A solid entry which takes the franchise back to basics in a whole new way

Rating: 7/10 (13 May 2014)

Full disclosure: I was given my advanced screening ticket and didn't pay to see the film which may have colored my initial impression. That said...
My first thought on leaving the theater last night was: Good, not great.
Visually, the movie does what it does exceptionally well. There are a lot of very coolly handled transitions which use drastic perspective changes to change scenes and simultaneously handle the larger scope of Godzilla and the smaller scope of the individual characters. I'm still a firm believer, though, that 3d...even IMAX 3d, is the death of cinematography. 3d forces the viewer's perspective to an intended focal point in either the foreground or background, and as a result, everything else loses definition. I can't imagine directors or principal photography groups actually liking this technology and I'm continually surprised at how well received it is.
Sound was well done from an effects perspective. There was absolutely nothing in the way of a score which was disappointing. The only thing that stood out to me thematically from a musical perspective was a drum heavy theme which they overused each time Japan was shown. I'm not certain that there wasn't other music present, but if there was, it was completely forgettable.
In terms of plot, it was a Godzilla movie, so I don't think anyone is going into this expecting an Oscar-worthy screenplay, BUT the trailers set an expectation for me that the movie couldn't match. The acting was nothing special and a little over-the-top in some places. Cranston lent some credibility, but the novelty of his appearance wears off pretty quickly. Unfortunately, this film wasted Ken Wantanabe; I'm a fan of his limited work which I've seen, but he had nothing to work with in this script, and to call his performance wooden is a disservice to trees. AT Johnson is much the same, regrettably. I didn't feel that there was much to connect him to the audience, and instead, he becomes more of a vehicle through which to view the movie's world around him.
Now, considering it is a Godzilla movie, the important part. Is the monster battle epic, and does it hold up? The answer is, like everything with this movie, a little of both yes and no. Personally, I really liked how they handled it. I felt the build-up and pacing made for a weighty climax with decent enough stakes to keep the audience invested. The director toys with you a bit though and teases a lot of the action from the perspective of the characters on the ground. The timing of these cuts serve as morsel after morsel of payoff, but after the third or fourth of these cuts, I started to wonder if the grand scale would ever come. Fortunately, in the end, it did come with 3 or 4 separate scenes giving the epically scaled battle the foreground and a couple welcome surprises that were contrary to some of the pre-release info which was making the rounds.
Is it worth seeing? If you're a fan of the genre, yes. It has some of the campiness and charm of the series while still playing straight within its own construct. To me, this is miles ahead of the travesty that was Godzilla '98, but it lacked some of the cinematic flair and novelty that Cloverfield brought to the genre back in 08. It was way more digestible than Pacific Rim as well which should bode well for better overall audience reception.
I'd go with a strong 7.5 out of 10 with a +/- of about .5 expected after a second viewing.