Flawed. Very.

Rating: 5/10 (18 October 2014)

My advice for this movie is: 1. Watch the first half hour, which is when it seems promising. Bryan Cranston being one of the reasons. After that, simply fast forward through all the scenes that have humans only, but watch the monster scenes.
2. Turn off your brain.
The special effects here are GORGEOUS. Godzilla is beautifully brought to life, the Mutos, well, less so, but the monster interaction is actually kind of interesting. So is some of the monster-human scenes. A certain lying-on-train-tracks scene comes to mind. Scene has no logic, sure, but it's memorable (see point 2).
The human interaction, on the other hand, is completely uninteresting. I seriously wonder if the director/screenwriters know the meaning of the word character development?? I mean, no character has any arc. Cranston may be the exception, but sadly leaves the movie early. Him aside, they are all clichés. Good actors, mostly, wasted. As characters, the monsters are more interesting!
The storyline is riddled with plot holes and just...jumbled. Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) tells his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) to stay put in the city. A big mistake, apparently. Then she basically has no purpose for the rest of the movie. We get quick glimpses of her now and then, roaming around the city. She doesn't even motivate the hero's actions in any way. He doesn't look for her or anything. She does nothing and nothing is done to her.
The nuclear warhead is put on a.. train. Okay. Then nobody considers the idea that maybe the nuke might serve as bait *before* they reached the ship? And get the MUTOs to attack the train??
Later Ford Brody comes in as "the only one who can serve the day" and disarm the bomb. Aha. So that's why they made him a bomb specialist. But no! Because the lid is jammed! They can't open the bomb! Sorry, Ford, plan B. I get that they wanted to unconventionally make Godzilla the saviour instead of "one man", but lets at least have a good reason to leave a plot point like this in a split second.
Last but not least, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is miscast. I don't know what happened. He was okay in Kickass. Watching him opposite Bryan Cranston, though, I felt sorry for him. He was left to carry the movie, and couldn't do it in any way, shape or form. Enough said.