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Godzilla is impeccably shot, features top notch effects, and the action we do get is fantastic.

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The shortcomings are just too frustratingly insurmountable for me to give it a full endorsement. I enjoy much of what it has to offer and find more to appreciate with each re-watch. So by the third time the film cuts away from action about to happen, it veers off the road from toying with expectations to actively feeling like it has contempt for the audience. There is no mystery here once the MUTOs emerge, and the narrative isn’t structured in a way that lends itself to the Jaws-esque suspense Edwards wanted to achieve. Edwards wants you biting your nails and leaning off the edge of your seat waiting for the fireworks to explode – but this isn’t Jaws. The problem is that the execution goes from anticipatory to frustrating the more the film continues to holds back. I get what Edwards was doing with his decision to withhold the full-blown monster mashing for the finale. Aside from the flaccid human element, the biggest issue with Godzilla is that it simply pulls its punches for far, far too long. Serizawa, but the film underutilizes him as well. The only human anchor worth a damn after Joe Brody’s demise is Ken Watanabe as Dr. Compared to Cranston’s powerful and raw performance, everybody else in the cast is muted and subdued. The driving force behind his journey is to get back to his wife (Elizabeth Olson) and son (Carson Bolde) but the film never does the legwork to get you invested. He moves from scenario to scenario with the world’s thickest plot armor, witnessing these events without much to do until the finale. Johnson is a gifted actor, but Ford is such a blank slate compared to his father the audience simply can’t get invested in his plight. We’re left with Joe’s son, Ford (Aaron Taylor Johnson) to carry the narrative.

All of the engagement the first 30 minutes established so well is quickly and unceremoniously blown out like birthday candles. Edwards then makes the head scratching decision to kill off Joe during the first major action scene – utterly cutting the film off at the knees. He successfully established a dramatic, tense, and foreboding tone rooted in palpable human emotion carried by Bryan Cranston’s character Joe Brody. The slow burn Edwards was winding up worked for the first act of the film. The problem is Edwards simply got a little too precious with his creative vision. At its best, Godzilla genuinely achieves Jurassic Park levels of spectacle splendor. Every single time Godzilla or his enemies, the MUTOs, are on screen they never feel anything less than intimidating and powerful. This results in truly wondrous and stunning moments of visual grandeur. He made the creative decision to keep the camera as grounded as possible, never showing the monsters and destruction from an angle a camera or human couldn’t conceivably be seeing. Edwards has a keen eye for scope and scale. The technical aspects of the film are top tier. Helmed by Gareth Edwards ( Monsters, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Godzilla makes some baffling decisions within its runtime that keep it from ranking higher in our MonsterVerse ranking. They painted the picture of an epic, dread filled, and horrific disaster film that brought Godzilla all the way back to his 1954 roots as a force of pure destructive karma for man’s sins of releasing nuclear power upon the world.įor some fans, the final result didn’t quite capture what the trailers had promised.

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The trailers for this movie were perfect. Read on for Bloody Disgusting’s MonsterVerse ranking! In a blockbuster landscape dominated by capes and spandex, the success of the MonsterVerse is something to be celebrated by genre fans as the grand alternative superhero fare.īut how do these films stack up in a four-way royal rumble? The MonsterVerse is four films deep at the moment, with a newly announced Apple TV+ show in the pipeline. Since that film’s positive critical reception and strong box office numbers, Godzilla found himself back in the pop cultural zeitgeist for life-long fans as well as newcomers to enjoy. and Legendary took the first rumbling step into the playing field with 2014’s Godzilla.

The notion of a mega budget, interconnected “shared universe” franchise starring Godzilla and pals was nothing more than a flight of fanboy fancy. Toho themselves even voiced their displeasure with the final product. America had its shot at adapting Toho’s Godzilla in 1998 only to find almost universal hatred from the fanbase, poor critical reception, and a weaker box office than expected. Legendary’s MonsterVerse is something of a miracle in the realm of modern franchises.