A good movie, but it should work more on the monster department.

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2014)

The story follows the Bordy family. Joe Brody lost his wife in a radiation accident in a nuclear plant in Japan. Years later his son Ford, an army bomb specialist, joins him in Japan to uncover the truth about that accident. It's revealed that a Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism (MUTO) that eats out radiation caused that accident and cocooned there the past years. Now the MUTO then spring out of its cocoon causing another accident wounding Joe. The researcher Serizawa brings Joe and Ford to get more data. Joe doesn't survive and Ford goes to Hawaii to head home to San Francisco. The MUTO snapped a Russian submarine and placed it there. Godzilla emerged to fight the MUTO but it escaped. The monsters are no more secrets.
The MUTO is tracked to be going to US soil. Serizawa informs the army there is another MUTO in Nevada, that turns out to be the female. The female MUTO then springs out of its dormancy, obliterating Las Vegas. The army goes with a plan of luring the MUTOs and Godzilla with nuclear bombs. The plan botched because the female MUTO chomped on the train carrying them and snacked on one bomb. Ford and the other bomb is scooped by the army. The army then sets up the remaining bomb time to lure the monsters somewhere near the SF coast. But the MUTO again snapped it and bring it to their nest, in downtown SF. Godzilla emerges right beside Golden Gate being and the soldiers attacked it. The bridge is damaged because of the incident. Soon the two MUTOs have a showdown with Godzilla. The army sends a team HALO jumping to disarm or move them bomb away from people.
Ford and the team finds the nest. Seeing the eggs they rigged to blow the nest. The explosion panicked the female MUTO, giving a second take for the losing Godzilla, that eventually kills the MUTOs. Gdzilla then drops down as if its dead, but as the day breaks, it awakens and heads back to the ocean.
The base story is better from the last Godzilla adaptation back in 1998. The quite complex story forces the pace to be more of a jog than a walk on the earlier parts. Unfortunately there is no pace variation and the ending doesn't fell as epic as it should.
There's much controversy about the movie's overall quality. Many comment on Godzilla's new look. I personally agree to the unsatisfied comments. Godzilla looks strange, if not stupid, in this movie. The character design gives back Godzilla's more original shaping from the Japanese origin with a much bigger posture. Guess it's not only currencies that get inflated.
The fact that some scenes show the iconic monster from not so alluring angles just do worse to the look. The leg shot, now that Godzilla has pretty much scaly elephant legs, is just awful. The bridge scene looks like Godzilla clumsily tangled it's hand onto the cables.
Godzilla's foes the MUTOs are well planned and executed. The design doesn't stray much from the original monsters but not specifically too Japanese. On the early promotions, some media even mistakenly wrote the MUTO as Mutou, presuming them as some Japanese monster name.
Unfortunately the monster fight scenes are stupid, if not suck. The daytime face-off is all too same to other monsters or mecha battle scenes with airborne entities. One flying foe will go and perch on one building, obliterating some parts of it, and taunts. There is not new thing offered here.
The real monster fight is just stupid because it's done in night time. It's just like the movie's crew didn't even try to give a better fight scene on daytime. Also the fights are not well documented because there is insufficient environmental lighting to cover the fight like for example in Pacific Rim (2013).
The acting is overall a so-so. Bryan Cranston acts well although sometimes he gets a bit overacting. Elizabeth Olsen doesn't really shine compared to her last take on Oldboy (2013). Juliette Binoche did quite a good job playing her so-so role while Ken Watanabe doesn't really shine due to his role that is not so much challenging
On the other hand Aaron Taylor Johnson did a great adaptation since his last Kick-Ass role. Besides managing to get his body buffed up well, he also manages to land a safe performance on his role, although in my opinion he must use his facial expressions better.
For me, The movie is indeed a recommendable watch. But for the score, it's a 6 out of 10 from me, due to the critical disappointments on the monster department.