Pacific Rim of course you would be disappointed. If you went in expecting a real Godzilla movie you would love it. I do.

 

[Samurai8472]

There were ALOT of plot conveniences with Ford being involved in everything

Someone are defending the "slow burn" approach with Godzilla not appearing for about an hour in.

Then there was cut after cut after cut.

*Camera pans up to show Godzilla*

CUT!

We see Ford's son in San Francisco

 

[Christopher]

There's a long tradition in monster movies of not showing the monster very often. Partly, often, that's to save money on special effects, but it's also valuable at creating suspense and fear. What we don't see and have to imagine is generally scarier than what's shoved in our faces. So I don't get all this complaining that Godzilla was used judiciously.

In the original movie, Godzilla wasn't seen much. He only had one big rampage, and most of the focus was on the human-scale aftermath and reactions. After all, the monster was an allegory for the atomic bomb and the horrors of war.

 

[Kelso]

It was fun! The human story was even less engaging than normal for a G film, but the Godzilla/Muto stuff more than made up for it!

I like their take on the King of Monsters! I can't wait to go see it in IMAX 3D!

There's a long tradition in monster movies of not showing the monster very often. Partly, often, that's to save money on special effects, but it's also valuable at creating suspense and fear. What we don't see and have to imagine is generally scarier than what's shoved in our faces. So I don't get all this complaining that Godzilla was used judiciously.

That works better when the human story is entertaining or compelling and has some bearing on the outcome of the film- films like Jaws or the original Gojira did that well. This one didn't. But like I said, the fantastic monster stuff makes up for it.

 

[Cutter John]

There's a long tradition in monster movies of not showing the monster very often. Partly, often, that's to save money on special effects, but it's also valuable at creating suspense and fear. What we don't see and have to imagine is generally scarier than what's shoved in our faces. So I don't get all this complaining that Godzilla was used judiciously.

In the original movie, Godzilla wasn't seen much. He only had one big rampage, and most of the focus was on the human-scale aftermath and reactions. After all, the monster was an allegory for the atomic bomb and the horrors of war.

Came in to say this. Pretty much in every one of the old films we had to wade through a long, not particularly interesting human story to get to the "good stuff".

Or at least that's what a twelve year old me always thought.

Sounds to me like people have been spoiled by films like Pacific Rim, and Transformers, where its wall to wall action the whole time.

 

[Kelso]

Sounds to me like people have been spoiled by films like Pacific Rim, and Transformers, where its wall to wall action the whole time.

I don't like either of those movies and I had no problem with the amount of Godzilla action in the film. But complaints that the human story in this one was particularly dull are right on point.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

Here's my review.

I imagine it will be getting criticized a lot. The people I went with thought it was terrible. There is a lot to dislike about the film, it's quite repetitive in places and the human characters are boring (aside from Bryan Cranston's performance).

But despite all that the parts when Godzilla was on the screen were awesome.

 

[DWF]

There's a long tradition in monster movies of not showing the monster very often. Partly, often, that's to save money on special effects, but it's also valuable at creating suspense and fear. What we don't see and have to imagine is generally scarier than what's shoved in our faces. So I don't get all this complaining that Godzilla was used judiciously.

In the original movie, Godzilla wasn't seen much. He only had one big rampage, and most of the focus was on the human-scale aftermath and reactions. After all, the monster was an allegory for the atomic bomb and the horrors of war.

Except that in this movie it's the lack of appearance of the Mutos that cause most suspense and fear and Godzilla is jsut a mysterious force of nature out to restore the balance. And this Godzilla isn't an allagory to the horrors of war or our nuclear age. And really we're cheated a bit on Godzilla's scenes since the movie tends to move away from scenes involving Godzilla, even during the battle in Hawaii.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Not going to give out any spoilers, but it was not very good. If you are expecting tons of screen time with Godzilla doing his thing then you will be sorely disappointed. It is pretty much 2 1/2 hours of talking and chasing monsters and cut away scenes once you start thinking it will get good. The real action doesn't happen until the last 30-40 minutes.

Matthew Broderick's "Godzilla" showed Godzilla more then this one and that is sad.

I was disappointed as well. Good effort. A decent Godzilla movie.... but not the epic likeness of the original I was hoping for.

Good effort, Gareth... but I've seen better from Toho. At least you did better than Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich in 98. I'll reserve final judgement for your director's cut.

What it felt like to me was a theme park ride. Your little car goes along looking at scenery with sound booming at you; then you turn a corner and drive into some action; then the cart turns away and takes you to another room. You know those kinds of rides, right?

That said, I enjoyed it. It was better than Amazing Spider-man 2.

I thought it was awesome. Reminded me of the old Godzilla flicks from the '80s I watched as a kid. The opening was especially neat. I thought there was just the right amount of monsters stomping on people and fighting each other. Too much more and it becomes Pacific Rim, any less and it's Cloverfield, both of which were boring as fuck. Godzilla 1998 can't touch this film's used TP. The monsters looked great on the big screen, too. Especially the King of Monsters. Definite DVD purchase. Could definitely be a new franchise.

Next Time: Jet Jaguar, useless Death Ray artillery, and B-plots with lost children

Disagree with the first three quoted, agree with the fourth; this was an amazing movie (I saw it last night in IMAX at the Yonge Dundas Cineplex in Toronto). Godzilla was in fine form, he kicked plenty o' ass, the human elements were balanced with the action elements quite well, and people cheered each and every time Godzilla roared; what was not to like? This was just as excellent as Pacific Rim/Cloverfield (and a local critic agrees with me, too.)

BTW, here are some pics of a promo thing in downtown Toronto linked to the movie that I took last night (it's supposed to be a destroyed BART train, but all that the company behind the promo had to work with was a decommissioned T1 Bombardier train from the TTC [Toronto Transit Commission]):

 

[SG-17]

This posts contains vague spoilers for the film. Inside the spoiler tags are four paragraphs. There are no specific details, but it does give away the general feel of the story. If you are in this thread you've likely already seen the film. I am spoilering this post out of courtesy.

Spoiler: Godzilla's Screentime

While I feel that Emily Olsen's character was an unnecessary damsel in distress instead of actually being a useful female character I did enjoy the human element over all. Both times that they teased a fight but switched away to Ford I felt strong anticipation. I wanted to see the monsters fight, but I knew that if they were cutting away like that when the fight did finally come it would be worth the wait. It was without a doubt. I really enjoyed that teasing.

You can really tell that Edwards is a real Godzilla fan and did his homework. In almost every movie you have the human characters in some way helping or hurting Godzilla. As such you can't show Godzilla too much or else it lessens the impact of the human characters.

In earlier films you would have layouts where the bad kaiju was rampaging for a while before Godzilla showed up to fight. Same thing happened in this film. Also you typically have a part where the bad kaiju gets the upper hand on Godzilla and the actions of the humans help restore the favor of the fight to Godzilla (Hedorah, Terror of Mechgodzilla, Final Wars just to name a few), in this film it does as well.

Most importantly, and surprisingly was how they made Godzilla not into a malevolent force that only fought the other kaiju because they infringed on his turf and sought to cause damage to humanity (Gojira, 2000, Final Wars, GMK, post-KG Heisei) but rather into, while not a "friend" to humanity, an ally that had no desire to destroy what humanity built and fought the other kaiju to "restore balance" or save the world (post-G3HM Showa for the most part and the end of Final Wars). Having Godzilla return to the ocean without rampaging through the city following the fight made me tear up. I never thought that we would have a "good" Godzilla ever again.

 

[Gryffindorian]

I didn't know about the MUTOs until I read about them on CNN. That's sorta spoilerish.

 

[Kelso]

We went to see the big G in IMAX 3D today! I liked it even more. The 3D didn't add a lot, but the IMAX screen and sound certainly did! And I came to the conclusion that the only human character that bores me is that kid from Kick-Ass.