User reviews

I followed this film for several months before it's release and my expectations were sky high. What I was hoping for was a fresh new take on the original Godzilla film; a grittier, darker, and far more complex film. What I got instead was a cookie cutter military action film that horrendously segued into a pseudo super hero film.

Unfortunately the ending of the film completely ruined it for me. The film blatantly asks the viewer to choose whether or not Godzilla is the hero, when in fact Godzilla is not a hero nor a villain. What Godzilla represents is sheer chaos and destruction; Godzilla is "a force of nature" and that's how things should be left off. Unlike the atomic bomb, Godzilla cannot be controlled by man, and the beast operates on it's own terms. Thus this is where the main problem of the film lies. The film teeters between this idea that Godzilla, somehow, is our savior, but for the first 90 minutes of the film the viewers are lead to believe that Godzilla must be stopped at all costs. But this problem mainly stems from the poorly contrived military plot.

Which brings me to my second biggest flaw, which are the human characters. The only redeeming characters to the film are Joe Brody, portrayed by Bryan Cranston, and Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, portrayed by Ken Watanabe. Unfortunately their time on screen are severely lacking and any possible resemblance of character development goes out the window once we are introduced to the dry military portrayal of Ford Brody, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Instead of going the military/action route the film would have benefited from taking a more detective/mystery/thriller path, which the trailers so falsely advertised. But back to the subject at hand. The characters, besides the previously mentioned two, are dull and lack any redeeming qualities that the viewer can latch on to, which causes us to simply not care about what is happening to them. The film tries so desperately to establish a tone, but that's all the film does. There are no layers or complexities to the situations that are presented, which go hand in hand with the simplistic and boring characters.

My third gripe about this film is that it struggles to identify itself. Is it a disaster movie? A hero film? A monster movie? A thriller? A horror? A science fiction? Well in case you couldn't figure it out, it tries to blend all of these different genres and more. But you often see that in military action films that strive to be more than what it is. If the filmmakers simply went 100% the monster/action genre route then the film would succeeded in delivering it's message and concept. Instead this film appears to have been bogged down by multiple script revisions and having too many hands at the wheel.

And in regards to the elephant in the room, the film is advertised as Godzilla when it really should have been advertised as "The People vs Godzilla." Godzilla is only featured in about 20 mins of this 122 min film. While the human characters, excluding Cranston performances, are featured for a good 60 mins. Try to keep yourself awake during long dialogues between bone-headed military superiors and soldiers not listening to the scientists, a boring and shoe horned love interest and blah blah blah...

Overall the film was over-hyped with expertly crafted trailers and advertisements to lead viewers, like me, to believe that this iteration of Godzilla was going to take this franchise to the next level. Like the name itself, Godzilla is a "God" like creature that does not play by mankind's rules, vice-versa, mankind must learn that Godzilla is something that we cannot control and we must adapt to live in his realm of destruction and chaos, essentially hell on earth. Godzilla is not a figure that should be labeled as hero or villain, unless that's the initial purpose. Taking cues from films such as Alien and Jurassic Park would have greatly benefited this film in the long run and would have established not just a franchise but a bonafide contender for many Summers to come.

This is my first Godzilla movie. I'm honestly a bit disappointed.

I'm not sure about the plot, it just seems to be weirdly engineered towards a battle between Godzilla and these other monsters, but meh. All those scenes with the soldiers really bored me and the main character had almost no personality. I also feel like there are many plot holes.

The best parts were in the first half when they discover the mysterious beings and try to begin giving some explanations. But besides that there is almost no plot.

The sinister end-of-the-world mood is well displayed but after 40 of repeatedly the same stuff, it just gets bland and boring.

So yeah. First half was acceptable. Second half quite boring. Possibly this is just another case where the American adaptation is much worse than the Japanese original? I don't know but I might need to find out for myself.

I understand that this is a film about Godzilla, and the masses buying their tickets want to see cities and landscapes smashed to a million billion bits. In this respect, Godzilla 2014 delivers outright. But there's no reason we shouldn't get a decent story as well. As soon as we see the eponymous creature, the humanistic side of the film descends into chaos. The characters are one-dimensional, the script is terrible and I can barely remember any dialogue. In addition, I couldn't help but note how intrusive Alexandre Desplat's soundtrack was. Gone is the tense, choral subtlety of the film's trailer and we are instead treated to Hollywood-standard booming orchestral pieces that actually make the monsters less terrifying.

But on a positive note, Godzilla himself was absolutely gorgeous, and Edwards bravely waits almost a full hour to unleash him in one of the best unveilings of any cinematic character of all time. It's mad to think how an entirely digital creation can become the emotional centre of a story. And someone definitely deserves some kind of award for the film's sound design. It's just a shame that Edwards loaded the film with walking clichés, while forgetting to give show-stealer Bryan Cranston anything to do. Very disappointing.

If you are like me you wanted to see this film for the spectacle. Disaster, excitement and destruction. Godzilla fighting other monsters in never before seen fidelity. This is what it is really is: approx. 10 minutes of the above (although mostly in the dark!) and the rest is boring characters coincidently stumbling from one boring talking piece to the next. If you make a film in which Godzilla is mostly happening in the background and on TV screens have the decency to market it accordingly. After many years I really have to evaluate my method of seeing movies on opening night if this trend of audience deception continues. Shame on you!

So forgettable that I forgot I watched it after seeing it.

Godzilla's 2014 remake is a modern take on the classic movie with a lot more CGI. Yet, it doesn't bring anything innovative or new to the table. All the cliches have been done since the classic. Audiences will yawn at the storyline and plot devices. It's the same tale we've seen a thousand times of a giant kaiju causing destruction that's somehow...good?

2/5. Cheap Hollywood pulp fiction that "tries to introduce a classic to a modern audience."

I hate "action" movies which are shooting "visiual effect" scenes at night. You almost only have visiual advantage rather than non-action films but hiding behind the curtain of darkness is non sense, can't see what "effects" going due to high-dark atmosphere.

There's plenty to love for fans of special effects and monster mayhem in general, but for those who want to see a good original story there's hardly anything there.

Technically it's a well made movie that navigates through all the necessary story beats for this kind of movie, but it lacks personality or soul. The characters aren't interesting or have much of a personality - they're basically just stereotypes instead of real people - and because of that it's really hard to care what happens to them and so the whole movie becomes uninteresting. The actors do plenty of emoting, looking teary eyed at each other or at the mayhem around them and there's lots of personal tragedy etc. but it all feels lifeless.

There's some impressive visuals in the movie especially near the end when Godzilla & co. really lets it loose, but sadly these gorgeous images are hollow because the story is lacking. The visual part of the movie is the only inspired part. The story just goes through the motions of a stereotypical monster movie with some themes of nature's balance or whatever thrown into the mix to justify the special effects.

... to the company that fakes the IMDb buzz of this movie. Unbelievable, they faked the votes (it still came down from 9+ to 7+) but they also faked comments and forum entries. Nice.

The movie itself.... superb CGI, terrible acting, many awkward scenes (+ unnecessary children), a story not worth mentioning.

I really don't know how to get 10 lines together about this movie which is the minimum review length on IMDb. So I will write more about faking reviews. Much like the end of network neutrality, the end of internet review neutrality is nearing. You will need a lot of money to get good ratings, the product ratings will then be done for you no matter how worthless the product. IMDb ratings used to be such a great source of information but I saw it decline over the years. Pretty soon it will all be fake.

Sorry, but this Godzilla was a letdown in terms of expectations. Sure, the monsters looked great, and Godzilla itself was looking like the real deal, compared to the 1998 dud; but it's a MONSTER movie, not Terms of Endearment. It's supposed to be summer slam-bang entertainment, not one of those Oscar seeking type. The preview hype made me expect something along the lines of the first Transformers' movie - brawn AND brains. When it should have had more throat grabbing monster fights, Godzilla ended up being given less screen time appearance than some of the actors. One moment he appears, and you adrenalin goes up expecting a big pow-wow; next, the scene cuts to Elizabeth Olsen's character- not the kind of letdowns you want in a summer movie! And the acting - other than Cranston & Binoche, everyone else was wooden - including the great David Strathairn and the usually dependable Ken Watanabe. Look closely, and you'll find unreal expressions from the likes of Sally Hawkins. Aaron-Taylor gives an almost perpetual blur look for the duration of the movie. The Plot too- weak. Sections of the script seems to borrow from a typical Syfy channel do - why is it always down to one scientist who discovers the 'plot'? What are the guys at NASA or the UN doing? And why is it nobody believes that scientist until everything goes kaboom? You think with a budget of some $160m, they'll at least try to bring the script up to date in this age of the internet, but no. I'm giving it a 5 and not a 3 or a 4,only cos of Cranston's short but effective appearance, and cos of Godzilla's monster-awesome looks. Otherwise, this is a biggest letdown since The Dark Knight Returns.