Trevor

I think I'm going to re-watch Godzilla 98 while this mediocre mess is in my mind. 98 stunk and wasn't what I wanted in a Godzilla film, but I swear it disappointed me less than this one; and had it's moment.... Well, I better just watch them both again.

Solid Snake

My problem with the Millenium series is.... the cgi. a lot of it makes me cringe.

mndtrp

I enjoyed the movie, but have the same complaints as many others.

Mabuse

Got around to watching this. What a bad film. So many bad choices by the filmmakers.

The decision to cast great actors in small roles was disastrous. Don't tease us with great actors doing good work in tiny roles and then switch it up so the rest of the film is nobody actors doing shitty work.

The decision to keep Godzilla off screen and have most of the fighting elided was also terrible. That's just not the spirit of a Godzilla film. Godzilla films often employ slow buildup, this film does too, and that's fine. But when the fighting starts it needs to be all about the fighting. Many, many minutes of direct fighting and smashing. That's what made the genre so popular and so fun.

The scope of this film was so limited that it actually felt SMALLER than the '50s and '60s efforts. Every scene that isn't a brief monster fight takes place in a bunker or war room or command center with characters spouting exposition and telling us things that should have been shown to us.

Fucking pathetic. I can't believe I heard so many good things about this film when it came out.

RocShemp

My issues in a nutshell. I particularly agree about there being a slow buildup (which is fine) with no payoff (which is terrible).

This is one of the best reviewed pieces of shit I have ever had the displeasure of watching.

Mabuse

Now I'm about to go watch Man of Steel for the first time. I'm hoping for a better result, but I have a feeling I won't get it.

dsa_shea

You get what you asked for and more but to absurd levels

Hokeyboy

I'm on record with my distaste of this movie, but I watched it again recently to see if lowered expectations and a fresh look would change my rather low opinion of this movie.

My opinion did in fact change. The movie was even worse than I remembered. What a joyless, soulless, utterly boneheaded and misguided movie.

DaveyJoe

Still love it.

Mr. Cinema

Only a little over 3 years until the sequel!

Giantrobo

Same here.

maingon

Same here. Was my favorite movie last summer.

islandclaws

I've watched it at least a dozen times (I'm a ridiculously big G fan) and never has the human drama risen above passable, at best; at worst, we've got everything with Olsen, who is atrociously overacting the weak material she's given. Johnson is a zombie, barely registering. I def agree the constant cockteasing gets very old, and we certainly needed more uninterrupted G fighting, but I really like the universe Edwards has built here for future use.

Plus, Godzilla looks fucking killer. Roar could use some work, but his design makes me really happy.

Josh-da-man

God, yes. It's just awful. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Godzilla 98 is a better fucking movie. Adding to joyless and soulless, I would also add turgid and dull, tedious, and plodding. Most of the shit happens at night, so it's like watching gray blobs swirling around a black surface.

This movie promised Walter White vs Godzilla, and we got neither.

From what little we saw of Godzilla himself, the design looked nice. It's too bad he wasn't in a better movie. The Mutos, on the other hand, were uninspired and looked like rejects from Cloverfield.

Abob Teff

Almost a six year bump ...

Revisited this in preparation for Godzilla vs. Kong. I remembered people pretty well shitting all over it, but me being lukewarm on it. However, when I combed back through this thread, it seems I was better than lukewarm and the initial reception of this was much better that I remembered.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m not sure, but perhaps having the world building of a sequel and Kong: Skull Island helped provide better context for what was a new world in 2014.

Aaron Taylor Johnson was very vanilla, but not as horrible as I thought. I think the thing to remember is that his character is not there to do anything or to drive the story forward. He is just there to provide a human POV. You really don’t want a charismatic, over the top GI Joe type in this part; it would be too distracting. It does seem it would have made more sense to just carry Cranston’s character on, but he could not have reasonably provided a “boots on the frontline” view through this story. You really needed a soldier to do that. Even Watanabe and Hawkins could not reasonably provide an “on the ground” view as often. That said, ATJ’s storylines were sometimes rather comical creations as a way to get him there.

In the context of 2021, I was very uncomfortable with him and Elizabeth Olsen being affectionate.

I had forgotten how beautiful this movie was. Yes, some of it was dark and difficult to see, but Edwards did a wonderful job showing the reality of the aftermath of natural disasters and in putting together scenes in ways we don’t normally see.

Tom Banjo

Oh shit, I didn’t realize that was the guy that played MCU Quicksilver. I guess it fits well if you’re into the incestuous Ultimate versions of those characters.

Dan

ATJ is by far the weakest link in this film. Other than that... It's act a damn good film, and a damn fine Godzilla film at that. Can't say the same for its direct sequel.

Hokeyboy

IMO still just awful as it was in 2014... nothing like that fist big reveal of Godzilla -- FINALLY!! -- and then instantly cutting away to a kid sleeping on a couch with the fight on a tiny TV in the background, and when they cut back to the fight scene, it's long since over.

Wow. Exciting. Give us more of that.

DaveyJoe

Godzilla is definitely the best film of the Monsterverse, and the only one that matches the gravity of the original 1954 film. It's got the best directing, pacing, and visual effects of the newer films. King of the Monsters features less compelling characters and action fatigue, outside of the fantastic Rodan sequence, robbing each fight scene of impact and making everything feel anticlimactic.

Dr. DVD

While I would have liked more monster action myself, this movie works better as an auteur movie from Gareth Edwards. If you look at his movie "Monsters" , which is definitely what landed him this gig, it's very similar in nature (lots of human stuff, not as much monster). He wanted to show a G movie from the POV of people trying to deal with the reality that these creatures are for real. The subsequent movies more or less took the Showa era approach with a little more edge to it.

Josh-da-man

I should probably revisit this at some point, but I didn't really like it the first time I watched it.

All I remember is a handful of murky scenes involving Godzilla and some other generic monster, while the bulk of the screen time was the Olsen Twins' kid sister wandering around looking for her lost purse or something.

Dr. DVD

It's strange going back through this thread and seeing so many users we haven't heard from recently, mostly because they apparently got "banned".

milo bloom

I rewatched this today for the first time since the theater and I still enjoyed it, that is, what I could see. I had to close the curtains and turn up the brightness on the tv and I could still barely see the last act.
This has to be an error, how was there not a recall on this Blu-ray?
Is the 4K actually visible in the dark scenes?

fujishig

Man, I was just going through the movies and started with this one. If this is the best one of the bunch, maybe I should stop now...

I agree with a lot of the earlier comments in this thread, the characters were tacked on. I was actually wondering if Cranston had some kind of dispute with the filmmakers, with his character just going away in the middle of the movie like that (I know they explained it but man). And then all the plot points you could drive, well, a train through. Like transporting the nuke by train near the kaiju, the kaiju leaving the nuke instead of taking it, the plan to detonate 20 miles off the coast of San Francisco without thinking of nuclear fallout, not trying to detonate before they reached land (I realize they would still have to deal with one kaiju but why not take one out away from civilization?), the navy riding along with Godzilla even though they consider him a threat, Godzilla having the care to go under the big carrier so as not to harm it, getting the nuke to the location and having it stolen away anyway, etc. etc.

I realize I was probably expecting too much, it is basically a turn your brain off and watch monsters go at it, except they spend half the movie on other stuff.

Mike86

Looking back at this thread and my comment compared with how highly I rated it in the poll I'm not sure what I was thinking. This really wasn’t that great.

The best part is the prologue with Cranston. After that it’s kind of just a lot of meh throughout. Godzilla is cool when he shows up, but he’s not in nearly enough of the movie.