When a valued member of my "Movie Posse" told me that he had already seen the film--I instantly asked him if he would be interested in wiring a review for me. I am very thrilled and grateful that he accepted the assignment.
It is my pleasure to welcome the very film savvy Ryan to the blog. As always, anyone that I enlist to post here, has an open invite to return whenever he or she wants. It's my sincere hope that Ryan does decide to write more for the site in the future.
Enough chatter from me...I give you Ryan's review:
Hi everybody! I got to see Godzilla a little early and have some very quick thoughts and I will try to depart with the prose and simply give you a Cheers and Jeers bullet point version, and I will keep it free of any important spoilers.
CHEERS
The last 25 minutes of the movie. – This is where the majority of the action located and the film really springs to life here. Director Gareth Edwards ("Monsters") shows why he will likely be the next big action movie director.
Godzilla– Godzilla looks awesome and I thought the characterization (if that’s what you want to call it) was interesting and I’m curious what they will do in a sequel, which is inevitable.
The scene(s) everyone will be talking about – There is one/two scenes near the end that will make you crap your pants. It will be worth the price of admission.
JEERS
All the scenes about the humans – The film has what I call the “Jurassic Park” problem. Jurassic Park is a movie that will forever be a landmark film for the awe-inspiring use of CGI in it’s infancy. That said, go back to that film and there are stretches where they are stuck in exposition limbo and create a world where a lot of logic is thrown out the window. Godzilla doesn’t have a logic problem much at all. Instead, it is just incredibly boring for long stretches at a time.
There are essentially a half dozen characters of note in the film. I honestly can’t tell you anything interesting about any of them. The main story is about Ford Brody (Aaron Johnson) a Naval bomb defuser whose father (Bryan Cranston) is a nuclear physicist who believes the Japanese government is covering up something after the nuclear reactor he runs blew up 15 years earlier. Ford must leave his family (Elizabeth Olsen and Carson Bolde) in San Francisco to help his father. What happens next changes the world. Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins also star as scientists investigating suspicious archaeological findings.
Now there is an interesting fundamental story here, but screenwriters Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham seem to go out of their way to not make us care about any of these characters and especially about any of these relationships. First and foremost, I think eliminating Watanabe and Hawkins characters would allow for time to be spent on building the relationship between Johnson and Olsen, and their role in the film could easily be converted to giving Cranston the burden of handling their exposition-filled existence.
Speaking of, why would we not get more Cranston? No spoilers, but I would have made the relationship about father and son far more central in this film.
All together, it’s a film that is disappointing because it seems the creators seemingly did not care about creating an engaging story and instead only cared about action scenes that will leave most very impressed. Many critics seem to be giving them a pass on this. For me, I come for the action, but I stay for the story.
There you have it folks...Thanks again Ry
Be sure to follow Ryan on Twitter for his movie musings and more!
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