Godzilla spoileriffic thread

[Graham Kennedy]

Rather than put extensive stuff in spoiler tags in the other Godzilla thread, I thought we've have a separate one for full spoiler-heavy talk about the film.

Okay, I saw it Saturday. Gotta say, I'm a bit disappointed.

First, the good. The monsters are awesome. I LOVE how Godzilla looks, he really comes across as being the unstoppable force of nature here. And I really like the vibe that he "saves" us from the monsters... but that he could give a crap about humans, nothing he did was intended to be to our benefit. He fights monsters because he's a badass who likes to kill other monsters because they're his prey, not because he has any love for humans.

What monster fighting we got also looks pretty damn good. One thing I really disliked about Pacific Rim was that the monster fights were hard to follow because it was all dark monsters moving against dark backgrounds. Well they shoot most of the monster fights against a dark background here too (saves money on CGI), but it's just better done and easier to follow and generally more awesome-looking. I was WAY more involved in the monster fighting here than I was in anything in Pacific Rim.

On the down side... there just isn't that much of monster fighting going on. Godzilla doesn't show up until an hour into the movie, and we don't see him doing his thing in a big way until the last 30 minutes or so.

And oddly, they seem to actually be teasing and playing with this. Like when Big-G is first introduced in the airport scene, we see the Muto rampaging, then we get the fantastic intro where they pan across to Big-G and up his body and he roars at the camera.... and then it cuts to a little kid watching it on TV. And that's all we see of that fight, a tiny little low res picture on TV. It's meant to be funny, and it kind of is, but dammit, we're already an hour into the film at this point. We've had little teaser glimpses of him already before this point. Enough already - In a film about Godzilla, this was the time to stop the damn teasing and give us Godzilla!

But instead, we keep cutting off back to the human story surrounding the monsters, and sorry but that story is just weak.

First off, the trailers lied to us massively. Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but lie is what they did. Watching the trailers you'd think Bryan Cranston was the star of this film, right? Almost all the dialogue we see in the trailer is spoken by him, after all. And we're clearly meant to think he's talking about Godzilla in his big "You're hiding something, this was no earthquake!" speech? Well sorry, but he's talking about the Muto not Godzilla. Cranston dies 40 minutes into the film, and he never even knows Godzilla exists. Again, this doesn't mean the film is bad, but it did give me a mental gear clash at that point. And after that we focus on Cranston's son and his wife and kid... and frankly they are all boring.

Regarding the humans, there are three basic stories the film is telling and only one of them is done well. First off, there is Cranson losing his wife. The trailer features this pretty heavily, and it's right to do so because it's the one aspect of the human story of this film that actually works. We get a nice little setup for Cranston showing his family life, his job stresses, etc - and then out of the blue he has this horrible decision to make. So you really feel for him when he has to close those doors, and it sets up a really good character motivation for him to become the obsessive that he does. If this had been the driving engine of the film, I would have been very satisfied with it.

But then they add story number two, which is that Cranston's obsession with finding out what happened has alienated him from his son. The trouble with this story is that the movie pretty much brings it up and then disposes of it straight away. We see nothing of the alienation developing, the film just jumps 14 years to the scene where the son is like "Oh, dad's in trouble, dammit, he's such a weirdo now". And then the very next scene is one where he picks his dad up from the police station, and then in the very next scene the son joins his dad to help him find out what happened. That's it, the entire story is brought up and dealt with in three scenes spanning about 10 minutes. It's not very involving because the movie makes no effort whatsoever to involve us in it.

And a few minutes after that, Cranston is dead. Now think about this... the son has spent years being alienated from his father, and thinking his father is a crazy person. Then he's just right now discovered that his father was right all along. Then he watches his father die. Heavy stuff, right? But the movie says NOTHING about any of it! The son never shows an instant of regret for the years he didn't believe his dad. He never shows one second of guilt over it. There's just ZERO attempt to explore any of it. In fact immediately after the death scene, the Japanese guy states his condolences to the son and then so far as I can recall, the son never once so much as mentions his father again. (I have a thought that he might mention it to his wife on the phone...? I honestly don't remember.)

So then story three Cranston's kid trying to get home to his wife and child. And this story lasts ages, but it's just kind of dull. In fact to me the worst aspect of the movie is part of this. The son is travelling by train in Hawaii. Out of the blue, he sees a kid who is separated from his parents when a closing door traps him on the train and them on the platform. So the son takes charge of this kid and they tag along together. It's obviously an attempt to give the hero a kid to protect so that we can get a bit more invested in what's going on - when the monster shows up and wrecks the train the son now has to save the kid as well as himself, which is supposed to make us care more. But again, we've no real reason to care about this kid. We know absolutely nothing about him other than that he's lost his parents. There's no real bond created between him and the son, no reason to care (you notice I keep calling him "the son"... I can't remember his name. That's how interesting a character he is.)

And there's no real "search for the parents" either. When they survive the train crash, the son and the kid walk into a gigantic refugee camp and literally bump straight into the kid's parents ten seconds later. And off they go on their separate ways and we never see the kid again. It's a zero payoff resolution for a story we never cared about.

And IIRC, this is also how the son's ultimate meeting with his family is handled. Once again, he simply blunders into them at the end of the film.

So the human stories of the film are largely uninvolving and pointless.

The stuff with the missile was a bit weird too. This was really the best way to deliver a bomb, by taking it right into and through the city by train? Hmm. I guess they wanted the humans to have a mission to accomplish that would help the monsters be defeated, and it does work well enough on that basis. The whole "got to get the nuke away from the city" aspect was a bit preposterous, but it worked pretty well in a story sense and I liked how it was kind of like Godzilla and the son were working together to defeat the Mutos, each in their own way.

Well, I've bashed and bashed, but I really wouldn't say this was a bad movie. I enjoyed it, and I'd rate it maybe 6/10. It's just such a shame we have to sit through so much that's bad to get to the really great monster parts.

[Jim]

I didn't think that the human story was as weak as you feel, but then again, I went to see monsters not a sappy family tale. I didn't have a problem with Cranston death "early" in the film. A good number of genre movies show a star in the trailers and then they are barely in it. I am used to it. Most movies have weak plots and such when your break them down. Logically watch the Notebook or Fargo... facepalm all over the place.

I actually thought that Godzilla was a bit weak, not a force of nature. The other monsters, specifically the little one, seem to push him around a bit. but... what I found odd was they made it so that the MUTOs are Godzila's prey... yet when he kills them he just leaves. So he is just a serial killer? I was expecting him to maybe rip a part out of their bodies (some radioactive part) and eat it.

[Graham Kennedy]

I didn't think that the human story was as weak as you feel, but then again, I went to see monsters not a sappy family tale. I didn't have a problem with Cranston death "early" in the film. A good number of genre movies show a star in the trailers and then they are barely in it. I am used to it. Most movies have weak plots and such when your break them down. Logically watch the Notebook or Fargo... facepalm all over the place.

I actually thought that Godzilla was a bit weak, not a force of nature. The other monsters, specifically the little one, seem to push him around a bit. but... what I found odd was they made it so that the MUTOs are Godzila's prey... yet when he kills them he just leaves. So he is just a serial killer? I was expecting him to maybe rip a part out of their bodies (some radioactive part) and eat it.

Yeah, I found the origin of all the monsters a bit off. It didn't bother me greatly, but in this film both the Mutos and Godzilla are basically just giant dinosaurs. Not one but two species of giant creature, hundreds of times larger than anything we know, which can feed off of radiation... and we just never knew they existed before. And they're still around because they've just been dormant/sleeping for hundreds of millions of years or more. It's a little hard to swallow. But I guess it's not really any less sensible than radiation mutating lizards into giant monsters, so I was okay with it.

And it is weird that if the Mutos are Godzilla's prey that he didn't eat them after they died. That one didn't bother me much though, to be honest I didn't think about it until you mentioned it just then.

[Jim]

In the long run... I just cared about pure entertainment value. I did not go into a Godzilla movie expecting award winning writing, acting etc. I want giant monsters smashing cities or each other... I would have liked a little more of that but I was okay with it overall.

[stitch626]

The Mutos weren't Godzilla's prey, they were parasites that used large creatures to feed off of when young that were kept under control by Godzilla.
They were only prey from a hunting aspect, not a consumption one.

[Graham Kennedy]

That makes no sense to me in terms of how predator/prey relationships actually work. But whatever, it didn't bother me at the time.

[stitch626]

That makes no sense to me in terms of how predator/prey relationships actually work. But whatever, it didn't bother me at the time.

It was less predator/prey, more... whatever you would describe two warring tribes of humans in a single environment, one destructive, the other trying to look out for their home. At least thats how it came off to me.

[Teaos]

[Griffin]

Saw it, loved it.

There was a really fantastic divide in the audience when the Big G's tail lit up between the excited murmurs of people who knew what that meant and the confusion of those that didn't, followed by the satisfaction and delight of the former and the complete shock and awe of the latter. I'm fairly sure the boy sat behind me's head exploded.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the atomic breath until I saw the plates on his tail glowing. I thought "ooooooo...." and just grinned in anticipation. There was a real "whoa" current in the audience when he blasted the Muto with it.

[Jim]

The first time the breath was used I was not impressed with it's destructive power. The last time though... it was nice.

[McAvoy]

Saw it and then got a ticket from one of those new famed license plate scanners that notify a cop that a unregistered car is parked somewhere. Bullshit. Most expensive movie ticket. $128 plus whatever a my renewal costs. Yes I did forget.

Anyway, it was definitely slow and at one time I forgot what the movie was. The trailers didn't really specify how many Mutos so I thought it would be kinda underwhelming but having two which were male and female was nice. It seemed like Godzilla had the most trouble with the flying male.

The big reveal of the female I thought was dumb. You are inside a mountain looking to see if the female escaped yet and then the helicopters circle around to see a big hole never noticing a giant monster. I know it was done as a dramatic effect.

If these are prehistoric creatures what is the point of the EMP because it didn't seem to affect Godzilla at all.

Oh and I kinda liked how after swimming and a brief battle at Hawaii, then swim to San Francisco then shrug off some human weapons them battle two Mutos which kick his butt for a bit and then use his atomic breath multiple times and have a skyscraper fall on him, he decides to 'yep I am going to pass out now'.

Oh and aside from the aircraft carrier which was crap (proportions were way off) no way in hell would they steam that close to Godzilla. That is just asking for him to alter his course and accidentally sink a multi billion dollar ship.

[Jim]

If these are prehistoric creatures what is the point of the EMP because it didn't seem to affect Godzilla at all.

This is the one thing that, even with all of the normal "suspension of disbelief" stuff that you need to watch a Godzilla movie, just simply made no sense. How, and much more importantly WHY, would the EMP thing evolve in these creatures. As you said it had no effect on their predator and it was also not used for communication between the two MUTOs.

[Teaos]

The only way it could work is if the EMP is just a side effect of what it really does... like deafen an opponent or something.

[McAvoy]

My theory is that it is a weapon or defense mechanism against something other than Godzilla. The EMP like effect is a just coincidence.

I know the audience knows Godzilla is an apex monster but I thought it was interesting they thought he was too without evidence.

Oh and those weapons they detonated on Godzilla assuming they are the same tests in the 1950's are not kiloton level but megaton some of which are the most powerful ever made by the US.