Gareth Edwards fails to do justice to the monster's legacy.

Rating: 6/10 (13 July 2014)

If you've seen the trailer for this Godzilla film you probably thought that it would be a more faithful yet serious take on Japan's most famous monster. In the trailer Godzilla looked like a real threat. It seemed frightening the way it was portrayed. In the film though this isn't the case. We're yet again in that summer movie territory where the trailer was more inspired than the film itself. Does The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) come to mind? I think that the big reason why many people were disappointed with this Godzilla film is its lack of originality. If you pause and look at what's happening you'll see that it's actually very similar to the 1998 Godzilla film directed by Roland Emmerich. Godzilla is portrayed as a monster with some intelligence. It becomes a sympathetic creature. The American military and navy get involved, something that we've seen many times in Hollywood films recently. And, to top it all off, there's more focus on the human characters than on Godzilla. In fact, much time passes before the Big G even makes an appearance. So, just as in the 1998 film, we're forced to watch a typical human drama before anything exciting happens. But at least the 1998 film was entertaining. And it was a film about Godzilla. This 2014 film is lacking both Godzilla and entertainment. It's a summer movie, so I expected to be entertained. Instead I was left wondering what happened when the film ended. It wasn't just me. Other people in the theater were criticizing it right after it ended. Director Gareth Edwards really didn't have enough experience to make a big budget summer movie. The monster fights lack excitement, the acting is wooden, and the clichéd script lacks intelligence. I don't think that Edwards is a bad filmmaker. I think that he's an inexperienced filmmaker. His 2010 low-budget feature Monsters is a technical triumph that showed some promise. Max Borenstein's lazy script and studio interference are the two things that really ruined this film in my opinion. In a monster movie one would at least expect some exciting action but this film fails even at that. In addition, it's obvious that Edwards took the Jaws (1975) approach of obscuring the creature for much of the film's running time. Jaws, however, features interesting human characters and terrific performances. It keeps on movin' when the big shark isn't around. The human characters and performances in Edwards' Godzilla are flat, resulting in a truly dull middle section. Only Bryan Cranston, playing Joe Brody, stands out. Cranston is definitely one of the best Hollywood actors working now. His performance alone made this film bearable at the beginning, but even then the story's shortcomings were already noticeable. I have to admit that I had doubts about this film. I usually read reviews on a certain website before I go to the cinema. This time I made the mistake of reading the early positive reviews on IMDb, so I didn't wait for the review on that favorite website of mine. As it turned out, that website was right yet again and this Godzilla film made for an unpleasant night at the cinema. Some Godzilla fans might like what Edwards did, but casual moviegoers should definitely not buy a ticket. Remember, as was the case with the 1998 film, there's no hiding that this is a Western production. It has none of the quirks and cultural aspects of the Japanese films.