The year American cinema died

Rating: 2/10 (22 August 2014)

2014 has been a woefully bad year for Hollywood. Producers are scraping the bottom of the barrel for franchises to reboot. Now here comes the latest remake of 'Godzilla', a pointless two-hour borefest during which the main character is barely even seen.
I'm a lifelong Godzilla fan, and the initial positive reviews for this movie made me cautiously optimistic. Well, big mistake. There is nothing extraordinary about this Summer Blockbuster, and everything typical about it. Frankly, the whole film feels like a cheat, a ripoff designed to lure moviegoers with the most minimal plot possible. Lazy filmmaking to be sure. The mediocre 1998 version, and even last year's 'Pacific Rim' had more charm than 'Godzilla', which forces us to suffer through an hour of pointless human drama before we even see Godzilla.
We have no emotional connection to these characters. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the entire movie is the actor cast in the lead. He's wooden, uncharismatic, and vanilla.
The film itself looks very dark, with thick black smoke and red lights occasionally peeping through. It's actually hard to see what's going on. The soundtrack alternates between silence and blaring, to clue us in that there's a monster on screen.
Yes, there's one very well made scene (which every other commenter has mentioned) when the paratroopers jump into the action with vivid red smoky flares. In fact they put this scene on the movie poster. Well, one nice scene doesn't compensate for the rest of 'Godzilla', which is a failure on every level.