Godzilla movie review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic reviews...

Okay, so after the terrible '98 Godzilla completely tanked the monster movie genre for a good ten years, we finally got Cloverfield & Monsters which both helped in reviving the genre. So, with such a revival, we have a new Godzilla film. This one comes from the director of Monsters, and stars Aaron-Taylor Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Wantanabe, Sally Hawkins, and Juliette Binoche for like, five minutes.

Juliette Binoche in Godzilla

Now, I feel like my view of this film is going to be very different from other people. Mainly because of the mindset I had going into this film. Everyone else seems to have had the mindset most people would have with, say, "Pacific Rim". However, I had seen Monsters previous to seeing this, and I knew this would not have a lot of monsters. For a film called Godzilla, he isn't actually in it a whole lot, there's a lot of set up and teasing. This film more focuses on the human characters, and their situations. And that could be really good, or it could be boring like the '98 film. Thankfully, to me anyway, I thought this film did a great job with the characters.

The actors in the film are also pretty good in the film. Bryan Cranston is the focus for the early parts of the film, kind of to lead into the main characters story. And for those early parts, he completely owns the role as the character. He shows a lot of emotion, a lot of intensity, and overall a great performance. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays the protagonist of the film, and although he's not as good as Bryan Cranston, I still think he did a good job. Something I've heard a lot of critics complaining about is that Aaron Taylor Johnson's character was relatively emotionless, or just plain. Again, I saw what they would mean, but it wasn't a problem for me. Mainly because he is in the military, and I felt that the way he portrayed the character gave him determination. He was convincing as someone in the military, so I have to give him credit for that.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Godzilla

The tone of the film was also another high point, I felt the director - Gareth Edwards - did an amazing job of creating an eerie tone for the monsters. Both Godzilla and the other two monsters Godzilla is trying to kill had both a very intense presence, but also the way the film is directed gave them a sense of their scale. You could really feel how large these creatures were, and it gave the film a great sense of fear.

Bryan Cranston in Godzilla

But enough about all that other stuff, we're talking about a Godzilla film here. And as a Godzilla film, I felt it succeeded. The creatures were very well designed, they all looked absolutely incredible. Godzilla looks very authentic to the original design for Godzilla, but with enough unique little tweaks to make it it's own thing. That's another thing I loved about this film, it wasn't exactly the original film, it wasn't exactly Cloverfield, and it wasn't exactly Monsters. This film did it's own sort of thing, and set itself apart from other monster films.

Okay, here comes the negative bits. For me, there weren't a lot of problems with the film. The only things that I didn't like were some plot points, certain moments of dialogue that didn't really work, but those are little things. My main negative point for the film isn't even really a negative point for me, but I'm sure it will be for some other people, and that is the fact that there's a lot of teasing and set up. There's this one scene where an awesome fight is set up, but the film cuts away to a different scene. For me, again, it didn't cause me an issue, but I'm sure some people will at the very least scoff, or give a very concerned "huh?".

Elizabeth Olsen in Godzilla

Final Rating
Godzilla is an absolutely fantastic film, in my opinion. It's got some gripes, sure, but overall I think it's great. The Godzilla design is amazing, the tone works amazingly with the direction and cinematography to create an incredibly eerie and apocalyptic idea. Some people may find it too slow, or just might not like monster movies. And hey, if you don't like monster movies, I don't know what you'll be expecting from this film.

Godzilla: 4.3/5