Quick Review: Godzilla (2014)

Expectations
I went into this film with average expectations.  All my favorite critics liked it (Leonard Maltin, Silas Lesnick, Kate Erbland, etc.) but my good friend Kevin (who is also a critic at redcarpetrefs.com) was quite disappointed with it.

Thoughts
With these tempered expectations, I have to say that I was a little disappointed.  I can see why it would appeal to a lot of people, however I just didn't 'feel' it.

It tried to be smarter than it should have.  Although I ultimately thought Pacific Rim was a silly film, at least it knew it was silly.  Godzilla is not a complex subject matter, so I thought it ridiculous that they tried to make it more sophisticated than it was.

Ultimately this 'clever' back story took away from what people wanted to see: giant monsters fighting!  For a monster movie, there is a very noticeable absence of fighting.  In fact, with the exception of the climax scene, they try to NOT show Godzilla.  I suppose Gareth Edwards decided to follow the "don't show the shark till close to the end" principle, cleverly avoiding much monster action until the end.  As a result of this, I personally felt cheated.  The movie just didn't know what it wanted to be.

The characters were pretty shallow, with the exception of Bryan Cranston's. This saddens me because both Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are both great!  Same with Sally Hawkins and Ken Wanatabe!

My friend Kevin told me that it wanted to be a Steven Spielberg film.  I went in looking for this, and found it to be pretty obvious that the director, Gareth Edwards, is a Spielberg disciple.  He employed mirror and crane shots to no avail, but none of them were nearly as effective as when Spielberg does it.  There were also A LOT of Jurassic Park references.

The special effects weren't nearly as good as Pacific Rim, although I think I liked Godzilla more overall.

3/5 Disco Balls.