Godzilla falls flat on his face, even in 3D

Rating: 1/10 (19 May 2014)

Where do I begin? Nothing in this movie works. The 3D effects are the worst I've ever seen. In almost every major scene featuring the monsters, they appear completely flat and in the background, with one or two humans in the foreground in 3D. But the humans are so small (in a flawed attempt to convey the enormous scale of the monsters) that they just seem like silhouettes watching the same movie you are, as if somebody in the audience stood up to block the screen. It's almost as if the director pre-rendered the movie for Mystery Science Theater 3000...
There are lots of other monster scenes where some minor object (broken window pane, windshield wiper, train passenger, etc.) gets in the way in a botched attempt to create depth. It never works - the monsters always seem fake and flat.
Nothing about the plot makes any sense. We're to believe the monsters could completely obliterate a nuclear power plant without being noticed. Then, when they re-appear after 15 years (couldn't they have waited a few more years like the cicadas?), they can effortlessly elude radar tracking, satellite imagery, and a hundred million iPhones and just sneak around, silently munching on nuclear submarines. We're also to believe that nobody is really sure whether Godzilla is friend or foe, so the U.S. Navy will arbitrarily alternate between sailing right next to him and shooting at him with rockets.
With all of the nuclear power plants in the country, which are like catnip to these suckers, somehow a major plot element involves luring the monsters away from population centers with a single nuclear weapon on a train.
The score is so loud, intrusive, and overly dramatic it's mind-numbing.
The M.U.T.O.s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) are as generic and uninspired as you could possibly imagine. Just think of every mantis-shaped bug you've ever seen in any movie, and that's them. Throughout the entire movie I was distracted trying to remember where I'd seen them before - and I just remembered, they're a rip-off from Starship Troopers.
Every time a monster fight scene starts, it ends abruptly before anything interesting happens. In this movie, Honolulu, Las Vegas, and San Francisco supposedly get destroyed, but you can't really tell and won't really care. I think maybe 60 seconds was spent on the destruction of Honolulu and about 30 seconds on Las Vegas.
The guy from Kick-Ass (I can't be bothered to look up his name) plays a giant walking cliché. So do half of the Olsen Twins (edit - it wasn't until I lost a bet over the cast of Avengers: Infinity War that I learned that Elizabeth Olsen is a sister of the Full House Twins, not one of them. Sorry Elizabeth. This movie still sucks). So do two - count 'em two - precocious endangered kids.
The scene on the Golden Gate bridge is one of the dumbest I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure that bridge wasn't designed to hold a bunch of M1 tanks and - even if it was - they probably wouldn't be in a traffic jam with busloads of kids. I still can't figure out whether the bus driver was supposed to be a hero or a maniac for trying to mow down every pedestrian/soldier/policeman on the bridge just to save the walking cliché's son. And all those ships in the bay! Toy ships dropped in a bathtub would have a more organized formation.
It doesn't really matter that Godzilla isn't in the movie that much. You'll just want the movie to be over. It doesn't matter that Bryan Cranston dies early on in the movie - you'll just want the movie to be over. It doesn't matter whether Admiral David Strathairn gets his SitReps from the TV news instead of looking out his window at the 600-foot-tall monster. You'll just want the movie to be over.
It doesn't even matter that military people repeatedly "pronounce out" A.S.A.P. even though in real life they'd probably just say "AY-sap". You'll just want the movie to be over A.S.A.F.P.
I think what bothers me the most is the overuse of helicopters. I mean, I love helicopters. Blue Thunder is one of my favorite movies and Airwolf was my favorite TV show. I don't watch Westerns because there aren't enough helicopters in them. But the excessive use of helicopters in this movie made even me want to scream "Enough with the helicopters, we get it, you can make them look 3D! Too bad you couldn't do that with the giant monsters!"
Honestly, this latest installment of Godzilla is just as unwatchable as the Emmerich brothers' fiasco, and even Godzilla 1985 was more interesting.
To those positive reviewers who claim that it's not fair to compare this to Pacific Rim because they're different kinds of movies, I say: You are correct. Pacific Rim is an enjoyable, well done monster movie with good effects, and Godzilla is the exact opposite.