A monster smash

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2014)

This seems to have divided people a lot. Some have found it to be entertaining monster mayhem while others have panned the human characters and lack of Godzilla. As for my opinion: Monster movies aren't just about smashing skyscrapers. They're meant to be intense and scary. Godzilla really does that, and it makes the monsters frightening. It also brings in some of the key themes of nuclear age commentary from the not great original. Godzilla is accidentally released due to nuclear testing and goes on the rampage, while 2 other monsters crush America at the same time. Some humans try to stop the destruction. While I disagree with many of the criticisms, it's true the humans leave a lot to be desired although to be fair so does the Japanese original. Bryan Cranston is the star of the show. He's excellent in the movie. So naturally they kill him off in the first act. The rest of the humans aren't very interesting. Aaron Taylor Johnson, despite his strong performance in Kick-Ass, plays a wooden leading man with less facial range than Godzilla who is so boring he feels like a parody of boring action heroes.
The film doesn't show Godzilla much, but few have understood that that is a good thing. It makes the movie more intense and scarier. Gareth Edwards makes the transition from low budget to big budget with ease, and the movie is filled with stomping, romping monster movie mayhem. It's visually stunning and genuinely scary. The script isn't the worst ever, and it's a good monster movie storyline which pays tribute to the original while also bringing Godzilla into the 21st century. By the sound of it it's far better than Roland Emmerich's version from 1998. The movie forsakes fun for gritty thrills and this will divide people, but at least it actually felt scary and still delivered the sobering commentary on nuclear testing. It is incredibly rare that I would say this, but I prefer this version to the original since the original was anticlimactic but this version got bigger and better. Godzilla is a good movie which shows what monster movies are meant to be about yet people still criticize it for trying to be scary. What do filmmakers have to do to please the fans?
8/10