I've never been a huge Godzilla fan myself. Just like with the another big cinema monster, King Kong, I can see the appeal, but the "giant monster" genre has never really been my cup of tea. So in that extent I have no means to tell if this particular movie is a travesty towards the ol' nuclear lizard.
In this new Godzilla, the lizard king itself is an ancient monster from the more radiated past of the Earth. As the radiation has cooled down Godzilla and its kind went to the deep ocean or in deep slumber inside the Earth. Until the day humans found atomic power. The human meddling with the atom causes parasitic giant creatures to submerge from their slumber and soon the world is suffering in the claws of the monstrous destruction, which goes even further when the ancient enemy of the monsters, King Kong arrives to whoop some ass.
While, just like every other disaster movie, Godzilla is trying to bring a human element to the story in the form of a father Joe (Bryan Cranston) a son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his family and a monster researcher Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), that human element is just as obsolete it is in any other disaster movie. The main course of the movie is the destruction the monsters can cause, the mayhem and the spectacle of it. And boy, does this movie do the spectacle well.
But as the human element is pretty much stock material for a movie like this, I couldn't help but to feel in many places that this Godzilla movie is just way too long. It uses a lot of time in order to convince that we should care about the humans, but just like in almost every disaster movie before this it is pretty hard to care about stock caricatures.
As far disaster movies go, I've seen much worse. But at the same time I can't really say this Godzilla has sparked my interest to go to the Japanese Godzilla's either. But at least it's better than that utterly horrible 1998 movie with Matthew Broderick, so I guess that's something at least.
In this new Godzilla, the lizard king itself is an ancient monster from the more radiated past of the Earth. As the radiation has cooled down Godzilla and its kind went to the deep ocean or in deep slumber inside the Earth. Until the day humans found atomic power. The human meddling with the atom causes parasitic giant creatures to submerge from their slumber and soon the world is suffering in the claws of the monstrous destruction, which goes even further when the ancient enemy of the monsters, King Kong arrives to whoop some ass.
While, just like every other disaster movie, Godzilla is trying to bring a human element to the story in the form of a father Joe (Bryan Cranston) a son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his family and a monster researcher Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), that human element is just as obsolete it is in any other disaster movie. The main course of the movie is the destruction the monsters can cause, the mayhem and the spectacle of it. And boy, does this movie do the spectacle well.
But as the human element is pretty much stock material for a movie like this, I couldn't help but to feel in many places that this Godzilla movie is just way too long. It uses a lot of time in order to convince that we should care about the humans, but just like in almost every disaster movie before this it is pretty hard to care about stock caricatures.
As far disaster movies go, I've seen much worse. But at the same time I can't really say this Godzilla has sparked my interest to go to the Japanese Godzilla's either. But at least it's better than that utterly horrible 1998 movie with Matthew Broderick, so I guess that's something at least.