Godzilla

False advertising is a lot of fun

We open with Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) flying to an island to investigate a finding at a dig site, it turns out to be the bones of a huge monster (or something). Pan to the Brody family where we see Joe and Sandra Brody (Bryan Cranston) off to work and there son Ford Brody (apparently they wanted the most American sounding name they could think of) off to school. Joe and Sandra work at a nuclear plant in Tokyo (Marge apparently wanted a job where she could be next to Homer), until the day that a series of earthquakes makes the plant go into meltdown killing Sandra (basically in the trailer not giving a spoiler warning to that). Fifteen years later we find Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) working as an EOD unit's Lieutenant in the military. He is home on leave for all of a couple of hours when he hears his father is being held in a Japanese prison for trespassing on a quarantine zone so he could try to get back to his old home. Joe has been trying to confirm his suspicions about there being more to the accident that claimed his wife's life. It turns out he is right when they both go into the quarantine zone and the government is housing a monster.

If you are looking for a lot of Bryan Cranston in this movie you are going to be very disappointed. If you are looking for a lot of moster action in this movie....you are still going to be a little disappointed. At least I was. I think "Pacific Rim" has kind of ruined me for movies like this. In that movie they promised giant robots punching giant monsters to death, and they delivered exactly that. In this movie they promised Godzilla and Bryan Cranston, and I got very little of both. Instead I got a lot of that kid from "Kick-Ass" trying to play soldier. I thought with a movie like "Pacific Rim" being out there, and the visuals of movies being what they are today we were past the point of not wanting to show a lot of monster fighting; but apparently the people in charge of this movie think that we are still dealing with puppets, or guys in suits......or they were trying to stay under budget I don't know. Not to say this was a bad movie by any means, it was just a little disappointing. There were some scenes that were thoroughly enjoyable, but it just wasn't what I expected. I kind of want to back hand the people in charge of the trailers for false advertising, but I digress; this was a very okay movie. The story line was pretty much like every other giant monster movie out there, transparent. A lot of "oh we're going to do something really stupid in an attempt to kill the monsters, but then have to save ourselves from ourselves." "How are we going to stop something that size?" "Military jargon, military jargon, military jargon" the story line is never what we come to these movies for and I am not going to insult you by spending to much time talking about it.

I did, however; expect great acting. Instead I got good acting, mixed with bad acting, mixed with some great acting. Great acting from the little bit of time we got to spend with Bryan Cranston, and a tip-of-the-hat  to Ken Watanabe as well. Good acting from the forgotten Olsen sister Elizabeth Olsen, she gave a very convincing performance as the worried military wife. Now, let's talk about Aaron Taylor Johnson. I know this kid can act, I've seen him do it. He does very well in movies like "Savages" and "Kick-Ass, " I guess he just isn't the correct fit for a military Lieutenant (also, I want to know why a guy in EOD automatically knows how to H.A.L.O. jump...problems with the story line, I'll continue). The kid definitely needed to take a few hours out of his days on set to ask Bryan Cranston what range actually was, because with a performance like this he will probably be typecast in future movies and that would be completely justified.

The monster scenes were the absolute golden moments of this movie. When I saw them I instantly went back to moments as a kid when I would watch cartoons and just feel in awe. These fight scenes were the adult me equivalent to when Goku and Majin Vegeta fought in my younger years (sorry anime reference... ummm.... think Megatron fighting Optimus Prime on the 1980's "Transformers" series). Seeing monsters crash into buildings and those buildings having an actual effect on their physical well being was awesome. The monsters always seemed like they were huge, they never lost scale, you always felt like if this thing was real you would be the size of it's eyeball. An impressive job on this part of the movie all around.

Okay, okay, I know what you are waiting for: was this movie a repeat of America's first time trying to bring "Godzilla" to the states and should we want sequels? The answer is no it wasn't that god awful Matthew Broderick heavy piece of garbage; and yes, you should definitely want sequels. This movie should serve as more of an "origin esque story" for the character, I expect the second film will be much better. The best part is this movie opened the doors for revamps of all our favorite monsters fighting Godzilla. I just only hope that they don't blow their load on the second one and make a Mecha Godzilla movie.

Final Verdict: Netflix It due to some major short comings I can't bring myself to tell you to waste money on this. The only reason you should see this is if you want a good five minutes of some amazing monster fighting, other than that chalk this up to another lazy day movie. If you have nothing better to do watch this.