Godzilla's return to the big screen since 2004's 'Godzilla: Final Wars' and the first American made 'Godzilla' movie since the 1998 Roland Emmerich version. And there is a lot happening in this movie. In 1999, two scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) investigate a quarry in the Philippines. Their investigation leads to the discovery of a massive skeleton and two parasitic pods, with one already hatched. Meanwhile in Janjira, Japan, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is in charge of a nuclear plant which soon goes into meltdown, killing his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche). A massive cover-up follows and Joe wants to know why. Flash forward fifteen years later to their son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who is an explosives expert in the Navy returning home from a tour of duty to be with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and son Sam (Carson Bolde). The night he comes home he is forced to go to Japan to bail his father out of jail, and together the two stumble upon the reactivated nuclear plant and discover that it's housing something called a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), still in it's pod from earlier in the movie. It soon escapes and travels to America to team up with another MUTO, and the titular monster must come in to save the day.
Simply put, I thought this movie was awesome. The cinematography is excellent, the score was also good, the special effects were among the best I've seen so far this year, the sound effects were equally as great, and once all three monsters finally come into play there is a tense atmosphere throughout the rest of the movie. But in all honesty I just loved seeing this new incarnation of Godzilla on the big screen, and seeing him fight two monsters. I really have no words for it other than that seeing those fight scenes later on in the movie was awesome, and they more than make up for the movie's shortcomings (some inconsistent acting from a good chunk of the main cast, and cutting away from the first two monster fights). Some have complained that Godzilla wasn't in his own movie enough, but I kinda liked the slow burn feel of the movie and the various teases and glimpses we got of Godzilla before the big reveal about halfway through the movie. That reveal is also worth the ticket price alone.
Now it has been years and years and years since I've seen any previous 'Godzilla' movie, so I can't exactly compare this to those. I mean I remember liking the 1998 version, but I was also in second grade when I saw that. Something a bit more recent that I can compare this to is last year's 'Pacific Rim', which was inspired by the old Japanese monster movies. 'Godzilla' blows 'Pacific Rim' out of the water in virtually every aspect. Sure 'Pacific Rim' had some good special effects, but the fight scenes overall were really underwhelming and I couldn't care less about the human characters. 'Godzilla' has even better special effects, the fight scenes are actually exciting, and despite the inconsistent acting from Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, and Juliette Binoche, I still actually cared about the human characters.
Now I saw this in IMAX 3D, mainly because my youngest brother chose to see it in that format. Seeing how massive the three monsters are on an IMAX screen was pretty cool, and the HALO jump sequence was also fun to see in the IMAX format. But there was little if any 3D effects. The trailers had more 3D effects in them than the movie that followed them. Then again this movie was shot in 2D and converted into 3D, but I've seen some 3D conversions that actually had some pretty good 3D ('Gravity' was converted to 3D).
Overall, 'Godzilla' is entertaining and impressive in the technical departments despite some inconsistency in the acting department. I had a fun time watching this in the theater.
TRAILERS
- Maleficent - This actually looks like it could be good in 3D.
- Edge of Tomorrow - Well....this comes out soon enough so I won't have to see the trailer again. Hopefully.
- Transformers: Age of Extinction - All will be well as long as this is better than 'Revenge of the Fallen'
- Jupiter Ascending - Haven't seen a trailer for this since the second 'Hobbit' movie last December. It doesn't look bad...might be something that I rent at some point.
- Interstellar - a full trailer that somewhat explains what this movie is about. Still looks really good.
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