Godzilla - Liked It - DOUBLEFEATUREPREACHERS

Godzilla - Liked It

10/25/2017

Starring: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen
Director: Gareth Edwards
Runtime: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

So as the movie started, the only thing that gave me the sense that I was watching a Godzilla film was the fact that they were in Japan. Joe Brody (Cranston) and his wife worked at a nuclear plant and in the beginning scenes of the movie, his wife dies from a tremor that destroys the plant. Then we are flashed forward 15 years, and their son Ford (Taylor-Johnson) is the main character. He is a soldier in the Navy, a bomb expert, and is finally home from deployment.

The night he returns, he gets a phone call and must return to Japan to bail his father out of jail. This is when the story gets interesting. There’s obviously something the people at the old nuclear plant are hiding, but what? Well, it’s a giant ass preying mantis type creature that is feeding off the radiation in the area. This was the first moment that I questioned if we were truly watching a Godzilla movie… I even checked the DVD case to make sure that creature wasn’t just a newly designed Godzilla. Phew! It wasn’t.

But for real, how about some more Godzilla action? We didn’t even see him until about an hour into the film and, after some google searches, come to find out that he has less than 10 minutes of full-screen time altogether. That’s just crazy because it definitely seemed longer. Must have been because of the splicing and the back and forth shots. Less than 10 minutes? That’s crazy.

Overall I thought the story was fine. The use of other monsters for the King of Monsters to fight was intriguing, but totally took away from what the original Godzilla was about. I guess they wanted to make him more of a hero than a monster. I like that. Still, if you remember from my review on the original movie, I felt really bad for Godzilla near the end of the movie. However, I am happier with the ending in this film.

As far as the acting goes, it was fine. For me, I think Elizabeth Olsen stood out even though she wasn’t in too much of the film. The emotions she brought to screen were perfect under the circumstances.

I really enjoyed the scenes with Ford and the young boy on the train. He made it his goal to help him regardless of him not knowing the boy. Plus the titanic like scene with the MUTO was great. I also really enjoyed the scene that we first start to see Godzilla. Him swimming under the bridges was fantastic and eerie. I found myself on the edge of my seat for most of the movie genuinely worried about all the characters.

There really wasn’t too much Science Fiction to this film, other than the monsters existing, and I would have like to hear more scientific dialogue between the two researchers. I did however like that it was based in Hawaii and the west coast. And it was in English with no subtitles.

Can someone tell me what the heck MUTO means? It’s not Japanese… I already looked it up. Where did they get that name from? Okay, sorry to rant, I should probably close this post out. I’m going to give Godzilla a “liked it” rating. It was exciting to watch and forealz gave me thrills the entire time. (4/5)

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