Sunday, May 18, 2014

Discuss: Godzilla (2014)

Karen: He's here...Big G in all his glory! No, I'm not talking abut Galactus, it's Godzilla! The big lizard is back, and it looks like they may have gotten him right this time. Certainly Bryan Cranston's terrified voice-over lends a certain gravitas to the proceedings. Tell us what you think, as spoiler-free as possible for at least a few days, about this new version of the old King of the Monsters.
Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

10 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
May 18, 2014 at 7:11 AM
J.A. Morris said...

Going to see it on Tuesday. If Toho & Marvel were smart, they would've cashed in by giving us a nice, glossy color reprint of Godzilla's Marvel adventures. Until they do,that's why CBR files were invented.

May 18, 2014 at 12:39 PM
Edo Bosnar said...

Well, that preview is pretty effectively scary.
However, I'm not sure I really like that whole tsunami scene - the memory of that horrible disaster in 2004 is still a little too fresh for that kind of imagery in a horror/action flick.

May 18, 2014 at 2:19 PM
William said...

Saw it today. It was pretty good. I felt attempted to capture the spirit of the old Japanese movies while eliminating a lot of the campier aspects.

It seems to come at it from a "What if Godzilla was real?" sort of angle. It's got some pretty cool moments, but at the same time it's a little slow in parts. The film-makers took a page from Jaws by only showing the audience glimpses of Godzilla for much of the movie. While this serves to add to the suspense and make GZ seem more scary and mysterious, it also leaves you wanting to see a little more of the title character. As it is, the Big G has more of a supporting role as opposed to being the leading man.

As a longtime Godzilla fan, I would definitely recommend seeing it. It's worth at least one sit through.

May 18, 2014 at 6:07 PM
Anonymous said...

Gojira!

Glad William says it's good. I'm glad Toho and the Hollywood movie industry finally decided to make a reboot of the big G. I haven't seen it yet but it looks like they got it right this time around. I hope they make a sequel too with more of the classic monsters like Ghidrah and Mothra - but NOT Godzilla vs Kong Kong!


- Mike 'destroy all monsters' from Trinidad & Tobago.

May 18, 2014 at 6:53 PM
Anonymous said...

Sorry that should have been King Kong!

- Mike 'typo king' from Trinidad & Tobago.

May 18, 2014 at 6:55 PM
Anonymous said...

Ditto what William said; good, not great, but still enjoyable. Too much human drama - show us more monster fighting, movie! A few other problems, but ultimately a film worth seeing.

Hopefully this doesn't count as spoiler, but when the atomic breath finally makes its appearance, it is AWESOME! :-)

May 19, 2014 at 9:38 AM
Fred W. Hill said...

I saw Godzilla on Friday night and mostly enjoyed it, although regarding Anonymous' comment about the atomic breath, that moment was held off sooooo long I began to wonder if they'd jettisoned that aspect of Godzilla. As to the similarities of the movie destruction to the actual destruction of the tsunami of 2004 and other natural disasters, I'm sure that was meant to echo the metaphoric aspect of the original movie, where Godzilla was a stand in for the destructive force of atomic weapons. That aspect is still in play but now Godzilla and the other monsters are also stand ins for "natural disasters" that human behavior is accelerating. The destruction isn't just on display for mindless entertainment but to hopefully make viewers think a bit about what we're doing to the world and how it might come back to haunt us. At least that's what I got out of it.

May 19, 2014 at 9:17 PM
Karen said...

I was excited for this but came away disappointed. Not enough Godzilla or Bryan Cranston for me. The mutos got more screen time than Big G. Aaron Taylor Johnson is bland and his story wasn't compelling. And why must all giant monster fights be held in the dark? Parts were enjoyable but I'm not in a rush to see it again.

May 25, 2014 at 3:42 PM
Humanbelly said...

HBSon (a MAJOR Godzilliac, him-!) went with me yesterday morn for the early matinee (2nd viewing for him), and I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. I get what the creators were trying to come up with-- sort of approaching a giant-monster film from a sort of disaster-film perspective, where the story of the human protagonist(s) is what we're really following in, around, in front of, and right under the noses (or way out away from) the absolute mayhem being dished out by the giant monsters. But. . . that really only served to remind me of a movie that accomplished it much more effectively: CLOVERFIELD.

Bryan Cranston was truly great in the kind of role that often is given short shrift in most conventional horror/monster movies. HOWEVER-- since it was HEAVILY marketed as being "his" movie, the fact that he dies 20 minutes in is a major blow against it-- especially 'cause he was so flippin' moving in that whole opening sequence. Couple that w/ the fact that Aaron Johnson has almost no discernible screen charisma, nor a particularly memorable face, and you're left w/out a strong sense of driving personal viewer involvement. I will say that Elizabeth Olsen went a long way toward getting us over that hump (was quite impressed w/ her), but she disappeared as an active participant in the later stages of the story. You know what would have been great, although it would have needed a different scenario-? If she was the one tasked w/ the "kill the monster" mission.

Visually, they do a VAAAAASTLY improved job of depicting how ponderously giant-sized things simply have to move. I like that. Big G himself (oh, I'm going to get heat for this) still looks visually almost-comic to me, though. Honestly, he still looks like a creature that somehow evolved to look like a guy in a rubber suit. Oh, the irony.

You know what I'm HATING? The stupid 3-D glasses make the screen markedly darker, which is murder in a film that's dark almost throughout. It is REALLY hard to see at times. Same was true for WintSold & for X-Men:DoFP. Sadly, our schedule didn't give us the option for 2-D screenings, but my own circle of geeks have an active preference for 2-D at this point, if it means being able to actually SEE the movie.

HB

May 26, 2014 at 3:22 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Related Posts with Thumbnails