Godzilla (2014) - Review

Full disclosure:  I don't actually hate the 90s Godzilla with Matthew Broderick.  It's certainly not a good movie, but a guilty pleasure, if you will.  I mean come on, just watch it, it's hilarious!  Full disclosure part deux: I've never seen any of the other Godzilla movies.  I've watched James Rolfe's Godzilla retrospective, so I have the gist, but I haven't actually watched them.  They seem like they wouldn't be super interesting to me, though I may eventually check them out.

So right off the bat, I can't really compare this movie to any of the others except the other American one, which was bad anyway.  Luckily, this movie isn't anywhere NEAR as clunky and goofy as the '98 version.  However, it doesn't escape those monikers completely, as you will notice when Godzilla gives a knowing "I tried" look to the protagonist during the final fight.  It's ridiculous; the whole concept of these ancient creatures lying dormant for millions of years and then hatching, only to feed on radiation: ridiculous.  It's just a matter of "can you get past that and just enjoy the movie?"

SHE'S JUST LOOKING FOR HER BABIES

I got past it easily enough; things like that only bother me if the movie is awful and I'm bored anyway; but this movie isn't boring.  It is, however, misleading.  Don't pay the trailers any mind: the marketing team did a great job hiding all of the cool stuff that happens in the movie, and some things play out in a way contrary to your expectations (particularly the fate of a certain character -- I don't really want to spoil it), so it gets points for creativity.

But from a structuring standpoint, it still feels painfully formulaic and derivative when the hour and a half setup implicitly promised much much more than 'standard city destruction' fare.  The characters and actors, aside from the always phenomenal Bryan Cranston, are pretty underwhelming, to say the least, and the movie doesn't really work from a storytelling perspective after the setup because the rest is just running and gunning.  Ultimately we end up with a movie that has an interesting first half, but sort of devolves into a generic disaster movie in the second.  Oh well, at least it's way better than Pacific Rim.