Movie: Godzilla (2014) - Semi Spoileriffic

As far as Godzilla movies go the latest 2014 Godzilla movie is about as spot on as I've seen for believing that Godzilla isn't a guy in a suit and actually could be real.

Although I knew there were other very big monsters in this movie apart from Godzilla (not really a spoiler since almost from the beginning you learn there's more than one monster) the trailers gave the distinct impression this was a people versus Godzilla movie.

Whilst it was certainly that in some respects the people in this film really did little more than get in the way. Literally and metaphorically.

In the same way that Raiders of the Lost Ark would have exactly the same outcome if you took Indiana Jones out of the picture, Godzilla would have exactly the same outcome but with few less lives lost if all the people just stayed out of the way.

In the trailers Bryan Cranston's character, Joe Brody, a former Nuclear Power Plant employee, emphatically accuses "Because what's really happening is that you're hiding something out there! And it is going to send us back to the Stone Age! God help us all..." It's a great line but it really makes no sense... Big monsters wandering the Earth... maybe... but they didn't have cities or even people in the stone age.

In the end it was dramatically overstating on the events that unfold in the film and might have seemed more relevant if the movie delivered what the trailer implied. A real battle between humans and Godzilla.

What I got was a movie with some soldier, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) wrestling with his Dad's erratic, crackpot ideas. Then kind of trying to stay alive because he's the only guy that knows how to work the machinery that may or may not stop the monsters that are causing havoc on American cities.

Ford Brody is a character I might have cared about more if he didn't spend so much time just reacting to the events around him. Even when he had a goal all you could really do was watch him attempt to carry it out and hope he doesn't die in the process. He was no great intellect trying to match wits with a monster or two.

I can't really fault this movie in terms of the monsters, other than it took a long time for Godzilla to get into the main action. However when he did, it was full on Godzilla awesome complete with atomic laser breath. It's well worth seeing for just the monster sequences alone. It's definitely franchise worthy because it would be amazing to see this very realistic Godzilla go up against realistic versions of some of his previous foes in the early films.

The human story however really needed some work. I would've liked to have seen more back story come into play. The movie states that nuclear bomb tests conducted in the 1950's were attempts to kill the monster but none of what they learned back then seemed to come into play in the present day storyline.

It felt like no one was really communicating to make sure civilians got out of harms way once they understood each monsters motivations. The strategy seemed to be all about stopping the monsters simply by blocking their path with as much military hardware as possible despite knowing how ineffective that was.

Yes I know the military did have a strategy to try and redirect the monsters but they still persisted in setting up troops in harms way knowing they didn't really stand a chance.

If there is a sequel to this film - and I'm sure there will be - I hope they manage to give us some pseudo science that the characters can really get their teeth into.

If this movie's subtext is really about 'man versus nature', as director Gareth Edwards suggests, then there's a whole story there about man trying to control nature that could give the people of the next film something really interesting to do.

To sum up. Godzilla is a really good monster movie. For me it was pretty much how I imagined Godzilla should be. I was very happy that the movie started in Japan before moving to the USA because above all else, Godzilla is a Japanese creation - even if he was born out of the US nuclear bombing of Japan.

If I could have got more interesting and better developed human characters it would have been just about perfect but perhaps we'll see that in a sequel... certainly don't kill off the most interesting character half way through next time!

Well worth seeing. I really hope to see another Godzilla movie that builds on this and perhaps goes a bit more into the science and intellectual side of things whilst still giving us great monster battles.

Comments

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements

TET heelflip - looking better but still not a land. A s of writing this I've stuck to my plan of filming myself skate every second Sunday. By the time this post goes up I will have three episodes done. As part of that goal I am also skating more between episodes, about every second to third day for an hour, practicing Braille's Skateboarding Made Simple, Volume 1. That said, I'm not posting these videos here immediately after they're posted to my @TETLife YouTube Channel because I only post an article once a week, and that would make every second article a Sunday Session post. These posts are really so I can add some additional thoughts after the fact, and, of course, because this blog is about all things that interest me, of which skateboarding is one of them. In episode two I had intended to speak to camera more than I do but my driveway is right next door to my neighbor's shed/workshop, and I get a little self-conscious if I'm not too sure whether he's th...

The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Image to Video Generator to Animate Art That Started as a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch

B ack in October of 2023 I used Prome AI's Sketch Rendering feature to color a 23 year old rough pen sketch I did of a princess watching butterflies, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. You can read more about that in my previous article, The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Art Generator to Color and Enhance a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch The three images I used to create my final image (bottom right). Notice how closely the AI has followed my line art sketch (top left) but in the first image (top right) has misinterpreted the waterfall as some kind of large tree stump. Prome's render of the artwork was pretty good but I did end up creating a composite image myself from two of the best renders, to get my final image. Since then AI Image to Video has come a long way, particularly when it comes to creating animation from artwork and maintaining the art style for the whole generation. AI still does much better with turning photographic images to video but I found ...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...

The Australian Federal Election 2025 Could Be a Win For Independents

Australian Democrats founder, Senator Don Chipp, embodied the role of minor parties holding the balance of power with his quote of "keep the bastards honest." Photo Manipulated Caricature by TET. A s of writing this, the actual Australian Federal Election date has yet to be announced, as our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, attempts to keep the focus on the fallout of severe weather events in Queensland, however it's looking likely that some time in May is the safest bet. Despite this, all parties have been hard at campaigning, with smaller parties, and in particular, conservative independent candidates, seemingly rallying together to make sure people know how much influence they can have just by preventing the two major parties (Labor and the Liberal/National coalition) from having a majority in either (or both) houses of parliament. They're also doing their part to make sure voters finally understand that preferential voting works in everybody's favor over one ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Making an Effort to Be a President Trump Free Zone - Final Rant (I Hope)

I hope the American people, who voted for President Trump, get the full experience of what they thought they voted for along with what they're actually getting. Now may be a good time for them to learn to speak Russian because if World War Three does break out, it's not beyond possibility that it'll be the USA and Russia against the rest of the world, as Trump appears to be emboldening Russia to dig in on their attack on the Ukraine. China, may opt to stay neutral, or even join forces with the rest of the world because they've been quietly winning an economic war with so many countries, they may not care so much about the USA. Especially since President Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to America and impose tariffs on every country exporting anything to the USA. After that fiasco meeting President Zelenskyy had in the Oval Office with President Trump I've pretty much had enough. I'm not writing about what new dumb ass thing Trump's doing this week. ...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog