Impressive effects and a cool monster, but not enough of them

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2014)

Once again Godzilla roars his way on to our screens, with a big epic path of destruction lying in his wake. Obviously after the failure of the 90's Godzilla, then the director Gareth Edwards had a lot to make up for. Unlike the 90's Godzilla, the film is far more loyal to the original films. For example, it's the military's mistakes that awake an ancient monster who has been dormant for years. As they awaken, mankind's only hope lies in Godzilla to protect them. In one of several nice callbacks in the film, Godzilla and the other monsters are influenced by the use of nuclear warfare, demonstrating the film does have respect for it's roots.
But obviously whilst the story remains like the original, the effects have improved vastly over the past 60 years. The monsters definitely look epic and just like the monkeys in Planet of the Apes, Godzilla has been brought to the modern age and gone from a guy in a suit to brilliant special effects. Obviously the effects go towards not only making the epic scale of monsters real, but also their vast destruction with the sight of entire buildings falling as we get to witness our monster pretty much obliterate entire cities.
Though, it has to be said the special effects alone are not the only thing that make this film impressive. Whilst the effects are probably the main selling point of the film, the director is not afraid to build up the monster over time, for a large part of the film showing glimpses of the monsters before their ultimate reveal. This is far more effective at emphasising the scale of the beasts in the film and also building up anticipation to get a full view of the monster. He also often shows the camera at the perspective of the citizens looking up at these monsters, placing us in the position of the victim of these attacks.
But unfortunately, just like Pacific Rim last year, a majority of the characters in the film feel either redundant or underdeveloped. For example, Brody's family are probably in the film for about 15 minutes and have little character and absolutely no impact on the plot other than being a reason for him to get home. They're an incredibly weak plot device and the film would have been much more successful had they simply been removed from the film to allow for more time towards stronger elements in the film. Similarly, Sally Hawkins character does nothing in the entire 2 hours of the film apart from possibly some exposition that could have easily been done by Ken Watanabe's character. Then there's the lead Brody, who is a very bland hero. This isn't due to the acting, but because we never learn anything about him as a character after the first 20 minutes of the film. It becomes harder to invest in the film because of this due to a lack of empathy towards the character and less tension when he is placed in danger.
It's also strange because they were effective at creating a great character in Bryan Cranston who would've been far better as the lead for the film, but instead gets barely any screen time overall. His character actually gets a lot of emotional investment in the first act of the film, becoming obsessed with finding out what had been hidden from him and becoming a crazed conspiracy theorist. But then the focus of the film shifts to his son who was less built up than Cranston was and didn't get any development over the rest of the film. It was also Cranston's great acting as well, being that great mixture of emotional agony and sheer awesomeness, making it a real shame we couldn't see more of him in the film.
There's also one other great character that the film has. Godzilla himself. Yes, finally instead of Hollywood treating him as some mindless monster, Godzilla has a personality! He's awesome with the best cheers in the cinema coming from his tail whips and atomic breath making him into one heck of a bad-ass. Along with this also comes his epic roar that remains as timeless now as it ever was. But Godzilla does have one disadvantage. Whilst the character of Godzilla dominates everything when he is on screen and has a very impressive build up, just like Cranston's character he doesn't get enough screen time with a feeling that there were some missed scenes of destruction in the film.
This can be said to partly being focused to build up suspense of character, but it's also because the film spends far too much time focused on the other monsters called the MUTO's. This is a shame, seeing as they are not particularly impressive and are fairly generic monsters that you can never really get particularly interested in. What I don't get is why not just use one of the many already existing monsters for the film like Mothra or King Ghidorah who would have made more interesting enemies? Though I guess we can hope to see them in the sequels.
Besides, Godzilla is still a good film. It's not as great as it could be, but still has some good elements such as the fights and the character of Godzilla. It's just a shame the film is let down by weaker elements such as spending too much time on characters who serve no purpose. But the film is certain to be a hit at the box office, largely due to the special effects and the name Godzilla which is something of an icon. Also I do feel that in some part the star power of Bryan Cranston will also play a role in it's box office glory due to his strong presence in the trailer and riding off his success from Breaking Bad.