Best & Worst Monster Movies

Article by Gabe Zia
This weekend, we've finally got the film. The one I've been waiting for all year, and a good chunk of 2013. Ladies and gentlemen, we will finally have... Million Dollar Arm. I'm kidding, it's Godzilla, of course it's Godzilla.

Now, for best & worst this week, I found myself in a tough spot. Pretty much everyone in this film would be pretty difficult to do.  So, I'm not doing a best & worst of somebody today, I'm doing the best & worst of the genre, and that genre is Monster Movies.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Monster movies have been around ever since film production companies discovered that people love watching stuff get blown up. However, very recently, the monster movie genre has taken a different turn. Instead of being about monsters wrecking stuff, the genre has seemingly become more focused on people trying to survive it. This turn in the genre exists mainly because of one film, and that film is Cloverfield.

I was originally going to go with Monsters from back in 2010, but that's less of a monster movie and more of a people film. However, the reason I'm going with Cloverfield is because this is the film that really changed the genre. Ever since Cloverfield, recent monster movies (all four of them to come out since cloverfield) have been less about destruction and more about survival. Not the mention, this film is really well done. I know a lot of people get pissed about motion sickness they might get from the shaky cam-ness of it, but I think it works for the films grittiness. Most of all, I love Cloverfield because it revived this genre from plummeting on account of my pick for worst monster movie.

A film that needs no introduction, because it just doesn't deserve one- Roland Emmerich's Godzilla.

Roland Emmerich films are a very unique brand of bad. Some films are bad because the characters are bland and uninteresting, and so is the story. Other films are bad because of cheesy, over the top action. His films are both. And although I still consider White House Down his worst film, I still hate 1998's Godzilla with a burning passion. From having too many characters & sub-plots, a painfully slow pace, cheesy lines that are just stupid, and a Godzilla that doesn't even look like Godzilla. It looks like something scrapped from Jurassic Park. But all this isn't even why I hate this film so much (for the most part, anyway). No, I hate this film so much because for ten years straight, this movie killed the monster movie genre. Even with stuff like Batman & Robin, it only killed Batman films, but not superhero films as a whole. This film ended an awesome genre for a decade, and that is why it's the worst monster movie in my opinion.