Not Worth the Praise

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2014)

Why Godzilla (2014) Sucks There are several elements to why this movie was terrible and to see why we'll begin with some of the major problems. Okay so you've decided to hold back the creature till the last half an hour of the movie where we finally see it fight and you want to showcase the human drama behind the movie. Aside from the fact this disappointed me as a sucker of monster movies and you primarily came here for the monster (which is a preference admittedly although your trailer advertises it specifically as that type of movie) that approach will only work if the human drama is worth giving a s**t for and in this film it isn't. Comparing this to Jaws which held back the creature to the very end, the reason why that worked and you weren't angry is because you actually gave a s**t about this very likable characters that had meaningful issues and development behind them. The only likable character here is Bryan Cranston's who plays it phenomenally and again shows why he is a great actor. When you kill off such a character early in the film and leave the film to depend on a character who's undeveloped and flat, the audience no longer is invested into the film and that's what happened here. If you're going to kill off such a character in a twist the audience might not expect, which we didn't, you need to have supporting characters to fill in that void and this film didn't have those. Looking at sally Hawkins, after seeing her in Blue Jasmine you know she's a fantastic actress but now you have here being reduced down to purely an ex-positional character, she has no character arc whatsoever or any personality. You have Ken Watanabe again who's there as an ex-positional character who has a slighter more developed side. You can see he gives a little s**t about Godzilla but when you have him for the whole movie doing the same dumb founded confused expression it's hard for the audience to see any character within him.literally. Now moving on to the main supporting lead in Aaron Taylor-Johnson, he does not have the likability or personality to hold up the audiences invested because he does not have the character arc to do so. There's no real emotion in what he's doing, OK so he won't be emotional after his father's death because 15 years ago he experienced the same tragedy with his mum. Fine, reasonable to assume since he knows how to distance himself. But then what other emotion is he going to show? He seems to care for his family but the movie doesn't provide enough investment to it. He makes a phone call to his wife and that's it. Like really. Why do you give a s**t about stopping Godzilla and how are we meant to give a s**t if you don't. I'm using a basic clichéd example of some emotional investment but at least it's something.
Now moving on from the characters the things in the movie that distract you or remove you from being within the moment on what's on screen. Having Godzilla pop up for the first time and then cutting to a TV screen of the news showing the fight with s**tty dialog placed over it. And doing this once is bad enough but twice, really. What it does is instead of firstly showing the fights in the trailer and most audiences expected come to see, secondly removes the god like aspect of the film. You instead see these figures of giants reduced down into a TV screen when you could be panning the camera to see the fight in all its glory. Secondly, so Joe is arrested for trespassing in the quarantined area and his son who's in San Francisco is the only one who can travel to japan to assist him? Thirdly, Joe gets arrested inside the quarantined zone and this time for whatever reason the guards accept his request to see the secret facility that holds one of the creatures? Like what happened to last time and locking him up in prison. Forget about cause he said he used to work here? Fourth, you send Joe to Hawaii for some reason? Fifth, so you found out that your plan to keep the mu-to under control with radiation that you're feeding but realized this didn't work out and then instead it grew and fed off the radiation for which you realized was its power. So why didn't you communicate this with the other scientists who were looking after the second mu-to baby that was supposedly dormant inside a f**king radiation hot spot. Really you don't think it's important to note that? And why was sally Hawkins so surprised it woke up because the scientist said it was dormant? Um hello, I'm not even a scientist but dormant doesn't mean f**king dead why this such a surprise is. Sixth, so you've invested a massive mega ton nuclear warhead that you claim to say has not been seen before and nothing will withstand its force. Obviously we know this won't work against monsters as the film wants u to see that we need to rely on Godzilla as the hero. But when it detonates right next to a city (which conveniently happens to be where Ford's wife and son live) there's no f**king way any person could of survived that. Yet the cliché return of reuniting Ford and his wife happens and its bull$hit.
Things like this hold back the movie that has such great special effects behind it. The creature design is amazingly good looking and the sound of it is fantastic (though they may have milked it a bit too much). Other than that and Bryan Cranston's character, the film has nothing else going for it. 4/10