Godzilla - Movie Review

Who's in it?

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen

What's it about?

When Joe Brody's(Bryan Crantson)nuclear plant in Japan (Kanto I believe) melts down with his wife trapped in the middle, he turns full Julian Assange and starts to investigate the occurrences around it. Flash forward 15 years, he and his son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) return to the site only to see a Rodan-esque creature escape.

A more accurate poster courtesy of u/soph_dawg of Reddit

Any Good?

This movie is basically just Hurt Locker 2 with a pterodactyl thrown in. The entire film is basically soldiers talking about how the kaiju grows in radiation, how they plan to nuke it (genius!) and then how they plan to disarm this ace-in-the-hole of their's to save San Francisco.

The acting was eh - Aaron Taylor-Johnson (he's Kick Ass dont'cha know?) who's now hella jacked played his family man-jarhead as well as possible, with Elizabeth Olsen playing the struggling nurse during the attacks on San Francisco adequately. Bryan Cranston seemed to really want to act well in this but just couldn't. He was frantic in the beginning, rushing his lines until he came to a speech to the plant owners where you can see his Heisenberg creeping to the fore. Joe Brody just wasn't menacing or powerful enough for him to perform as well as on Breaking Bad.

Also, some big dinosaur thing is in this, I think it might have been Godzilla but I don't know because YOU SEE ANGLED SHOTS OF HIM FOR AT ABOUT 10 MINUTES. Any time you do see Godzilla he's being battered or on his back, then it cuts to more soldier time and it was so aggravating. Not only that, but the two 'important' experts on him just disappear for the whole movie with nothing but cameos, it's ridiculous! 

That being said, Godzilla was goddamn impressive on his own, when we did see him. He was HUGE, they panned a bit up his body a couple times and WOW he was amazing. Even the sound he made was incredible, it was the exact sound from 1962 just remastered, he was perfect, just lacking in screentime (and respect imho). 

If you want to see a Godzilla/Kaiju movie, don't waste your money on this military movie - cutting away from the spectacular star of the show EVERY TIME really made me want to walk out. He's just not in it and the film itself isn't fun. Though the human characters act well, we just don't care enough. Watch Pacific Rim instead, in that it's all Kaiju fight scenes with giant robots and also, it's AWESOME. Another suggestion? Cloverfield is a better movie than this tried to be, this was an attempt to play off the camera tricks of the 2008 sci-fi flick and it fell flat completely, the original is so much better. 

Rating:  

The (sigh..) Eldest Gorgebag