Godzilla (2014)

Unlike this movie, I will keep my review short and sweet.


I did not like Godzilla (2014).

To be honest, my hopes were not that high to begin with. When I first saw that trailer where they jump out of the plane, I thought they were holding back on the themes of the movie and only showing us a spectacle.
The more I watched and read though, the more excited did I become and this morning I was actually really looking forward to this movie.

Now, an hour after the movie ended, I regret spending all that money and time on such a boring movie.

So, why didn't I like it? Well, to begin with, Godzilla barely appears for the first 90 minutes. Instead we have to look at this weird M.U.T.O (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) thing that looks like the lovechild of Clover and one of those spider monsters from Starship troopers.

But, any good creature feature is never actually about the creatures, it's about the humans trying to survive. Too bad that all the characters were portrayed as bland, faceless clichés that had basicly no redeeming qualities. The only good actors were Juliet Binoche and Bryan Cranston, but they only get about 20 minutes of screentime...combined.

Well, so they failed with the human aspect, there is at least a lot of monster fightscenes to enjoy. Sorry, not really.
There is of course one big epic fight that takes place in a burning San Fransisco, but the camera constantly cuts away from the action and continues to focus on the stonefaced humans. It's like they are trying to make the movie out to be this epic drama about love and undying loyalty and therefore only using the monsters as some kind of deus ex machina to drive the story forward. That leaves us with a monster movie with very little monster action, and no human protagonist that we care about.

So what was good then?
The scope and scale of the movie was good. One of the first scenes show this massive quarry where thousands of little people scurry about and you get the feeling, right away, that this film is going to be big.
The monsters are also gigantic, and when they slam each other into buildings, it looks really cool. The sound however doesn't...sound at all.

When you think of Godzilla, the first thing that pops into your mind is booming footsteps and deafening roars. For a 300 feet lizard, Godzilla is an excelent sneaker. Rarely do the ground shake from his footsteps and when he roars you are not really blown away by the awesone force. Not even when all three monsters tear each other apart do we get a cacophany of screams and explosions. I don't know if the director was trying to go the realistic way and make all the sounds very distant, because there are scenes where Godzilla is right behind our hero and you can't hear a thing. It's almost as if they forgot to add the sound effects in some scenes.

I promised I would keep this short and sweet, and I am a man of my word.

All in all, Godzilla was a gigantic failiure on almost every point. To watch this movie is a waste of your time and money. You would get a lot better bang for your buck if you watch the original Godzilla or Cloverfield instead.


Godzilla? More like Borezilla.