RAWWWWR! Spoiler Alert!
Thursday night a few of the ICRT gang went to the premier showing of Godzilla. We all eagerly awaited to see the big guy on screen wreak havoc upon the good people of earth, but things didn’t quite pan out the way we expected…
I’m not going to go into depth of the film or too deep into the plot since I don’t want to spoil anything for those that haven’t seen it, but I will point out the things I did and didn’t like about the film. First of all, let’s hear the bad news and get that out of the way.
There was a long, and somewhat arduous build up in the movie and I kept wondering WHEN will we see Godzilla. For a good portion of the film we don’t really get to see him. Instead we get to see his backside as he swims in the water. When we finally do get to see his face in all its CG glory, in my little head I shouted, “Finally!” as the movie rolled. Another issue I had with the film was the fact that Godzilla’s design, while much closer to the original design than previous films, he was not designed as an aquatic animal. He swam A LOT in that film and it made me to believe that he was ocean dwelling. In college, at my animation school, I had a professor who taught biology. His specialty was animal anatomy–drawing them, knowing their body structure, movement, etc. Because of his drawing class I learned a lot about the anatomy of animals and certain characteristics. So, in light of that, Godzilla’s design didn’t fit the profile of an animal that spent majority of the film in water swimming around. That peeved me a little. But I digress…
I also feel like Godzilla wasn’t featured much in this film, which was a bit disappointing to me. When I see a Godzilla movie I want to see epic monster battles, cities being destroyed and terror in peoples’ eyes. Sadly, I didn’t feel that sense of fear or excitement while watching the movie. I actually felt a bit bored with the pacing and the acting.
There are things I liked about this film though! There were several scenes that were shot really well and I enjoyed watching those parts, like finally seeing Godzilla and hearing his iconic roar. I also enjoyed the scene where the soldiers jump out of the plane and descend into the city of San Francisco. It was so well put together and pleasing to watch. The music, composed by Alexandre Desplat, seemed to fit the film well due to its menacing nature. In fact, I rather enjoy Mr. Desplat’s music. He wrote the score to one of my favorite films, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and he also wrote the score for The Grand Budapest Hotel which was recently reviewed by Eric Gau (check it out here).
I really feel Godzilla had a lot of potential to be a really great movie, but it fell flat on a lot of things. It’s quite unfortunate. However, I’m taking the film for what it is: a Godzilla movie. Is it worth seeing in the theater? Well, I guess that’s entirely up to you to decide. I think the special effects and CG was rather decent so maybe it’s worth it to some to see it just for that. We saw the film in 3D, but I don’t think it did anything special for the movie at all. In fact, it was kind of pointless to see it in 3D. Oh well.
Anyway, on the Crispy movie scale I guess I would rate this movie with 2.5 crunches out of 5. It wasn’t horrible, but it also wasn’t awesomely good. If you’re a super fan of the big ol’ monster, then by all means hit the theater! Otherwise, just watch it when it comes out on DVD instead.
Now enjoy this awesome song by Blue Oyster Cult as a reward for finishing this semi long review!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVJInwekSl4
And if you haven’t seen the trailer yet for the new Godzilla movie, here it is:
Poster design by Ignition
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