Great movie, Godzilla is back to his roots

Rating: 8/10 (14 May 2014)

To me it was pretty awesome; Godzilla is more or less back to the way he looked in the Toho movies, which I really liked. He gets teased for quite a while with only showing the spikes on his back or a foot, while watching I hated it but for all the right reasons, it builds up tension till he is finally revealed and it was glorious. The humans were good, but not outstanding, which is a plus if you ask me. If I compare it to Transformers, where you also have a secondary human cast, it is handled way better because it doesn't feel tacked on as much and for me it didn't steal the show from the monsters. Another point I really liked was the fact that they incorporated the cautionary aspect of the original Godzilla, regarding nuclear weapons/energy but modified it a bit and lifted it from the 50's to present day; I am not going to go into more detail about this as not to spoil the movie. Lastly, two negative points, which might be nitpicking but still it needs to be said. Firstly, the 3D, while the animation was top notch on the monsters and for the most part the CGI worked well and was nicely integrated, why on Earth would you opt for what I call ambient 3D. It's basically the 3D you saw in Avatar, it looks great and gives you great depth perception, but a movie like Godzilla really lends itself to the more "all-out" effects á la Drive angry. I wanted to see sh*t flying into my face when Godzilla wrecks a building, I wanted to flinch when he whips his tail in my direction. The other slightly negative point is regarding the monster fight scenes, some of the lacked impact for me. I could forgive that on the old rubber suits you couldn't easily make Godzilla bleed or see his scales scratched and torn, but in 2014 I expect a bit from Godzilla to at least leave behind some kind of mark or scratch. In all fairness, I have to mention that this is not true for all the scenes and it didn't impact me that much, but I noticed it and others did too. Overall, I really enjoyed watching this film and recommend seeing it in theaters if only to hear Godzilla's epic roar on their sounds system. As for a numerical score I give Godzilla a very solid 8 out of 10, it's not a must see but if you like monster movies or even just want to watch a popcorn flick, you won't be disappointed.