A movie that could have been great, made just passable

Rating: 5/10 (15 May 2014)

I went into Godzilla not with earth-shattering expectations (I am not as fond of the director's previous film, Monsters, as most) but I hoped it would be better than Roland Emmerich's film (which I think I like more than most people).
The film had a good opening sequence, followed by some very heavy-handed and overly serious plot mostly featuring Bryan Cranston. The action soon gets picked up by his son, then goes to Ken Watanabe's character, then back and all over the place.
When the monster appeared and turned out to not be Godzilla, I have to say I was very excited - I thought this was going to be a great return to form for the series and I loved the idea of seeing Godzilla give the beating of a lifetime to another massive mutant.
Sadly, every time a conflict seemed about to start, the director cut away to something completely different. In fact, the film felt very disjointed as a whole, following several plot lines that didn't neatly intertwine and with a "main" character who seemed nearly incidental. Given the film's two hour plus runtime, only in the final five minutes do we actually get to see Godzilla do any fighting and by then it is over far too fast and is not as exciting as it should have been.
There are plenty of amazing "moments" in the film, some of which we've seen in the trailer, but it seems like the director just wanted to stitch all these moments together without any thought for the film as a whole. There seemed to be no sense of peril either, just a massive amount spent on CGI and special effects for ultimately a very unrewarding payoff. I much preferred Pacific Rim - as flawed as it was, that film delivered much more in terms of the headline draw of monster fights.
There could have been a great Godzilla movie here, but the opportunity was sadly missed.