Godzilla (2014)

It was good...I enjoyed it... but....... (Spoilers) it was not quite the movie I thought of when watching the trailers, and that's a shame. There are some scenes where, say, a Godzilla inspired film such as 'Pacific Rim' actually pulled off a similar idea better....

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Okay, saw it!

Spoiler:

That was cool.... they could have called it:

Spoiler:

I took my son to see it yesterday. We both loved it. My brother joined us and he even enjoyed it too.

Icy Grave wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

Icy Grave wrote:

Just got back from seeing it. I recommend it to everyone everywhere who were sorely disappointed by the 1998 Godzilla movie (like me and the entire world was) and still ultimately stuck in that era of Godzilla never being touched by an American movie studio again.

When I graduated from Navy boot camp in the winter of '99, that was a reward for us, to watch that abomination. I have no doubt the new one more than makes up for it. Look forward to seeing this eventually.

Wow. Did the Petty Officers and/or Chiefs get jeered heavily afterwards by the recruits?

No, we were still technically in boot camp so we still had a healthy "fear" of them. It wasn't until we got to our A school when we found out that they weren't really short tempered raving lunatics .

Does 1998 Godzilla exist to remind us that this happened, or does this exist to remind us 1998 Godzilla happened?

i heard some bad reviews but dont care i njoy it so much in cinema... i expect nothing but give somthing as fun. enough.

I saw it Sunday morning in IMAX and thought it was great. My wife fell asleep but I was awake the whole thing haha. I told my boss and supervisor how great it was cause they are fans of the original Godzilla. They went to see it the other day and hated it. I have no idea how its possible to hate this movie. Yes, there are scenes I wish they would have left in there instead of cutting fight scenes or whatever but I think it really left you wanting to get to see the big fight at the end. I don't get excited about anything and Im not even a Godzilla fan or could say I even seen a whole Godzilla movie til now but I was excited for this one and after I saw it I knew why. It was great.

My mom and I will be seeing it tomorrow.

Just saw it. It was exactly what I wanted the movie to be!

Phoenix Reign Drummer wrote:

I saw it Sunday morning in IMAX and thought it was great. My wife fell asleep but I was awake the whole thing haha. I told my boss and supervisor how great it was cause they are fans of the original Godzilla. They went to see it the other day and hated it. I have no idea how its possible to hate this movie. Yes, there are scenes I wish they would have left in there instead of cutting fight scenes or whatever but I think it really left you wanting to get to see the big fight at the end. I don't get excited about anything and Im not even a Godzilla fan or could say I even seen a whole Godzilla movie til now but I was excited for this one and after I saw it I knew why. It was great.

See, this is why I'm leery about seeing this.  Obviously, based on my screen name,  I'm a HUGE Godzilla fan (I've seen 'em all multiple times).   But when people who are big fans of the original "Gojira" come away hating this one, I get wary because I too am a huge fan of "Gojira".

Well, I certainly liked it. I'm not huge Godzilla fan, but I enjoyed the movies when I was younger and really loved the NES game based on them. Don't know why Godzilla fans wouldn't like this one. Maybe they focused too much on the humans. That's the only reason besides the creature designs. If that, what would one expect from a big budget blockbuster? Men in costumes destroying toy tanks?

I've seen it twice, the first time in 2D, the second time in IMAX 3D at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

It's a very good movie that could have been a great movie with a little more imaginative script. However, the monster sequences and big action set pieces are so awesome that it makes up for the formulaic nature of the script. I've been a Godzilla fan since 1976 and Gareth definitely got it right. The structure is just like a Toho film (which is the basic 1950s sci-fi/monster movie model that started with The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the film that inspired Toho to make the 1954 Gojira in the first place).

Gareth then took that basic structure and approached it like a 1970s Steven Spielberg movie. The tone and pacing is essentially a combination of Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. He said in an interview that he wanted it to feel like a "1970s event movie" and he accomplished that. There are some really brilliantly composed shots in this movie, many more than you usually see in a summer tentpole film. Gareth knows how to communicate exposition visually (a skill not as common as you'd think these days) and I'm impressed with his maturity considering this is only his second film. His choice of camera angles and shifting points of view is quite distinctive, give this guy a couple more movies and he could become a scary good director.

Most of the detractors on the internet are the people that just want to see monster fights non-stop, they wanted it to be Transformers with Godzilla. Thankfully that wasn't the film Gareth wanted to make. It was refreshing to see a slow burn buildup of tension and suspense instead of the usual video game approach that is common these days.

In the end we've seen a successful launch of a new Godzilla series, something I doubted we'd see again after the 1998 fiasco. The second film has already been green lit and Gareth is under contract for a 3rd as well.

The big guy still captures my imagination just as much at age 43 as he did when I was 6.

Well put, SD!

I liked it for basically all the same reasons you mention. I like the Transformers movies for the most part, but the sequels got to the point where they were just a bunch of broken robot and building parts flying around the screen. It's distracting. Godzilla does not bow to the ADHD/young crowd, but lets things breath. I appreciate that.

I will say that the "human factor" (in the second half of the film) didn't hardly live up to the weight and effort they put behind it. That really put a damper it for me. First half of the film, that's a different story - that was gold. I don't quite know why there was such a stark difference since it was handled so amazingly at first.

I had a feeling that the screenplay would end up being pedestrian. The lead writer, a rookie, has a less-than-impressive resume. But I also had a strong feeling that Edwards would overcome this hurdle with visual strength. It's till too bad they couldn't have picked a stronger writer with better chops. Wonder if they'll keep him for the sequel(s).

Well what can I say ? I loved it. Maybe there's not enough of Godzilla, but the build up to the reveal is done brilliantly. The cast itself is ok. Could have been better except for Bryan Cranston who I thought was great. And thankfully no comic relief! Now bring on the sequel, which Edwards said he'd like to do in the vein of Destroy All Monsters (a personal fave of mine) although logistically I don't see how he could pull that off.

Saw it yesterday and liked it a lot. I have to agree with S.D and 007. I've heard some complain that the setup took too long, but that's what I liked. Just when you thought they were going to show Godzilla, they pulled back just enough to build your anticipation. At least that is what it did to me, which made the payoff that much better. I thought that the final battle was great.

My only complaint is some of the acting was a little rough at times (the wife), but it didn't kill it for me.

It didn't quite top some of my very favorites from either the Showa or Hesei series (it was better than any of the Millennium series), but I thought it was great! The final battle was simply awesome and epic.

In fairness to Elizabeth Olsen (who I have seen give a couple fine performances over the past couple years in independent films) they didn't give her a damn thing to do in the movie, I blame the script for that, not her. There's like a 2 minute introductory scene and then the rest of the movie she's talking on the phone, constantly in distress. You have to give a character at least a few normal scenes, a chance for them to develop empathy with audience, because if you don't the audience isn't going to give a shit what happens to them which is the case with Godzilla.

The problem with the mid-section of the script is there are too many focal points and that doesn't allow them time to explore any of them enough to make them work correctly. Instead of trying to keep 3 separate story threads going (not counting the monsters) with the military POV, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and then the wife/kid storyline I think they should have dumped at least one of them to allow the others more time to develop (the military sections would be the easiest to cut). It's also quite possible that some stuff ended up on the cutting room floor for running time considerations.

I too wouldn't have minded the heroic military stuff be pulled altogether. So many other things to be done.

I plan on seeing it one day soon

I wanted to see giant monsters brought to life with state of the art VFX and the film delivered. I would go see it again.

S.D. wrote:

I've seen it twice, the first time in 2D, the second time in IMAX 3D at Grauman's Chinese Theater.  

It's a very good movie that could have been a great movie with a little more imaginative script. However, the monster sequences and big action set pieces are so awesome that it makes up for the formulaic nature of the script.  I've been a Godzilla fan since 1976 and Gareth definitely got it right.  The structure is just like a Toho film (which is the basic 1950s sci-fi/monster movie model that started with The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the film that inspired Toho to make the 1954 Gojira in the first place).  

Gareth then took that basic structure and approached it like a 1970s Steven Spielberg movie.  The tone and pacing is essentially a combination of Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.  He said in an interview that he wanted it to feel like a "1970s event movie" and he accomplished that.  There are some really brilliantly composed shots in this movie, many more than you usually see in a summer tentpole film.  Gareth knows how to communicate exposition visually (a skill not as common as you'd think these days) and I'm impressed with his maturity considering this is only his second film.  His choice of camera angles and shifting points of view is quite distinctive, give this guy a couple more movies and he could become a scary good director.  

Most of the detractors on the internet are the people that just want to see monster fights non-stop, they wanted it to be Transformers with Godzilla.  Thankfully that wasn't the film Gareth wanted to make.  It was refreshing to see a slow burn buildup of tension and suspense instead of the usual video game approach that is common these days.  

In the end we've seen a successful launch of a new Godzilla series, something I doubted we'd see again after the 1998 fiasco.  The second film has already been green lit and Gareth is under contract for a 3rd as well.

The big guy still captures my imagination just as much at age 43 as he did when I was 6.

I almost completely agree in every way. My only nitpick, and this is just my opinion obviously, is that I would have liked a bit more focus put on the Kaiju in the last bit of the movie. I think the buildup to the reveal on each Kaiju was very well done. Maybe the acting could have been a bit stronger, though Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe both did very well, IMO.

All in all, I agree with SD in that most people complaining about the film obviously wanted to see a "Pacific Rim starring Godzilla" style film...

Saw it again last night. My opinion hasn't varied. I still love the film and look forward to where the big G's story takes us in the future.

saw it last week in 3 d pretty good