JANK

I think they did a perfect buildup for the Big G. You can't have the fights too early but you know the MUTOs & G sparred some before the climax, no need to show all that. Well done.

Solid Snake

I think the first fight should have been shown but be short. The 2nd fight should been just a long one that flowed through the end as a constant with splitting of the whole nuke plot. I guess some breather moments to not be a boring fight. I wouldn't mind some more visual of hiding/escaping civilians.

JANK

I think we are all being too picky! C'mon, this is the best Godzilla movie in YEARS!!

Orbi-Wan Techno

My nit to pick: USS Saratoga was decommissioned years ago, and was definitely not numbered 88... I served on Saratoga 1982 - 1985...

Hokeyboy

A textbook definition of 'damning with faint praise'

Traxan

I didn't know about the decommissioning but I knew the CVN was way off. Aren't we at like 78 for the George HW Bush?

Abob Teff

I cannot count myself as a Godzilla uberfan. It's not that I dislike the franchise, I just have never watched it. I've seen bits and pieces as a kid and am casually familiar with the mythos. That said ... I really enjoyed this incarnation.

Many of you are criticizing G's screen time. What more did you want? Do we need to see him crapping? Perhaps eating a kiosk featuring a shamelessly whored out product placement? I liked the way they did the cutaways, etc. I think it helped convey some sense of how disconnected we (as a modern society) are from actual events. We watch disasters and wars on the TV, but do we really grasp the enormity of what we are seeing?

Re: the nuke at the end ... A first I had the same reaction; the same reaction we all have every time this cliche is used (Batman?) ... But this may make sense if you paid attention during the movie. Since the thousands of MUTO eggs were feeding off of it, it is possible the radiation was depleted well below its anticipated load. After the bomb is detonated, I thought it was fairly obvious Godzilla absorbed the radiation to regenerate/wake up. It was heavily mentioned that the MUTO absorbed the radiation at the nuclear reactor site (when Cranston removes his mask).

The 3D was wonderfully sublime, which is when 3D is at its best. It should be used to add depth and gravity to a movie, not to "make you think you should duck." Things such as rain streaked windows and the layers in the train track sequence are examples of making 3D work as more than a gimmick.

I saw a mention of the camera lingering on a moth chrysalis in the aquarium ... Look closer - the aquarium is labeled "Dad's moth ra" ... Not sure what the "ra" was supposed to be as the rest of the word was rubbed off.

There are moths/butterflies and dinosaurs all throughout the pre-monster reveal sequences.

For those who are criticizing the design of the creatures ... When you last saw a 300 foot monster on your way to work, what did it really look like?

Re: monster made EMPs ... Electro magnetic pulses are a natural phenomenon. They are the result of an electric discharge (such as lightning). If the MUTOs were carrying a high charge it would not be unheard of for them to discharge this. Too many of you a thinking of this as a defense mechanism against human technology ... Think of it more like an electric eel. It's possible these discharges were also another form of communication (since they clearly could detect/feel energy sources from long distances).

Ash Ketchum

I don't get the love for "slow reveal" when it comes to a Godzilla film. We've been seeing Godzilla films (in the U.S. at least) for 58 years. We know what he looks like. We go to a Godzilla film because we want to see him do Godzilla stuff. If we don't see enough of it, we get upset. That's what's happening here. Or was the film made strictly for people who've never seen a Godzilla film before? That's the impression I got.

It's like rebooting Dracula and waiting till the end for Dracula to open his mouth to reveal his fangs and sink his teeth into someone's neck and expecting the audience to "ooh" and "ahhh" over the big "surprise." Or casting a new actor to play James Bond and waiting till the end before he announces himself as "Bond, James Bond," and expecting the audience to break out into applause. No, when Daniel Craig took the role, audiences expected him to do Bond stuff right from the start of the movie!

EctoCooler

It is because of people like you that most movies are shit.


--
"You don't know s***, Jon Snow."

DaveyJoe

I feel the exact opposite. We've seen Godzilla destroy cities, we've seen him do his radioactive breath, you show that early in the movie and keep showing it over and over and it gets boring and repetitive. This movie built up anticipation and suspense and I thought it really worked. When the money shot moments happened I was giddy because the movie treated them as something special. Godzilla's fighting the monsters and he starts to get his ass kicked, then his spine lit up blue I was like "he's about to do the radioactive breath!" and then he did and I wanted to cheer. The movie had several amazing moments for me where I felt like a kid, I'm glad the director approached the movie this way instead of just doing what we've seen before. There are 28 cheesy Godzilla movies that follow a strict formula, this was the first Godzilla movie that I would call a good film since the original.

Ash Ketchum

Well, thank you, Mr. Cooler, I wasn't aware I had such power. I don't make movies, I don't run a studio, I hardly go to the movies, and I rarely buy DVDs of new movies. I'm curious how I can wield such power under such circumstances. Welcome to DVD Talk, you should fit in just fine around here.

Solid Snake

I think you wanted something specific to you, Ash.

I liked this approach and do think think G had to be presented like this after all the shit G has had. I love the G films, some good and some bad. If they had just presented G like he was always presented in terms of actual presence I do think he'd be a little lacking in how special he is. The movie presented him as something of a force. A monster. An animal. Heavily reinforced by the tone of the film as well. It was special to see him when he'd pop out. We were bystanders to him.

I do think there was some missteps to some degree in terms of his length or transition of presentation in the moments but they don't kill the film.

Now I don't think Edwards will repeat his scheduling of G like he did in this one for the sequels but he's still got to not dilute the awesomeness of G. He doesn't have to hide G anymore. But don't expect him to be presented to the standard of the Toho films either. They haven't made him special in a long time. He was always awesome but that went past what Toho was doing after a while.

Ash Ketchum

Good points. I guess I reacted more strongly to the missteps than most. I would have gone along with it if they'd handled some of these other issues better. But I was pretty alienated by the time the film got to the good stuff in the finale. I was pretty blindsided, for instance, by Cranston's sudden exit and, to some extent, Binoche's even more sudden exit. Perhaps if they'd all been around as a family unit throughout the crisis and weathered it together, I might have had more of an emotional hook than what I got.

I watched MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA (aka GODZILLA VS. THE THING/1964) over the weekend and it's interesting to see how an ad hoc family unit gets composed and then works together as a unit throughout the film. In this case, it was a reporter, his female photographer partner, a scientist, and a more comical tagalong from the newspaper. That's usually how they did it in the Japanese kaiju films.

Hokeyboy

That's adorable

bluetoast

I really need to see all of these.

Matthew Chmiel

Giantrobo

Good Post. I never even thought to put the MUTOS in the Electric Eel camp. Makes sense.

Abob Teff

I will give you Cranston and I agree. Binoche? It was in all the damn trailers!

Obey The D

Thank you for saving me the time of writing this, because you pretty much summed up exactly how I felt after seeing it.

Supermallet

I think the "ra" sticker on the moth enclosure was actually the logo of the company Cranston's character was working for, and his son had stuck "dad's moth" over it.

devilshalo

Well HNL has never looked like that, so it took me right out of the movie.

Schloob1

I like your thinking on part of this. Definitely the part of the fact that the eggs probably absorbed a good or who knows almost all of the radiation that was in the bomb. However to suggest that Godzilla absorbed radiation from it and that is how he woke back up. That one is a stretch IMO. Especially when you use the example of the fact that the MUTO absorbed the radiation around the city of the nuclear reactor site. That happened over a period of years, well over a decade.

Kal-El

Off topic, I know, but isn't that exactly how Casino Royale ended?

Sadly, I have yet to see Daniel Craig do any "Bond" stuff in any of the 3 movies. He's done "Bourne" stuff, but not Bond.

On topic: Saw the movie on one of the early Thursday screenings and my friends and I loved it. I was never a big fan of the big monster/kaiju genre but I thought this was better than Pac Rim.

Solid Snake

He's fucked the occasional woman, used gadgets, had his drink, said his famous line, etc.

I hope they never go back to the (what eventually turned into) cheese of Bond.

devilshalo

In JAWS, it took an hour to see Bruce, but everyone knows what a shark looks like, it's the manner in which he was presented that made it terrifying. In the meantime, we're watching the people of Amity run around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to figure shit out. The original Gojira is the same thing. Watching the people of Japan running around until he comes ashore halfway through the movie to fuck shit up.