A Disaster of Epic Proportions

Rating: 3/10 (18 May 2014)

This movie was my most anticipated movie of the year. And as a long time fan of Godzilla, I walked away disappointed. This evening's viewing of Godzilla evoked a strong enough reaction in me to post my first ever review. To put this in context, in 23 years of cinema-going, I have never physically given "the finger" to a movie I have watched (no, not even Phantom Menace!) In the third or fourth last scene from the end, I gave this two fingers. At that point I couldn't even control the impulse to do so!
Without spoilers, what's good? Any scene involving Godzilla. What's bad? Everything else. The trailers suggest this as a dark reboot of Godzilla, a la Nolan's Batman Trilogy. Aside from 12-odd seconds of HALO jumping, it's not.
***HERE BE SPOILERS***
To elucidate:
The Good: The scenes involving Godzilla are visually spectacular. The destruction caused by Godzilla and the MUTO's (by themselves, or when fighting) is truly of epic proportions. The carnage and mayhem caused - even by these creatures' arrival(s) - is just what we expect from a monster movie, and is truly satisfying. Godzilla himself is pleasingly remade in the image of the originals; and the scene where he roars at the female MUTO was honestly terrifying!
The bad: It seems that everyone involved in this movie first conceived the climax scene (everything from the HALO jump onwards), and then reverse-engineered a story to lead up to that point, without worrying too much how it went together, or if it made sense. The story is stilted and disjointed, the dialogue is mediocre, and and the inter-personal relationships terribly clichéd and weak. All of them.
As an example of the relationships: I didn't remotely buy into Elizabeth Olsen's character of Elle Brody, who seems to have been written by someone who has never been in a relationship themselves. Even worse, Elle seems to have been written as one-dimensionally as the paper on which the script was typed: she has no depth as a character, and oddly seems to switch from a insightful and capable person, to a blubbering damsel in distress. "Do I go to the shelter now? Or do I wait for Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to come and save me?" By that point in the movie, I really didn't care. Part of me hoped she died, just for a jarring emotional reaction and a sadly poetic ending (Ford's father failed to save his own wife). But in true cliché style, despite being in the thick of fighting, she survives so we can have a happy ending (ignoring the thousands who actually died)...
Certain things can be written off with the Hollywood "Rule of Cool"; other things could be forgiven as minor research errors; but when things defy logic, it doesn't matter how cool the monsters are, the movie falls flat on it's face. Ignoring minor gaffs like trying to pass off Hawaii as the Philippines, I've listed the key things below that stick out in my mind from tonite's viewing (mainly so I am not accused of merely trolling as I've read elsewhere). Don't read these unless you've seen the movie.
* Reactor meltdowns don't work that way. * You can't outrun an explosion of that magnitude in an enclosed area. * Where did they walk to? China?? * Why did no Government, Regulatory, or Military body think to ask the Chief Engineer of the plant - who happened to be at ground zero (and survived!) - what happened, or collect any of his data?? * Unconsciousness is now a convenient plot device. * When an oncoming tsunami destroys the city in Hawaii, it somehow fails to break the glass windows or doors of the conveniently open shop that the family with a little girl take shelter in seconds before (because no children died anywhere else in the world either). * Even though Ken Watanabe's character continually refers to it as "Gojira", for no apparent reason, the Americans decide to start calling the creature "Godzilla". In front of his face. Even the much-maligned (unfairly, IMO) 1998 version of Godzilla accounts for this disparity (quite well, I might add). * That's the youngest looking 69-70 year old person I've seen in my life! * Why, when a *BABY* MUTO's arrival is presaged by tremors and destroys a nuclear plant, causing devastation to the surrounding areas, does no one even notice the hole caused in the SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN by another MUTO - later shown to be around the size of Godzilla - as it departs, until they open a door??? Or even as it strolls casually away towards Las Vegas???? This is the point where the movie finally lost all credibility to me and just became more and more ridiculous. * Ford walks up to a solder and claims to be an officer in another branch of the forces, so they promptly give him a weapon and equipment. Hmmm...I must try that at my local army base some time... * Unconsciousness can now stave off drowning!!! * BTW, EMP's don't work that way. * FYI, the scene I gave the fingers to was the one where the female scientist (name pretty much irrelevant) reacts emotionally to Godzilla's departure. The scene was so ridiculous my friends were laughing out loud at it.
Honestly, there's more, but why continue beating a dead horse?
If you want a fun entertaining monster movie, watch Pacific Rim, or the '98 Godzilla, or Jurassic Park, or Jaws, or Eight-Legged Freaks, or...you get the idea. If you want two hours of BUFFOONERY, interspersed with some visual brilliance, watch this.
This movie gets a 3/10 from me based solely on the above-mentioned monster scenes. Otherwise a big stinking ZERO.