Godzilla (2014)

Rating: 7/10

This is a really late review, so I'll do my best to not reiterate too much on what everyone else has said, and do my best to summarize.

"Godzilla" I feel is worth seeing, especially in theaters, but mainly for the last 25-30 minutes. I feel the film is shot well, has nice build up to the monsters, doesn't rely on a lot on shaky cam (to my immense relief), and overall looks great in terms of a modern day monster movie. Haters of the 1998 "Godzilla" (that's pretty much everyone) will be pleased.

That being said, the film's main flaw is its uninteresting human characters. Or the script's idea to focus on the uninteresting ones. More interesting characters played by Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe are kind of shuffled aside to concentrate more on the family aspect during these monster disasters. The family aspect in question is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who plays the grown up version of Bryan Cranston's son, and Elizabeth Olsen who plays Johnson's wife. Johnson's character is a military man who somehow seems to be the only one who has bomb experience in all the other military people he comes across, which would take me too long to explain why that doesn't make any sense. As for Elizabeth Olsen, she's a nurse and caring mother. That's about the extent of her character. Literally.

Right off the bat, you can see director Gareth Edwards trying to emulate Spielberg by borrowing the build up aspect of "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". The buildup and story structure itself is quite good. You see Bryan Cranston and his own family experience, with the first coming of the monsters. Then it fast forwards to years later and you see his son experience it again on a much greater scale. But as I stated before the problem is Aaron Taylor-Johnson's character and his family isn't as interesting. It's not to say they don't DO things, they do plenty. Johnson's character arms nukes to take down the monsters, avoids the monsters when they attack him on  not one but two separate train incidents, and even runs around their nesting area at the finale. The wife does what a wife does best and worries about her husband while doing her best to take care of their child, who is not at all re-memorable enough to even mention. The thing director Edwards seems to have forgotten when making a homage to the likes of "Jaws" is that you when watch "Jaws" you find yourself as interested in the men on the boat as much as the monster in the water. If Aaron Taylor-Johnson had been eaten by one of the monsters in this film, it may have gotten a shoulder shrug out of me at best. I couldn't really say I cared for him or his little family that much.

But as I stated earlier: The last 25-30 minutes is worth it despite all the previous mentioned flaws. You get to see Godzilla in full monster fighting action and its a wonder to behold. I'll say right now, lovers of "Pacific Rim" may be a bit spoiled walking into this movie, but the Godzilla battle at the end is just as satisfying. My only complaint at all having to do with the fighting, is that we don't get to see any iconic Godzilla enemies such as Mothra, King Ghidorah, Rodan, etc, etc. I can only hope now that we've seen Godzilla in his full glory we will get more monster fighting in the sequels as well as appearances of the aforementioned monsters. But more than anything else other than the monsters, I hope the returning human characters can be more compelling. Overall, I'm making it sound worse then it is and while it has its lesser moments it's worth it to see the big guy on the screen again.