Godzilla (2014) Movie Review by Kevshiro

Let the Godzilla blasting begin.  Huge spoilers below.  You have been warned...

Godzilla, why do I feel so blasé about it. Is it the story?  The CGI?  The M.U.T.O.s?  The actors?  I can't quite put my finger on it but I'm just not feeling the way I'd thought I'd feel.  I guess I'll just have to take it apart a little at a time and see what it is that just didn't make this an awesome flick. 

The movie opens with the American Navy trying to kill off Godzilla with a nuclear bomb. They think they got him but he disappears under the water hidden from sight.  Flash forward a few years and a Polynesian mining team has accidentally opened a giant hole in their site leading to a large cavern filled with giant bones and 2 pods one of which has mysteriously opened and disappeared into the ocean. 

Meanwhile Joe Brody, played by Bryan Cranston, his wife and child live in nearby Japan where Joe works as a nuclear power plant Engineer. He's been recently detecting sysmic quakes and wants to figure out the issue before a giant earthquake takes out the plant. A giant tremor causes an eruption within the plant, trapping Joe's wife inside the plant who dies a horrible death right in front of her husband after being exposed to noxious vapors. So far, so good with the story. I'm actually interested all up to here which rarely happens in a Godzilla flick. 

Now flash forward 15 years later, we find Joe Brody jobless and fixated on finding out what caused the accident that killed his wife. His son, Ford Brody (who the heck names their kid after a truck) has started his own family and is trying to spend some quality time with them after getting some shore leave from being in the Army.  He gets a call that his father was caught trespassing on the site where they lived in Japan. He flies all the way to Japan to get his dad out of jail and tells him to come home with him. The father agrees but turns nutcake again by the morning saying he needs to get back to their house to get some files that prove the seismic activity is happening again. So they both go merrily along in their haz-mat suits to their old house to pick up some zip files (for those of you who weren't aware of 90's tech. those are like today's thumb drives, which will soon be obsolete as everything is being stored in the cloud).  They get captured again and are taken to the power plant as somehow it's back in operation even though everything is supposed to be extremely radioactive.

We now finally get to see our first glimpse of an actual monster as the giant beetle bug wakes up and starts destroying everything.  Dr. Ichiro Serizawa, Ken Watanabe character, tries to keep it contained in a giant fence but the creature takes down the fence taking out lots of workers and Joe Brody who was freed from his cell by a giant EMP from the creature.  Now my first thought is, if this creature is from ancient times, why would it have the power to take out electricity?  It never uses this power against Godzilla in the film so what the heck is the use of it besides stopping military vehicles.  So Joe dies way too early in the film and now all the main focus is on Dodge, uh I mean Ford, trying to help the military and Dr. Serizawa ( who looks like he's completely stoned throughout the rest of the film) stop this giant beetle from destroying the world. 

The military tracks down the M.U.T.O. or Massive Unidentified Terrastrial Organism, (leave it to the military to name the creature) then watch helplessly as it eats anything radioactive.  I then felt my first and only goosebumps in the film when Godzilla comes out of slumber and tracks down the MUTO on Hawaii, and comes on land to confront the creature. They then start to get ready for a really cool battle and then surprise, they cut away to Ford's kid on the couch watching TV of the SUPER COOL AWESOME MONSTER FIGHT which I wanted to see.  WTF!  You can't cut away from the cool monster fight!  

Dr. Serizawa then realizes, in his stoned, zoned out haze, that the MUTO was calling another MUTO which was taken away to Nevada and locked away in a mountain with tons of other radioactive waste.  Some military folks go checking each cell for the egg and somehow the MUTO busted its way out of the mountain cell leaving a giant hole WITHOUT ANYONE KNOWING!! The creature which is much larger than the first creature, goes trampling through Las Vegas stepping on all the little old grannies who are so intent on playing they don't even notice it until all the power goes out. 

The flying MUTO gets away from Godzilla and they then cut back to Toyota, I mean Ford (I really hate that name), and he's signed up for another mission to try to lure the MUTOs and Godzilla out into the ocean where they'll detonate a nuclear weapon which will hopefully kill them all. The military don't get a chance to unleash their plan as the flying MUTO gets ahold of the nuclear weapon and gives it to the giant MUTO who takes it and buries it along with its eggs to fuel the next generation of MUTOs. The military follow Godzilla to San Franciso where the giant all out monster battle happens. Well, a bit of it before they cut away again to Mazda (I'm starting to run out of truck names) who's jumping in from a plane because that's the only way to get into the city to recapture the bomb and stop the detonation. 

The 2 MUTOs team up against Godzilla and start beating the crap out of him, which usually happens in all Godzilla films, and meanwhile Ford finds the hidden eggs and a-bomb.  They can't stop the bomb's timer and decide to take it out to a boat to detonate it. Ford decides to stay back and fry the eggs by releasing the fuel of a well placed gas truck that didn't explode AT ALL while a giant monster was digging a huge hole. This luckily distracts the creatures so that Godzilla can get up and get a second chance at blasting these creatures with his super atomic fire breath. The lead up to his breath is awesome as you see a little glow in his tail flow all the way up his back until Godzilla inhales and lets out a wimpy blue gassy burp that flows across the screen like water. Well that was a little unexpected. I wanted to feel that atomic blast come bursting out his mouth destroying everything in its path but it felt really flat to me. 

This is what Godzilla's atomic fire breath should look like.

Godzilla then smashes the flying MUTO with his tail into a building killing it with protruding metal posts but unfortunately for Godzilla the only building that seems taller than him comes crashing down burying him under tons of rubble and also smothering some poor nearby people, and Fords wife, hiding in a fallout shelter as if I can remember correctly, breathing all that dust can't be good for anyone. 

The giant MUTO goes after the a-bomb that was taken away from the hole it dug and starts killing all the soldiers except for Nissan, oh I mean Ford (I knew there was one more truck name) who was heroically sacrificing himself to get the bomb out of the city. Luckily for him, as the giant MUTO was closing in, Godzilla sneaks up on the monster and opens up it's mouth to puke up another blue burp blast severing it's head right off the MUTOs body. I just have to wonder though, how did a giant monster like Godzilla break itself out of a ton of rubble without making a sound then make it's way down to the ocean without making any waves to get close enough to bite the MUTO from behind. My only guess is giant Godzilla sneakers as that's the only thing that makes sense. 

Godzilla triumphantly walks back to land and promptly passes out and so does Ford, who I was hoping would get blown up but is rescued with 5 minutes left on the clock which I'm sure isn't enough time to get away from a giant nuclear blast that, as the military puts it "makes the bomb at the bikini islands look like a firecracker."

Everyone starts looking for their loved ones and Big Foot (Ford) meets up with his wife, who has absolutely no dust whatsoever on her, and they all cheer on Godzilla as he wakes up and stumbles off into the ocean like a drunkard after drinking too much the night before. 

So after all that, you can see that the issues with Godzilla is exactly what I thought would happen in our Jump the Gun segment.  Way too much people, not enough monster fights. And they even made it worse by leading you on with a "here comes a really cool fight but oops no, we're going to cut away to some other thing, then cut back to a tail going past a building". Such a shame, I really wanted to love this film. Ah well, guess I'll have to stick to the classic Godzilla films. - Kevshiro 

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