3 years later: I still love the Godzilla design, the MUTOs quickly grew on me from the beginning and I still like them a lot, I still love the big set pieces, and I'm so happy it jumpstarted a new franchise.
However, I rarely watch this film from beginning to end any more. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is that I have a toddler who loves Godzilla and he does not have the attention span for all the character scenes. However, the bigger reason is:
1. The Blu-ray release of this film is appallingly bad. Not only is it way too damn dark (which plagues every version of its US release except the Blu-ray 3D version, seemingly), but I have watched it on two different TVs and sound crackles like it's blowing out the speakers during several key moments--specifically when Godzilla's tail rises out of the San Francisco Bay. I recently watched the digital copy and I was so relieved to finally not have that happen. If I didn't know better, I'd think WB felt the film was beneath contempt instead of the beginning of their big shared universe franchise.
2. I think the monster screen-time is perfectly fine, I like the cutaway at the airport, and I don't think Bryan Cranston dying was a mistake--but I still
do not care about the Brody family's problems. Elizabeth Olsen and the kid are total non-entities that just vanish when they could have actually added to the film, and Ford is just
so boring. So huge stretches of the film that should be making me care about the characters instead feel like padding. Why couldn't we have spent more time with Ken Watanabe, who is unquestionably the film's most interesting character, or made Elizabeth Olsen into an actual character? And the way that the nuke goes off at the end is the ultimate insult because it feels like a repeat of
The Dark Knight Rises and it means that the constant justification for Ford being around because he's EOD was
never relevant.
3. I am so damn tired of having to defend this movie against the same stupid complaints. "Godzilla was a cameo in his own movie!" "Godzilla was too fat!" "Bryan Cranston shouldn't have died!" It's always the exact same things over and over and it's exhausting and I start beginning to resent the film because of things that aren't even its fault.
So, ultimately, I like it a bit less than I used to. I still think it's a good movie, but if it had had better human characters it could have been great.
GoWhaleTours wrote:Kaijunator wrote:Still love it. It's tied with a few others for my favorite Goji film. My only problems were Joe's death (I think that was too early) and them cutting away from the kaiju too much.
EDIT: Another problem I had was that the US was trying to nuke the kaiju. They fed on radiation. It would be like giving them breakfast, lunch, and dinner all at once. It would've also increased the growth rate of the MUTO offspring.
Yeah but wasn't the sheer force of the bomb supposed to kill them? We feed on food, but too much at once can be bad for you.
I think you're all missing the fact that it was supposed to be a bad plan. Well, I mean that "we'll kill them with the thing that they feed on that also couldn't kill Godzilla 60 years ago" was the explicitly bad and arrogant plan. I honestly don't know if we were also meant to think they were idiots for choosing to transport the nukes through a path that was guaranteed to take them into the path of the female MUTO.
vibramrunner wrote:NewBloodGodz wrote:If I had to summarize it perfectly, I feel that Godzilla truly did end in 2004, everything else afterwards is just an attempt to pay tribute to what once was.
The thing is, if you felt that Godzilla really ended in 2004, you'd also have to admit that Final Wars was at least as far removed from the original 1954
Exactly this. Elliott Kalan (head writer of the new MST3K, former head writer on The Daily Show) would love to frequently point out on The Flophouse Podcast that the moral of
Godzilla: Final Wars is Godzilla--and, by allegorical extension, Japan--being told to forgive America for nuking Japan. That may not have been the actual intent but it does kind of come off that way when you think about it.
And then you have
Godzilla vs. Megalon, where Godzilla is at his most heroic and he is basically
fighting for the right to test nuclear weapons.
I'd also argue NewBloodGodz's objections are also oversimplifying the 2014 film. Yes, I can see why an American Godzilla would make you uneasy and, yes, the film uses Fukushima imagery way too casually without having a deeper meaning--but it also does the same with 9/11 imagery. There's a lot of none-too-subtle commentary in the film about the military industrial complex that America has built and how it can often make threats to our nation far worse by interfering.
