The Godzilla Remake No One Saw Coming

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2014)

The original Godzilla is a classic, and is still an extremely entertaining movie to this day, but it lacks a certain relevance and heart seen today in other big (and small) movies. So when i heard there was a Godzilla remake happening, i couldn't not think of the disaster that was Roland Emmerich's Godzilla. Then, i saw the previews, and i was blown away. In this re-imagining, Godzilla is a terrifying force of nature that fights to defeat the MUTOs, Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms. But what really makes this Godzilla remake stand out is the "human element," present in the lead human characters portrayed by Aaron-Taylor Johnson, Ken Wantanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen and David Strathairn.
Honestly, I think this Godzilla is better than the original, and for multiple reasons. Firstly, Gareth Edward's direction. The movie feels like a Batman Begins-esque version of a Godzilla franchise, where we don't see the titular character for most of the first third of the film, but more and more as the film progresses, and it works extremely well. And the way Edwards grounds the film in reality and with the times is just amazing, and disturbing. The acting is absolutely incredible, and surprisingly enough, it's not Bryan Cranston that steals the show; Taylor-Johnson does it with his "everyman" character, Ford Brody. The visual effects were easily the best part of the film, and some of the best visual effects of all time. There wasn't a single moment that had me thinking, "That's definitely CG there." I was completely glued to my seat in awe, like most of the other people in the theater and didn't think twice about what I was seeing. Even the musical score by Alexandre Desplat was haunting and epic, with the main theme being extremely memorable (I was humming it on my way out of the theater). The script was great, but there were moments where, they were fantastic and all, but felt like filler-moments; you didn't need them, but they worked.
Godzilla was a superb and epic monster movie that i think is a masterpiece in filmmaking, and could be hailed as a classic further down the line. I agree with some critics in that the marketing campaign was a bit lousy in that they showed off Godzilla a little too much (since he isn't seen constantly throughout the film), but to lower the score of the film because of giant lizard's absence in the first act isn't right; it isn't.
9/10 Stars