Godzilla 2014 review

MAJOR SPOILERS!

Saw Godzilla Saturday. My immediate reaction after the film was "it sucked". It really made no sense. Godzilla wasn't shown until EXACTLY 1 HOUR in.
The two other MUTO monsters weren't really that impressive to me.
Lastly I really gave 2 shits about the human side story. I didn't care about Cranston's son, didn't care about his son's son and personally wasn't crazy about The Last Samurai's deep toned over acting.
It turned out the entire movie was waiting for the last 15 minutes.
They never actually said WHY Godzilla wanted to fight these two other monsters, just that he was their apex predator yet he didn't take one bite out of either of them. It was like he just.... wanted to fight.

I actually liked the 1998 Godzilla more.

Then I thought about it. The more and more I did; the more I began to like the movie.

The major gripe I had was why Godzilla wanted to come after these two monsters who were supposedly some ancient creatures laying dormant until awakened by each other to mate. These creatures fed off radiation and were attracted to any source of said radiation. Hence the nuclear plant attack in the beginning. The creatures would cocoon themselves asleep absorbing radiation until they were awakened (say radiation one more time maybe?).

Let me see how I can break this down.




Godzilla was a revenge tale at its core.
Brian Cranston and his son wanted revenge against the creatures for killing their wife/mother in the beginning.
Godzilla wanted revenge because these MUTO creatures killed his race/possible mate.
In the beginning of the film Ken Wantanbe's character is flown into a HUGE mining operation when the discovery of an ancient Godzilla skeleton is discovered underground. Within the skeleton is a MUTO cocoon. It is speculated the MUTO is a parasite who burrowed into the ancient monster to absorb its high levels of radiation slowly killing it. Now imagine this on a grand scale. Eventually the MUTO's kill off every other giant monster including Godzilla's race. Perhaps this skeleton was his mate and if you think about it he has millions of years of pent up sexual frustration being the last of his/her kind.

Cranston makes a comment that the two MUTOs were talking to each other. They were sending and receiving mating calls to each other. It's speculated Godzilla heard this and was attracted to the calls. They kept saying Godzilla was hunting them as predator and prey but really had the food chain reversed. In this reality Godzilla was the prey.

Godzilla knew if these two creatures mated the entire world was once again going to be their menu including Godzilla. On top of that he wanted some deep shit revenge on them for ruining his world and race in the previous age. Godzilla heard the mating call and basically knew it was all or nothing at this point.

When you do see Godzilla its pretty epic. This is a HUGE creature of pure power, yet also somewhat intelligent. You want to think within this beasts head is some semblance of thought. You would think it would have a fairly sizable brain compared to his body. Not human intelligence but somewhere around whale like intelligence especially since he is portrayed as more aquatic, even having gills. Now Whales are huge...... HUGE animals and have been shown to have memory. Killer Whales have even been shown to take revenge on each other and other creatures. Now most large animals such as whales will go right by other animals in the water without even acknowledging their existence. This is how something like Godzilla views us. Ants on a sidewalk. Do you go out of your way to crush ants on a sidewalk, or kick over their mounds? We are definitely too small to eat. So whats the point of Godzilla EVER making contact with us. There is no reason for him to come on land except when a MASSIVE threat occurs. He lives in the water. He lives off the radiation deep in the ground and sleeps there. Its shown these creatures go into extended hibernation.
This is why when he finishes his fight he simply walks back into the water. He is tired, beat up and just wants to go back down and sleep. Some may think (me guilty at first) the final walk scene of Godzilla on the news being portrayed as the cities savior is a bit cliche and queer but really some random monster just killed the two creatures looking to end the world. You would be sucking that Godzilla's DICK! You'd be calling him your savior too. In fact we now have a MASSIVE beast that eats radiation and saved our ass. I would be putting together an initiative to feed this creature all our waste and sure as hell make him somewhat dependent on us for future battles. All creatures, even us, learn to coexist together when its mutually beneficial.

Id find a nice deserted island somewhere to drop all our waste and let him eat away being sure he sees us dropping it for him.

Anyway, back on topic. I will say the movie was COMPLETELY hindered by the "human element". Brian Cranstons and Wantanbe's characters were definitely helpful to the extent they sample fed us information to add to the story but nearly EVERYONE else was there to take up space. Personally the family story was garbage and the film would have been much better without it. When Cranston died (YUP HE DIES, and way too soon) I KNEW we were going to lose most of the scientific aspects of the story and it was going to turn into mush.

Like the original movie this one also deals with the undertones of the dangers of radiation. It puts a small focus on the use of nuclear arms as a means to an end and the dangers (Wantanbe's watch story). It doesn't dwell on it but it just shoe horned it in a non intrusive and minimally corny way.

In conclusion to sum this all up. It was good, the end fight was epic and for no reason other than film history you root for Godzilla. When you finally see that beam breath it was pretty awesome though I would have been much happier with a REALLY great film loaded with monsters at an hour and a half than a mediocre one filled with people BS at over 2 hours. Really the entire human backstory had NOTHING to even do with Godzilla after Cranston died anyway.

If I HAD to give it a number rating I would go 7 out of 10.
Had I not lamented and simply wrote this right after the movie though it would have gotten a 4.