Honest Confusion

Rating: 10/10 (18 May 2014)

This is a hard film to review, so from here on I'm going to pretend as if I have never seen a Godzilla film before and this is my first.
Firstly, Godzilla is a brilliantly crafted monster movie full of action, suspense and breathtaking scenes. Gareth Edwards uses techniques similar to that of Cloverfield. He incorporates a lot of shaky first-person camera shots from the people's perspective, this gave you a spectacular idea of how huge each monster was which left you feeling greatly intimidated and insignificant. Mr. Edwards was brilliant at building suspense and tension using obscured shots of each monster, gradually revealing them over time leaving you more and more curious and frightened. Overall, the monsters were portrayed brilliantly.
The let down I felt was how this was very similar to that of the Cloverfield 'point of view', not that it is a bad thing with the monster(s) having a haunting presence in the background. But if you're going to focus on the human characters, then they need to be more interesting! The characters were brilliantly portrayed by each actor & actress, it was just a shame the writers could only come up with such 2- dimensional roles to lead the film. And for the characters you fell in love with, well they barely had any screen time and if they died, it just felt unnecessary rather than being surprising and jaw-dropping, it just left you feeling irritated.
Finally, with such great suspense and build up we were left with a climax that was visually stunning and heart-racing but only for a couple minutes. After it was done and we were left with a questionable ending, I was sat there thinking "is that it..?". After all the fuss, it felt like a premature climax that was executed well but didn't feel as if it lasted as long as it should have.
Overall, I felt Godzilla was a well-crafted entertaining monster movie that I could definitely watch again. Just needed more monster mashing!
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Now from a Godzilla fan:
I Had high expectations which I felt were met in some aspects. I still appreciate and agree with everything I mentioned before, but as a Godzilla fan, I'm used to Godzilla being the main character and the center of all the action. The MUTOs got way more attention and for a 'Godzilla film', the star of the show was barely in it which left me disappointed.
The climax I felt was pathetic which made me think the writers had never seen a Godzilla film before. Although I appreciated the whole realistic animal fighting which was rather similar to that of two bears mauling at each other rather than those WWE moves back in the day, there was just NOT ENOUGH of it. I left the cinema thinking half the film was hidden away from view.
I did enjoy the first-person point of views which were very effective, but this being a Godzilla film, I was desperate for more aerial shots of 3 monsters fighting to the death with huge amounts of destruction. But these moments were only teased and the camera would then resume to characters I honestly didn't care for because they were so 2- dimensional.
Overall, this film was brilliantly directed with great acting all round, but the 'love' for Godzilla just wasn't there and at the end when it was, it was way too super-imposed. It felt like it was a Cloverfield sequel with 3 brilliant monsters where one of them happened to resemble and/or look a lot like Godzilla rather than it being Godzilla.
... Oh, and he did use his atomic breathe which I thought was such a relief and left me feeling like a giddy little kid again. The honest confusion here is this movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be. The 'love' for Godzilla was here and there, but it needed to be let out of the cage more! I am looking forward to a sequel, because if there is any movie that can get away with a sequel, it's Gojira.