Anyway here I am and here's my first entry,
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| From (http://www.beyondhollywood.com/uploads/2013/07/Godzilla-2014-Movie-Poster2.jpg) |
Godzilla (2014)
Movie review
By: James Fennimore
Pre-note: First off
spoilers...I guess, Second I will be comparing this movie to Pacific
Rim also any and all classic Godzilla movies. Let's begin...
When the trailer for
Godzilla was released, I was ecstatic, though at the time I was only
a young kid and didn't know exactly what the hell “Godzilla” was,
but still wanted to be part of something this cool. That's right I'm
talking about Godzilla (1998) a movie that I would later find out to
be a horrible mock of everything Godzilla stood for, but hey at least
it got me interested...
It was not long after that
me and my neighbor/best friend at the time, rented any Godzilla
movies we could! We loved these movies, knowing every second just how
cheesy and yet amazing they were, I can't tell you how many times we
would re-enact monster fights or dub in our own voices over the
monsters (as we watched the movies). It was special to me. ---To hear
a new Godzilla was coming out this year had me screaming like a
piglet. Pacific Rim was an amazing amount of cheese, class, and had
enough monster in it to keep me entertained. With the very thought of
a new Godzilla movie coming out after a movie like PR I had myself
per-imagining Godzilla monster vs. monster fight scenes in brand new
2014 movie magic!....sadly it looks like I’ll have to keep
imagining them.... That of course is not to say that there isn't some
cool fight scenes to be found in this movie...it just takes about an
hour and 30 minutes to get there out of a basically 2 hour film.
First, lets talk about our
main star Bryan Cranston's son. What's that? You thought it was going
to be so cool to see award-winning actor Bryan Cranston as the main
character in a Godzilla movie? So did the fucking trailer. Bryan does
a great job in this movie balancing a great deal of emotions for a
simple fleshed character, maybe a bit too good. Bryan is only in
about the first 15 minutes of the film, then he dies. He is so
interesting and great the trailer had him in it more than Godzilla!
But no, he dies, at pretty at much the beginning. Leaving us with his
boring ass son as the main....what a let-down. (Also the trailer
makes it seem as if Godzilla is the cause of Byran's Cranston's
wife's death. This is not the case. It is the new monster that's the
cause (that too is a let-down to me)).
Next let's start with some
good ol' TOHO comparison. The idea of Godzilla, the very root, came
from horror. HORROR ok? Godzilla is an force of nature pissed off at
stupid humans for causing wars. It wasn't until TOHO decided to add
in new monster after monster did Godzilla really become the idea of
fighting off evil or protecting the planet. THIS movie (2014)
believes Godzilla is a good-guy pretty much from the beginning. This
is a problem because the other monster(s) in the movie The MUTO as
they're called, gets most of the movie's screen time, causing havoc
and being 'bad' by wanting to breed. And then Godzilla comes in and
“Saves the day”. This kills any mood to have Godzilla be seen
as...oh I don't know; a monster.
Even then the movie is very
picky about it's fight scenes. In the classic TOHO movies there was
tons of dialogue of people trying to figure out what the fuck was
going on, but thankfully this was interrupted by some great pretty
long fight scenes involving Godzilla fighting off monsters. This
brings us to another huge problem, the first time you see Godzilla
(about 30 minutes in) and you think he's gonna fuck shit up, the
movie cuts away and brings us to the main character's family we don't
care about. For what you ask? A cheap fucking joke involving the
main character's son watching the monsters fight on TV, as we the
audience see barely two clips of Godzilla biting the MUTO. Then it's
off to a fuck-ton of more dialogue. Yes we see Godzilla moving around
(chasing the MUTO (in-between talking scenes), which the movie now
tells us has run away from the fight....not like we'd like to see
that or anything).
The movie wastes it budget
on having the monsters on a wild goose chase running around all over
the world.
*
So in short, the movie gives
us a “human perspective P.O.V.”, the “Clover-field” route.
This works in Clover-field because we don't know what's
coming.....this does not work in a Godzilla film because we fucking
know Godzilla! WE want to see him fight, we want the movie to stop
taking the fucking fighting scenes and throwing them to the side for
more “emotion” from these characters we don't care about...
and another thing, Godzilla
only uses his fire-breath at the end, HOW..FUCKING. PREDICTABLE for a
movie like this; again let's look at TOHO that had his fire-breath
used all the time, (It would be like if spiderman couldn't use his
webs till the end of his movie).
Overall score: 6.9/10
Positives
- + Godzilla looks great! Cool fire-breath (When he uses it)
- + Bryan Cranston <3
- + Movie looks great, tons of jaw dropping shots
- + I like the Mothra easter eggs (one in the class room at the beginning, and another in the wrecked Japan (there's a glass case with cocoons in it that has “Mothra” written on it)
Undecided
/The Muto looks like it
belongs in the Lost Planet videogame series
Negatives
- Too many cliches, happy ending
- cut-off fight scenes
- boring mains
- not enough monster development (these are characters too ya know)
- I wish I could have liked this film more, (I really want to) guys either embrace the cheese like Pacific Rim and the TOHO classics and form it yourself, or go the god-damn serious route (not a awkward mix).
- And another thing, the trailer's better than the movie
There's the review, it hurts
that in a day and age like this with all the comic book movies coming
out that all I get is a poorly cared for Godzilla film.
As Godzilla descends back
into the ocean after a long battle I to am going to desend off my
“ocean” and watch all the Godzilla classics I recorded on my DVR.
Why did I ever think anything could beat them?
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