Just watch the old movies for free

Rating: 2/10 (17 May 2014)

I had high hopes for this as someone who liked Breaking Bad and the trailers I had seen for this movie. I had thought it was going to be a throw back to the 1950s where Godzilla was actually a monster and people where having a hard time figuring out how to kill it. But it turned out to be another of the kiddie Godzilla saves the world battling other "evil" monsters. There were a lot of people in the theater that seemed to enjoy it and cheered whenever the big guy made an appearance. However...
There was an hour of set up before the monster action started. The actor I was hoping to see save the world got killed in a simple fall. The "hero" I guess you would call him comes home after a 14 month deployment promises his kid he will be there in the morning but hops the first plane to Japan to bail his Dad out of jail. Aren't there bail bondsmen in Japan? This same kid is stuck on an evacuation bus by his mother because she thinks its better to send the kid off by himself and wait for her husband to come home. The entire US military seems to consist of a few army units with machine guns an a bazooka, the navy of ships that has no guns, and a few tanks that decide to take up defensive positions on the golden gate bridge! The Air Force does actually try to use some technology but are helpless as the monsters give off EMP which knock the plans out of the sky.
One of the ironic parts was that even though the adult monsters are invulnerable a gasoline fire can take care of all their eggs without a problem. And oh my God what a twist when it turns out the nuke may actually go off while it's still in the city.
It's the kind of movie where the whole city is being evacuated but when the monsters fight there was still some shots of people working in a high rise office. Those are dedicated workers!! Another big disappointment was the big airdrop with the guys trailing red smoke. Since there was still tons of people in the city including the hero's wife there doesn't seem to have been a reason why they don't just have jogged in. They also try to hide and remain silent when on the ground but for some reason decide to trail the red smoke so everyone including the monsters can see their trajectory. It does look cool on the screen but it really had no purpose.
In addition to killing off Bryan Cranston early in, Ken Watanbe has nothing to do but have a worried look on his face and tell people to let Godzilla handle things. And David Strathairn has much too wimpy of a persona to be the tough Admiral who the US Government has delegated all responsibility to. Aaron Taylor-Johnson had no charisma in this role and it's hard to tell if the writing made him bland or he just is bland. They also had a little subplot of him helping a little boy separated from his parents which did nothing but add to the running time of the movie.
I got the impression that they wanted Sam Shepard for the part of the Admiral and Channing Tatum for the part of the hero and went down the list of that type of actor until they got these two.
The production team also chose to have a lot of shots of buildings that have already been destroyed, cut aways from the monster fights, and many many scenes of reaction shots of people looking on in shock and what is coming. I was hoping to see more of the monsters actually doing these shocking things then just the aftermath and the looks on people's faces.
So if you want to see another Godzilla versus the Smog Monster type of movie you will probably enjoy it. If you want a serious monster then this one isn't for you.