Flixist Community Discusses: Godzilla

Having recently seen Godzilla last Monday, I was extremely surprised to find out the wacky reactions it had brought out in people. Much like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 a few weeks ago, opinions were pretty split down the middle toward either extreme. Most of the folks I talked to either hated it or loved it. I’ve also heard lots of the same criticisms too (Not enough Godzilla, too long, boring, etc.). So I wanted to get to the bottom of this. 

After the wound from Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla reboot has finally healed, did we really get the American Godzilla movie we deserve? Thanks to Flixist Community Discusses, we’ll discover why Godzilla may or may not be successful in what it set out to do

Gathered from the comments (from both the opinions post and the review) and Twitter, here’s what the Flixist Community thinks of Godzilla. And fair warning, spoilers ahead! 

Here are a few comments from community members who really liked the film! 

@AlmostApollo:

Goodzilla

@TalkingMagnets:

Godzilla was a seamless blending of large and small-scale action. It nailed the monster vibes, but suffered from poorly prioritized characters. 

@RobLopez7:

Same problems as almost every Godzilla film, a lot of human junk and not enough fights or Godzilla himself. I liked it though. 

@DaddyBoJangles:

Best use of atomic blast ever. 

Chad Almasy:

I loved the film. It had an all-around more entertaining story than Hollywood’s lack luster attempt from ’98. The human side to it wasn’t even bad, far better than other giant-blockbusters have been *coughalloftransformerscough*. And the monster fighting? Absolutley fantastic. I weep for the poor souls that didn’t witness that in IMAX. The movie did need more monster, but what they did do they did -well-. The Muto were deliciously menacing, and the King Of Monsters himself was a complete blue-firebreathing bad ass. I cannot wait to see what they bring to the table next time around.

Also: kelly ZOMBOR.

And now community members who are more in the middle. Liked Godzilla himself, but really didn’t like everything else. 

Luna46:

As an old school Godzilla fan I loved it. The characters I agree are a bit boring, but I wasn’t bored. and the teasing of Godzilla vs the other “monster” was a bit frustrating, but still that final battle was so much fun. I have no problem watching it again. If anyone is on the fence just go into it knowing there’s not much Godzilla, but the humans dealing with the fact of there’s him and another monster.

OhBollocks:

I liked the monster action. There was little of it, but what there was, I enjoyed. The opening montage was excellent.

I disliked the family drama side of things. It felt forced right from the very start, the death of Cranston’s wife (did she even have a name?) happened too soon, and when it did, my God! When they’re busy staring at each other through the porthole…and then the second set of doors slides shut like Fate saying “FUUUUUUCK YOUUUUU.” made me burst out laughing in the cinema. Likewise when Kick Ass gets home and he puts Kick Ass Jr. to bed, it’s just him and Martha Marcy May Marlene but there’s no real interaction there, we get some muffled audio of him telling a story and her laughing, but there’s no interaction as separate characters, it’s just a reunited loving couple stereotype scene, there’s nothing funny or touching or empathetic about any of it.

That entire part of the film is so rushed it’s ridiculous, the film sets up some cardboard cutouts in the opening five and expects you to care. All the more puzzling when the setup for the rest of the film is so slow.

Shortysvilla: 

The trailers gave away almost all of the movies action sequences. There was maybe 2 minutes of fight sequences that wasn’t in the trailer. Huge let down as I would have liked to have seen newer footage! Trailers need to stop giving away so much!

Nathan Giesbrecht: 

I personally enjoyed it but it definetly could have been better. 6.5 our of 10 maybe.

For me, the most interesting thing about it was that it seemed to be trying to hit a compromise between monster movie styles. You got big bombastic monster flicks that are all about the destruction and special effects like Pacific Rim and arguably the American Godzilla remake. On the flipside you got films like Cloverfield that are much smaller scale, focusing on the people scurrying around the feet of the creature. Instead of pulling out so audiences see the enormity of the monster, it comes in so audiences see the insignificance of the characters.

Godzilla tries to show both the smallness of the characters and the awe inspiring power of the monsters, with equal measures of success and failure. By having most of the destruction happen off screen it makes the monsters seem less powefull then they should, and giving the human characters most of the action makes them seem more important and “larger” than they should.

It tried to go a direction that could have been an interesting middle ground of styles, but in doing so it sacrificed my investment in both the humans and the monsters. At least that’s more or less how I feel about the film overall.

The final 20 minutes was pretty great though.

dork:

The movie was King of Humans…

Gareth just needs to ditch the whole concept of “from the human’s perspective” route like they did here. Once was enough, give us what we want…Godzilla mayhem.

And these community members have the most spoiler filled contributions. Enjoy at your own risk! 

Fengor: 

I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t call it a stand-out amazing movie, but it was adequate enough…There was also a bit of fridge logic my friend picked up on as we were driving home. Why were the non-Godzilla monsters equipped with a defensive EMP ability? Evolution wise it would have served no purpose in the prehistoric world, and only seemed to be there in order to add the extra threat layer of knocking out technology stuff. Granted I read somewhere this is explained by something having to do with nuclear fission or something (though I already knew a nuke also generates an emp when detonated), but it’s not like this was an aura they put it out, it appeared to be an actual ability they could trigger as a self-defense mechanism.

I’ve got a long list of inconsistencies with this film, and I’m sure if I went see it again I’d catch even more. Overall though, I had lots of fun watching it and I was very impressed by the quality of the Godzilla CG model itself. My favorite moment had to have been when Godzilla fired up his nuclear fire breath for the first time; I was literally giddy with anticipation as his spines pulsed with the energy build up.

Oh, and hearing that roar in beautiful cinema surround quality?

Jonathan Wray (Flixist Editor): 

I’d never seen a Godzilla movie before,  and my brother-in-law invited me to this one, so I thought I’d check it out. It scratched that Cloverfield itch I’ve had for years, but to get to it, we had to wade through knee-deep family relationship stuff. Cranston should not have been killed off – following the son on his journey home was fun, but it could’ve been way more fun with more monster time.

Side note, I had no idea that Godzilla “restored the peace”, so that was a new one. To be honest, I’m sad that he’s not the destroyer of worlds that I thought he was.

That last kill was AWESOME, though. Next time around, let’s flip it to 25% human drama, 75% Godzilla action.

Nick Valdez (Flixist News Editor)

My main problem with Godzilla is its complete misuse of suspense. Rather than build up to Godzilla’s reveal, it’s building up to his fight with another monster. It’s like the whole POV has been shifted away from Godzilla. Sure he’s a force of nature now, but he’s never a real presence. You can’t build to Godzilla’s reveal and have it mean anything when we’ve spent 75% of the film looking at giant Starship Troopers rejects. In fact, every cut from the action as a hollow form of suspense is frustrating when we have to focus on cardboard cutouts of people pretending to be in a movie. But stranger thing is, when it works, it definitely works. 

Godzilla looked so good, everything else looked like garbage in comparison.

Matthew Razak (Flixist Editor-in-Chief):

I thought it was good (as my review said), but a few things I couldn’t say due to spoilers came up. The first is that Cranston’s death was terrible and the lack of his character took a huge dramatic chunk out of the film. The way he died was horribly anti-climatic and you didn’t quite know if he was actually dead or not. It took the entire “we killed a lead actor” surprise out of it. Very poorly done.

The second was that Ford’s family was almost entirely useless. They didn’t do much except stand as a McGuffin for getting him back to SF and they were never really in any danger. That took a lot of dramatic thrust out of the human side of the story.

Godzilla was awesome though.