Godzilla (2014) Review

"You have no idea what's coming."

-Joe Brody

When a massive, winged, insect-like creature emerges from the ruins of a old nuclear power plant, humanity bans together in order to find away to stop it, but they aren't the only ones.  The legendary beast, Godzilla (T.J. Storm), returns from the depths to hunt down the creature, but is Godzilla a friend or a foe to the human race?

What Works:

The visuals effects for this movie are really fantastic.  The insect creatures (MUTO's) and Godzilla both look amazing and the action sequences have a spectacular look.  

There are a couple of fun moments throughout the film like the monorail sequence and the trestle bridge sequence.  Both have a couple of really cool shots and interesting moments.

The 3rd act battle between Godzilla and the MUTO's is pretty awesome.  This is why I watch monster movies; to see monsters beat the crap out of each other and destroy buildings.  What we get here is really awesome, especially when he uses atomic heat beam on a MUTO.  It's easily the best part of the movie.

Finally, Bryan Cranston goes all out in his performance as Joe Brody.  He doesn't get a ton of screen time, but he brings a lot of emotion to it.  We get three scenes with his wife and when she dies, it's devastating and that is solely because of Cranston's performance.

What Sucks:

I found the majority of the film to be very frustrating.  A lot of what the characters were doing didn't make any sense, especially once Bryan Cranston is out of the film.  For a large section of the movie, I didn't understand what anyone was doing or why.  The motivations of the characters were not well fleshed out.

Out main protagonist, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is extremely dull.  There is nothing interesting about his character.  Taylor-Johnson isn't very good in the role and when he has to act with Cranston, it's very noticeable.

The other characters aren't very interesting either.  We don't get anything for us to become emotionally attached to any of them and they don't make any smart decisions so I can't root for them either.  I simply didn't care.

So, we don't have interesting or likable characters...no big deal.  This is a monster movie, right?  We'll just have tons of awesome monster fights to make up for it.   Wrong.  Apart from the final battle, every time Godzilla shows up to fight a monster, the film would instantly cut away.  It was incredibly frustrating.  No, I don't want to see what these boring and stupid human characters are up to!  Show me these behemoths throwing down and destroying the city!  This is why I watch monster movies!  Having just one fight at the end is not acceptable.

Verdict:

Godzilla is an incredibly frustrating film.  The characters are boring and stupid, anytime something of interest starts to happen, the film cuts awaits, and the character decisions are not well fleshed out.  The final fight sequence is awesome, Bryan Cranston does a great job (and should have been the protagonist), and the visual effects are excellent, but this movie is extremely overrated and not worth your time.

 4/10: Bad