Gogira

Godzilla (2014) was pleasantly entertaining to me. I’ve never cared much for the original Godzilla films, but I did like the Godzilla (1998) that everyone hates so much. I just love dragon monster things and she was very dragon-y. I didn’t really care that it didn’t follow any of the Godzilla rules or whatever. I didn’t have an interest in watching the 2014 version mainly because I just don’t crave some Godzilla, but after seeing it I would recommend it to people who enjoy some fun monster action.

I was disappointed, but already made aware, that there was not much shown of Godzilla in the movie. I enjoy the movie for the monsters, not the story or anything else going on outside of Godzilla killing radiation eating bugs. I hear the second one is much better for monster fights.

The biggest problem I had with the film was how ineffective the story they were telling was because the audience knew Godzilla was the answer. Godzilla will come. Godzilla will win. It kind of has the Superman feel to it. If we watched the film and Godzilla failed and the world became a big giant muto breeding ground, no one would watch it…probably. I personally thought the muto were visually more appealing and better developed in terms of how they work than Godzilla. From my understanding based only on the information I got out of the film, Godzilla is just an earth guardian that helps keep the earth’s balance. He doesn’t look like he could be amphibious to me, and I don’t understand how he exists or where he came from (I get the whole radiation thing they montage, but I don’t get how Godzilla is still alive.) This is where I start to nitpick instead of enjoy the movie because the muto felt more well defined than him. I guess I wanted a bit more than whatever Dr. Ishiro Serizawa was going on about.

As soon as the muto hatches and Ford’s father die, I feel the story dies with it and from there on the only thing interesting is the monsters. It could just be that I cared more about the father than I did the son, and I didn’t really feel the need to connect to Ford or his family. Once the father died, I was more interested in Dr. Ishiro Serizawa. Unfortunately, all he did the entire movie was rave about Godzilla and wanting to see Godzilla. Godzilla will fix it. And that quote from the trailer I remember seeing over and over, “Let them fight.”

On the other side of things, I love how every effort made by the humans just makes the problem worse. Their involvement basically makes the audience shout at them like hecklers in a scary movie shouting at the person going down the dark alley. It was very obvious they were trying to get the point across that human interference with nature just makes things worse. I might actually say it is social commentary on humans trying to fix problems that should just be left alone.

I know it seems like I just ranted about how I disliked it, but I really did enjoy it and I think I’d watch it again given some time. I would also like to see the new one, especially if it has more monsters and less annoying people.