Godzilla (2014) Movie Review by Solid Mike

Before we begin, I will like to state that this article will have massive spoilers of the new Godzilla film; so if you haven't seen it yet, please don't read this article.

Now that we have that out of the way, I will like to inform my fellow Godzilla fans that this has to be the best Godzilla film as far as acting and story wise goes and by acting I mean Bryan Cranston., unfortunately that is where stops.

So here is the plot; The movie starts by showing you series of video clips where you see different governments testing out nuclear bombs. The infamous atomic bombing that was believe to be an attack by the US for Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, was actually used to killed a creature known as Godzilla.

In 1999, two scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) are called in to investigate on what they think is a massive earthquake in the Philippines. When they arrived they notice a massive skeleton, which they think is the skeleton of Godzilla, only to realize that it's not. While exploring this colossal skeleton, they noticed two egg-shaped pods, one appears to be intact and dormant, the other has hatched and is headed to the Janijira Nuclear Plant in Tokyo, Japan. 

Before the creature causes havoc at the plant, the movie introduces the Plant supervisor's Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his family. While at work, the Plant is hit by some unknown occurrence and Joe does what any man would do and send his wife (Juilette Binoche) down there to investigate. However, disaster strikes and the Plant succumbs to a massive earthquake that ends up killing Joe's wife in the process.

Fifteen years later Joe and his wife's son Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is all grown up and works for the United States Navy as an explosive expert. While at his home in San Francisco with his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son Sam, (Carson Bolde) Ford receives a call that his father was arrested for trespassing in a quarantined area. So Ford flys back to Japan to try to help his father, who is still suffering from the death of his wife, to try to get him to come back to San Francisco to stay with him and his family.

But Joe refuses, because he believes he is on the brink of discovering on what really cause the catastrophe on the Janijira Nuclear Plant fifteen years ago. Joe's theory was that; whatever cause the disater at the Plant 15 years ago was communicating with something. After some dialogue and Joe convincing Ford to go back to the quarantine area only to get captured and bring to a secret facility where the audience is introduced to Godzilla's main enemy M.U.T.O (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). While the design for the MUTO is ok, it would've been more appreciated by the fans if the director would've choose one of the countless other monsters that Godzilla faced in series.

The MUTO are colossal bug like creatures (similar to the pray mantis) that has a mean appetite  for radiation. To my surprise there was not only one MUTO but two in the film, a male and female. The male is awoken because it was apparently receiving some explicit signals from the female MUTO.

While these two creatures were sex talking with each other, Godzilla was hearing all of this and was highly disturbed by all of this explicit talk from these two nasty creatures.

At this very moment is where the movie begins to fall apart, because you start seeing the MUTOs more than you see Godzilla. However, you can't help but get excited on how they introduced the "King of the Monsters", but once they do and build up the suspense on what you think is going to be an epic showdown between the MUTO and Godzilla, they switch the scene and shows Ford's son Sam watching the fight on the news.

The most disappointed thing about the whole movie is that it seem like the director was trying to hide Godzilla for this big epic moment that the film failed to showcase monster to do or perform. Personally, the movie would've been better if was called MUTO and Godzilla made a guest appearance.

Another disappointing factor of the movie was how the director decided to choose the role for Godzilla to played as. Now true fans of the Godzilla series know that Godzilla has played a role as the good guy, (the director decided to go this route) the villain and neutral creature. Personally, the neutral route would've been a much better choice. It would've been nice to see Godzilla paint the picture that he was helping the human civilization out only to turn around and cause more havoc on them.....I mean he's a monster after all people. Instead, Godzilla was made into a predator that supposedly hunted the MUTO, not to eat them, but to kill them and go back to the pacific ocean.

The movie focus entirely to much on the characters and the MUTOs and very little screen time was given to the big G. Even the last couple of fight scenes where Godzilla is fighting both MUTOs, again you see the two creatures giving Godzilla a beating, but you see more of them than Godzilla himself. This scene was a joke, because the music changes its tone and turns into a sad depressing one, because you witness Godzilla getting the radiation beaten out of him.

The scene that should've redeem the movie from being disappointing up until that point also was a failure. The scene where Godzilla uses his signature atomic breath was a let down. While the build up was excellent, the execution just felt lacking.

I can pick this movie apart all day because I've seen every film in the series up until this one and my expectations were set entirely to high, especially after seeing how good Pacific Rim was. In any case Godzilla 2014 is not a bad movie, it's actually good. It demolish the Godzilla film that was made in 1998 completely and that's an excellent thing. But if you go there and expect to see a lot of Godzilla, you will be highly disappointed. Hopefully if a sequel is made they will do it right that time.