Let me say this to start: Godzilla (2014) is not a bad movie at all, but i feel that a lot of people are not really going to get it.
The problem with Godzilla being, well, Godzilla, is that he is such an iconic figure that everyone knows him, but the general population has not actually seen a Godzilla movie; all they really have is the legend built around the icon and as such their expectactions for anything Godzilla are rarely realistic.
I think this is important in order to understand the reactions to this movie because, in an odd twist of destiny, this is a very Godzilla movie.
Seriously, when i was half-way through the movie i thought 'this is an extremelly Showa-esque movie', mostly because everything about it, from the way the characters acted as the focus to the way MUTO was the actual threat of the movie, was extremelly reminiscent from the classic Godzilla movies, mostly the ones made during the 60´s.
You can tell that Gareth Edwards knew the material, in some ways this movie is a love Letter to the Tomoyuki Tanaka era, but this is also one of the reasons why this movie will be divisive and it actually explains some of the problems people have with the film. For example, everyone makes a big deal about how for a movie called 'Godzilla' the titular monster is barely in the movie, and what´s more, the movie isn´t even about him. I agree with this complain to some extent, but thinking back on it, Godzilla also had a very minimal presence during the Showa Movies; those movies usually focused on whatever issue the human characters were dealing with and the monster which served as the main threat, with Godzilla only serving as the trump card. Sure, he rocked the screen whenever he was in it and looking forward to him is a big part of what made those movies enjoyable, but even some of the best Showa movies were barely about Godzilla.
I am not trying to say that the movie is perfect, it definetily has issues, but i can see the logic behind them and for the most they are not deal breakers.
There´s a few things i would have changed though; Brian Cranston was Great, and while i don´t have a lot of issues with his early death on the film, i wish his death had been a little more poignant. He was quite sympathetic and his actions were important for the plot, so i wish that his death had more gravitas to it for as it is it feels like they just needed to get him out of the movie as quickly as possible. I am not asking for a complete overhaul of his character or anything, but maybe a scene where people recognized his effort and redeem his character a little more.
I would have also liked to see a bit more focus on Dr. Serizawa, i really liked the way Watanabe played him and i enjoyed both his admiration for Godzilla and the way he tried to portray the tragedy of nuclear weapons. I said tried because this aspect of the movie was somewhat underplayed, but that was mostly an issue of the movie not giving him enough scenes.
Now, i know i said that i understood why there was so little Godzilla in this movie, but the fact remains that this movie was supposed to reintroduce the character and yet less than a minute is spent on his backstory. I am serious, the movie seems to take Godzilla for granted, and while this does fall in line with the approach classic Godzilla Movies took, this movie really needed to focus on giving him a proper introduction, especially because his origin is pretty interesting; it was both faithfull to the original story and surprisingly plausible, i really wanted to hear more of that.
I think that the only thing i could really hold against this movie is the way it focused on the monsters; they way Edwards choose to portray the Kaiju action for most of the movie was realistic and dare i say grounded, but while it was an interesting take it also downplayed the scope of the situation. There are a lot of scenes that could have been really epic, but they end up being just scenes.
The final act of the movie does make up for it, thinking about it i have never seen such a realistic destruction of a city. I mean yes, the fights in Pacific Rim were awesome, but most of the time it seemed that they were fighting in this magic Fighting Game corridor surrounded by buildings, while in Godzilla it actually feels like they are fightin on a city were people live.
All in all, i can say that i liked the movie, it has issues but i enjoyed it and i will probably watch it again, but i can tell that a lot of people will have issues with it becaue it certainly is not the Godzilla movie they were expecting, which is odd because, all things considered, this is an ACTUAL Godzilla movie.
Make of that what you will.
