• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Godzilla |OT| Legendary

Shouta

Member
I considered that and if they had simply shown the dudes running through the mountain with a Ginger counter showing 0 i'd have no problem. But, in the film, they showed the MUTOS directly eating missiles and radioactive stuff. The male's cacoon was directly attached to the old power plant. I'm just going by what they chose to show us on screen.

They do that because it's the most direct way. Pretty sure they don't digest it either because considering how that stuff works, being at the center of it or having it in you is going to bathe you in it, lol.
 

Odoul

Member
Saw it last night.

Pretty damn good all-in-all.

-I was expecting a little more of a horror angle to it. The MUTO's being parasitic could have been explored a little more.

-MUTO was ok...but any sequels better have Ghidorah at the least. And give Godzilla some buddies. Rodan would be cool.

-The breath was used perfectly. The way the tip of the tail started glowing and gradually moving up his spikes. AND IT WAS BLUE! I would have been satisfied with just normal fire but they actually made it blue.

-I wasn't expecting him to be an outright good guy in this. He pretty much HAS to follow the arc that Gamera did in the 90's movies doesn't he? Not quite a good guy or villain. Just a not particularly malevolent lesser of two evils.
 

Mononoke

Banned
Like everyone else said, it's enjoyable with flaws. I guess my expectations for Godzilla are kind of low and I generally don't take the movies seriously. I love them, don't get me wrong. So to me, this was a really good Godzilla movie overall, despite the little things it failed at. I was genuinely entertained.
 

y2dvd

Member
I thought this was a good thing instead of a bad thing.
To have villains with depth and motivation for their actions is surely more interesting than them being just villains for villanys sake.

Normally, I like this in movies but in this case
i found it super cheesy how the new report hailed Godzilla as a savior when he probably caused just as much destruction as the MUTAS (forgot what the acronym was exactly). I also found it annoying how the scientist kept going on about Godzilla restoring balance and blah blah blah. What is he basing this on? Why is he even there when he's not you know...being scientific and instead spouting random crap? It wasn't like the MUTAS were attacking humans straight up. They were just going for radiation and trying to reproduce. I empathizes more with them than Godzilla lol.
 

Daingurse

Member
During the opening narration it's briefly shown that Kaiju blood is highly toxic, hence the reliance on blunt force trauma.

Didn't realize it was a "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" reference as well. They didn't want to blow up that monster because it's flesh was toxic. That movie holds up quite well, really enjoyed it for the first time a few weeks ago.
 

~Kinggi~

Banned
Just saw it. I really liked it, didnt love it.

The group i was with was split. Some disliked it and felt it was really illogical. Me and others really enjoyed it for what it was. I was hoping for more from Edwards but in thinking back i actually think its an achievement he did what he did given the nature of the Godzilla story is so absurd anyway.

Visuals were amazing. Some of the sequences felt like a big budget Spielberg movie.

Im glad a sequel is being made.
 
Just saw it. I really liked it, didnt love it.

The group i was with was split. Some disliked it and felt it was really illogical. Me and others really enjoyed it for what it was. I was hoping from more for Edwards but in thinking back i actually think its an achievement he did what he did given the nature of the Godzilla story is so absurd anyway.

Visuals were amazing. Some of the sequences felt like a big budget Spielberg movie.

Im glad a sequel is being made.

That is a great way to describe the feel of the visual style. Edwards did a great job following in Spielberg's ability to add a real sense of weight and presence to his creatures.
 

~Kinggi~

Banned
That is a great way to describe the feel of the visual style. Edwards did a great job following in Spielberg's ability to add a real sense of weight and presence to his creatures.

He understands already how to shoot for scale because he did all the VFX for his first Monsters movie. He knows what works to make things look realistically huge.
 
The King Kong from the original, or Peter Jackson's remake, would last about 6 seconds against this film's Godzilla, and 5 of those are Godzilla raising his foot.

Give him some tools to work with lol

1372691676_tumblr_m5frjgIWv71qeniplo1_500.gif


kingkongvsgodzillathefuckfuck1962.gif
 

Daingurse

Member
I was looking back at the first couple of trailers released and it looks like there was either supposed to be another monster or they had a different design for the MUTO. It also seemed like the film would be much darker.

Heres the link
http://paranormalpopculture.com/2013/12/leaked-godzilla-teaser-trailer.html

Teaser was a concept trailer. I also was disappointed to learn that thing wouldn't be in the movie, found out months ago.

Also, i felt a lot of those beats were in the movie, it was just that
The MUTOs took on that role as opposed to Godzilla.
 
The King Kong from the original, or Peter Jackson's remake, would last about 6 seconds against this film's Godzilla, and 5 of those are Godzilla raising his foot.
Yeah also the Kong Kong from the older movies was about the same size as Godzilla... But this Godzilla is fucking huge so they'd have to make a Mega king kong to even be fair.
 

Shouta

Member
After sitting a bit on it, I think the film hits a real chord for us folks that experienced the 2011 Earthquake in Japan both from a disaster viewpoint and a nuclear one. The early and middle parts reminded me of how it felt sitting at home watching the reports of what happened and how talking about how everyone else felt about the events. The tsunami, the power plant, and all of that felt eerily there even if it wasn't connected and it having monsters, of course. it felt like it paid the proper respects while doing it too. My point earlier in the thread about entering the film yourself and experiencing it felt on point, I thought. I just didn't realize how much of my own experiences it really drew out. A lot of folks have never faced these things, let alone in the vicinity of all 3 at once.
 
I was looking back at the first couple of trailers released and it looks like there was either supposed to be another monster or they had a different design for the MUTO. It also seemed like the film would be much darker.

Heres the link
http://paranormalpopculture.com/2013/12/leaked-godzilla-teaser-trailer.html

It's crazy how much better the trailers were than the final movie. The trailers make it seem like a really dark film, with humanity fighting a losing battle against a force of nature.

NOPE! Godzilla is a good guy and the film is so damn cheesy.
 
After sitting a bit on it, I think the film hits a real chord for us folks that experienced the 2011 Earthquake in Japan both from a disaster viewpoint and a nuclear one. The early and middle parts reminded me of how it felt sitting at home watching the reports of what happened and how talking about how everyone else felt about the events. The tsunami, the power plant, and all of that felt eerily there even if it wasn't connected and it having monsters, of course. it felt like it paid the proper respects while doing it too. My point earlier in the thread about entering the film yourself and experiencing it felt on point, I thought. I just didn't realize how much of my own experiences it really drew out. A lot of folks have never faced these things, let alone in the vicinity of all 3 at once.

That's fascinating. What a interesting perspective
 

Shouta

Member
That's fascinating. What a interesting perspective

I think that's part of the reason why I feel this movie is so much better than people are saying. A lot of the complaints seem so nitpicky to me. Like sure the characters are shallow but they aren't meant to have this deep, individual plot line in the film. Everything is shot from the perspective of someone at the ground level of it all and it's their responses to this as a proxy for us that's kind of the point and what makes the first parts so good. And more so than disaster-flicks, they want you to be in there to be a part of it I think. The scale is so much smaller but it felt so much more real.
 
I think that's part of the reason why I feel this movie is so much better than people are saying. A lot of the complaints seem so nitpicky to me. Like sure the characters are shallow but they aren't meant to have this deep, individual plot line in the film. Everything is shot from the perspective of someone at the ground level of it all and it's their responses to this as a proxy for us that's kind of the point and what makes the first parts so good. And more so than disaster-flicks, they want you to be in there to be a part of it I think. The scale is so much smaller but it felt so much more real.

Eh, I simply disagree. I experienced a major earthquake as a kid (albeit not in Japan) and I had a deep, raw fear of shit going down and absolutely everyone I knew was powerless to do anything.

This film didn't even come close to hitting that same chord for me. None of the characters who watched things go down reacted in any way that I anticipated or would've expected them to. "Mommy, look" "oh my what's this on tv?" isn't my idea of the kid's or mother's reactions, sorry.

EDIT: 80% of the movie was a boring slog, the reasons being numerous and frequent. I don't see how that's "nitpicky" to me.
 
I think that's part of the reason why I feel this movie is so much better than people are saying. A lot of the complaints seem so nitpicky to me. Like sure the characters are shallow but they aren't meant to have this deep, individual plot line in the film. Everything is shot from the perspective of someone at the ground level of it all and it's their responses to this as a proxy for us that's kind of the point and what makes the first parts so good. And more so than disaster-flicks, they want you to be in there to be a part of it I think. The scale is so much smaller but it felt so much more real.

Well the complaints seem to be relatively minor if were going by percentages but I completely agree with you the film deftly accomplishes the feeling of what a giant creature walking around would be like and the aftermath that ensued. The storyline needed to give Edwards a way to ground the movie and get us to the different set pieces.

Plus I'm sorry all the cheesy stuff worked on me
Ford and Godzilla collapsing at the same time, yeah I loved that
 

G-Bus

Banned
Checking this out tonight. 3d any good?

Usually don't care for it but the friend I'm going with is always picking the 3d showings and I usually feel the extra bit for admission isn't worth it.
 
Checking this out tonight. 3d any good?

Usually don't care for it but the friend I'm going with is always picking the 3d showings and I usually feel the extra bit for admission isn't worth it.

The 3D worked for me. I was against paying more for 3D, but it was that or wait around the theater another hour for a 2D showing. That said, the 3D was pretty damn good. Many shots used the depth very well to convey the scale of the monsters. I think it's one of the few movies that really benefit from it.
 
EDIT: 80% of the movie was a boring slog, the reasons being numerous and frequent. I don't see how that's "nitpicky" to me.
Well, that right there isn't nitpicky, just exaggeration.
40 minutes or so are Bryan Cranston, which I assume most everybody related to. The finale takes up at a half hour. That's over 50% of the movie right there.
 
Checking this out tonight. 3d any good?

Usually don't care for it but the friend I'm going with is always picking the 3d showings and I usually feel the extra bit for admission isn't worth it.

Watched it in IMAX 3D and the 3D was alright. Adds some nice depth in a couple of scenes but more importantly it's not distracting.
 
I agree that Brody's character wasn't terribly exciting, but surprised at how much hate Aaron Taylor Johnson is getting. It seems to me the problem lies more with the story/script for not giving him anything interesting to do, I didn't really think he was a bad actor.
 
Well, that right there isn't nitpicky, just exaggeration.
40 minutes or so are Bryan Cranston, which I assume most everybody related to. The finale takes up at a half hour. That's over 50% of the movie right there.

You're right, 80% is exaggeration, but literally every other human scene other than any of the ones Cranston appears in did absolutely nothing for me. Whatever the actual minute count was, it was far too much and took up the center spotlight when it shouldn't have. Whatever percentage it was, it's a big chunk of the movie and it just isn't a "nitpick" as far as I'm concerned.
 

LowParry

Member
Ya know...

Why couldn't they kept Joseph alive. It's what made the movie so interesting to see and how it all came together to start. I didn't even care for Ford. Even after this father's death, my care for that character meant 0. Was I suppose to care when he was protecting the abandoned child on the train? Pff. Meh. Should of kept Joseph alive. He'd of been the guy who could of helped Godzilla when he was getting pummeled by the two MUTOs. "Hey guys, I think he's on our side. Let's help him! Rules of nature!" The teases still kind of piss me off. But eh. Ehhhhhhhhhh.
 
You're right, 80% is exaggeration, but literally every other human scene other than any of the ones Cranston appears in did absolutely nothing for me. Whatever the actual minute count was, it was far too much and took up the center spotlight when it shouldn't have. Whatever percentage it was, it's a big chunk of the movie and it just isn't a "nitpick" as far as I'm concerned.

Right, and that's fair, but there's more to what happens in a movie than just the characters. The plot of the film is great, with something new, some twist, happening most of the time. It moves forward at a rapid pace, and before you know it you've gone from
Cranston to the finale
. Both times I could hardly believe two hours had passed.
 

RichardAM

Kwanzaagator
Film was a LOT better than I expected.

Went in blind without seeing any of the trailers and really enjoyed it. Characters outside of Cranston would've benefited from more development but all the monster stuff was awesome.

Much better than Pacific Rim.
 
I don't know what keeping Joe alive would have accomplished. He completed his story. He proved he wasn't a nutcase, and that something was going on. What was there left for him to do? Would he have been on the aircraft carrier sharing reaction shots with Serizawa? Would he have been running alongside Ford from one monster fight scene to the next? He served his purpose. If he hung around, he would have just been eating up screentime.
 

Shouta

Member
Eh, I simply disagree. I experienced a major earthquake as a kid (albeit not in Japan) and I had a deep, raw fear of shit going down and absolutely everyone I knew was powerless to do anything.

This film didn't even come close to hitting that same chord for me. None of the characters who watched things go down reacted in any way that I anticipated or would've expected them to. "Mommy, look" "oh my what's this on tv?" isn't my idea of the kid's or mother's reactions, sorry.

EDIT: 80% of the movie was a boring slog, the reasons being numerous and frequent. I don't see how that's "nitpicky" to me.

You may have had experienced a quake as a kid but it wasn't recent like the 2011 Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear power plant scare in Japan. It's still so fresh for many of us.

And I disagree, a lot of the complaints are either nitpicky or totally different expectations.
 
Right, and that's fair, but there's more to what happens in a movie than just the characters. The plot of the film is great, with something new, some twist, happening most of the time. It moves forward at a rapid pace, and before you know it you've gone from
Cranston to the finale
. Both times I could hardly believe two hours had passed.

I don't know what else to tell you other than it felt overly long to me, and nothing of importance felt like it happened between
the reveal in Hawaii
and
the final fight in San Francisco.
Between those two the plot of the movie was literally just
oh shit they're going to fight in SF. Which is fine except they fell absolutely flat in selling the sense of fear and urgency. I felt nothing. I was just waiting for the fight to actually start, the movie on the way there wasn't entertaining me at all.

You may have had experienced a quake as a kid but it wasn't recent like the 2011 Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear power plant scare in Japan.

And I disagree, a lot of the complaints are either nitpicky or totally different expectations.

Oh no I definitely could feel it again given the chance. In fact, I probably felt it was "worse" than it was because of such a young age. I recently visited a site of a building implosion and got a brief jolt of that fear seeing the building go down. The ones in the movie? Didn't do anything on that front.

I'll just simply disagree on the nitpick part. As a whole the movie didn't come together for me. Maybe it was that my expectations were different (whatever they may have been because I didn't really have any expectations going into the movie), but I just didn't like the execution of this film for multiple reasons. The action scenes were great and it was entertaining, but on the whole I firmly think the "human" element of the movie fell flat, characters did nothing for me, human-related action (
monorail scene, Hollywood Tanker 'Splosion, train scene
) was generic and I wasn't caring at all about the characters in them, and the movie
really shoehorned Godzilla into being a good guy for the sake of easy Hollywood consumption when it didn't have to be. At all.

Maybe you disagree on those fronts, but different strokes. It's not fair to call them nitpicks, or any other dismissive rationalizations I've seen from other people ("true Godzilla fans like this", "it's just a generation gap", "you just wanted bland action").
 

The Adder

Banned
It occurs to me:

Of course the modern American version of the original Godzilla film features a Big G that does more good than harm.

The atomic bomb won us the war.
 

Instro

Member
Got back from seeing it earlier, a few thoughts:

-Really great visual direction. The scene composition is really impressive throughout, although the late scenes in the movie could have used a bit more light. That said it did help the colors really pop in some scenes
(i.e. the atomic breath)
.

-Was disappointed with where they went with the human element in the 2nd half.
They had this whole bad father/redemption/revenge thing going with Cranston, who was killing it, and it was pretty good stuff. They then proceeded to unceremoniously dump some cranes on him in favor of ooraah ooraah military meathead husband and some other rather poorly wrought stuff with the wife and kid. Not that this angle was particularly bad, in fact it was pretty serviceable and was mixed well with the Godzilla stuff happening, its just that it falls flat in the face of what Cranston was providing. You're trying to do this human drama against the backdrop of mega monsters, yet you kill off the best actor in the film and relegate Ken Watanabe to a few one liners and some anti-atomic sentiment rather than explaining his reasons for chasing Godzilla all those years. I'm assuming some they made a decision during re-writes that they needed a more time spent on the fresh faced actors and the military, because Cranston's death and the tonal changes were very abrupt.

-The pacing was a bit of a mixed bag, the movie slowed to a crawl
post Cranston
when it shifts to focus on the son and such. That whole train bit with the bomb was not enjoyable. They probably could have culled the movie down 10-15 minutes and it would have been better for it. It got a little frustrating because after all the teasing they got into this cycle of fully revealing the monsters only to not have them fight or cut away from the fight. Luckily the final act was great, but it took a bit too long to get there and the teasing was becoming less effective.

-+1 for the solid score by Desplat.

Overall I really like the film. It definitely had some issues, but its a great monster flick that has a lot more going for it than people might initially think.

-Desplat turned in another solid score, really heightened what was happening in the film.
 

Shouta

Member
I don't know what else to tell you other than it felt overly long to me, and nothing of importance felt like it happened between
the reveal in Hawaii
and
the final fight in San Francisco.
Between those two the plot of the movie was literally just
oh shit they're going to fight in SF. Which is fine except they fell absolutely flat in selling the sense of fear and urgency. I felt nothing. I was just waiting for the fight to actually start, the movie on the way there wasn't entertaining me at all.

Uh, wha? Between those two points in the film, we find out that
there's a mate to the flying MUTO and that they're planning on having babies. They keep stealing energy sources as they rampaged through Las Vegas. We even got a scene of Godzilla being attacked by the military and busting up a bridge in the evacuation. They then decided to try to nuke it with a plan as well.

There's a lot of stuff that happens. They raise the stakes just enough and showed what folks were doing to get out of the way of everything that was coming.

-Was disappointed with where they went with the human element in the 2nd half.
They had this whole bad father/redemption/revenge thing going with Cranston, who was killing it, and it was pretty good stuff. They then proceeded to unceremoniously dump some cranes on him in favor of ooraah ooraah military meathead husband and some other rather poorly wrought stuff with the wife and kid. Not that this angle was particularly bad, in fact it was pretty serviceable and was mixed well with the Godzilla stuff happening, its just that it falls flat in the face of what Cranston was providing. You're trying to do this human drama against the backdrop of mega monsters, yet you kill off the best actor in the film and relegate Ken Watanabe to a few one liners and some anti-atomic sentiment rather than explaining his reasons for chasing Godzilla all those years. I'm assuming some they made a decision during re-writes that they needed a more time spent on the fresh faced actors and the military, because Cranston's death and the tonal changes were very abrupt.

I actually kind of ended up liking what they did with this because it sort of was one small story arc for the family rather than individually. It feels disjointed when looked at separately but it felt like they were meant to be paired together, to me.
 
Top Bottom