Lately I've been watching some of the Godzilla films from the 2000s and really enjoying them. Some really creative monsters foghting the big green lizard. I really view Godzilla as something that's uniquely Japanese. He started out as a serious statement on war, and as silly as some of the movies got, the Japanese sensability and outlook always made things interesting to me. I haven't enjoyed any of the American productions. They're just not the same to me. Call me old fashioned or even racist- but I want to see Japanese actors in a Godzilla movie. I'm not interested in this new film at all.

I think he looks a lot better then the 98 version. I still prefer the old version though.

You know i never thought about that. It does take a lot away from what the movie is supposed to stand for. It definitely won't have the same feel and wont be nearly as good as the old ones especially the original but i'm still really interested in it and i hope it turns out well.

Oh rapture!

I managed to see the teaser and all i'll say is coming from someone who's pretty much grown up with Godzilla my neck hairs stood to attention when i heard that roar and it showed good old Gojira in the smoke and dust, will definitely be seeing this on the big screen !!

Has anyone the other rumoured teaser which shows Godzilla's foot stomping down and a snippet of a fight with the multi limbed monster ?

I used to watch Godzilla films quite a bit as a child. I just recently introduced my boys to Godzilla with some of the old films. After seeing the new trailer I didn't feel a lot of excitement. The one thing that I liked was hearing the roar, otherwise I was left feeling cautious. Hopefully as the new trailers roll out I will get more excited, but right now I don't care much.

The movie was filming a few blocks away from where I was staying in Vancouver in June, they were doing a night shoot and we could hear some small explosion-type sounds. But not much.

Kirk Jaques's martial arts school was right in the middle of the action - Kirk is an expert martial artist, personal fight trainer, stuntman & stunt/fight coordinator who works on all sorts of series that film in and around Vancouver. He was telling me that the streets were all blocked off, there was an overturned, burned out bus, and assorted debris from monster mayhem. LOL! We filmed there in the same area during the previous August, I wonder if that crew had as much trouble with the skytrain noise as we did.

If I hadn't been slammed with my own work, I would have considered trying to go hang out around the set to see if I could watch any of the scenes. :)

http://cms.springboardplatform.com/e...icon.com/10/1/

http://cms.springboardplatform.com/e...icon.com/10/1/

Brand new official Asian trailer:


Bite your nails and wait impatiently for the release now.

looks damn good! Really waiting impatiently. ::cool::
Great news is..here's a new multiplex theater in Dhaka bringing my favorite monster to our city! Hope to catch it at first day-first show!!

Seconded

This will be way better than the 98 version, nothing can be worse than that ::big grin::

The horror film of the summer? Or Purge 2. ::wink::

Officially releasing here on MAY 23rd...one entire week after most of the international releases::sad:: ...but "little" satisfying thing is my brother just got me a premier show ticket for May 19th!::smile::

According to IMDB, surprised to see that Godzilla's official release date for JAPAN is JULY 25!::roll eyes::

I'm going on Saturday. Can't wait!!!!

Already saw one "lukewarm" review.

reviews ain't gonna stop me anyway

Hell no!!!!

Very excited for this - seeing it tomorrow evening. I think Godzilla himself looks incredible and the little snippets about the plot interest me - particularly the 1950s stuff. I like the angle they've taken on it (possible spoiler?: sounds like he isn't created by nuclear testing, that was in place to kill him. I'm glad they didn't take an easy way out)

However, I do agree somewhat with Neverending. It's certainly an appropriation. The original Godzilla really is deeply resonant with the state of Japan post-war, with the mixture of shame for their actions and the horrors they then endured. It's really quite harrowing to watch and whilst, yes, it did go down a very different route it's still very much rooted within their culture. Transposing that to America somewhat misses the mark. Still, I'll wait - perhaps they have managed to inject some socio-political commentary into it. Looking at the apparent plot, there's definitely something to be said for the irresponsibility of intentionally using one extreme power against another - lesser of two evils and such.

First few reviews by HDC-ians can be found here (Ferretchucker), here ( V )and here (hammerfan).

This seems like the right thread for Godzilla reviews...

I saw Godzilla at the IMAX theatre in 3D yesterday. Excellent and appropriate venue for the film. It cost $15! Most I've ever paid for a film, but I don't go to the theatre all that often anymore, nor the IMAX. So it's a special treat.

The film was solid, and the visuals and immersion was top notch.

It stayed true to Gojira/Godzilla orthodoxy, had a traditional Godzilla storyline, and at the same time manage to take a fresh perspective on the King of the Monsters.

I won't go into any spoilers at this point. Yes, there's some small details of the story I would "correct", but overall, it was a Godzilla movie experience. Like many modern "action" films, it lacked some character development particularly with the son/soldier, and as a result, lacked some heart. Also, it lacked a bit of the Japanese Kiaju spirit -- that is giving the kaiju's a fantasy film spirit and mythos.

Rating out of 10: 7/10

Just read the sequel is confirmed.

Would you say you looked like your sig watching part one?

Saw this yesterday.

Once i got over my disappointment that it wasn't the movie i wanted it to be, i really enjoyed it. The monster designs were really good and the fights were awesome. I liked that the humans storyline was all about them trying to fix the mess they made and having nothing to do with defeating the MUTO's.

It wasn't without it's flaws though. Aaron Johnson's acting was terrible, the reasoning behind Godzilla's awakening and him fighting the MUTO's was a little weak IMO. Godzilla wasn't featured enough however i thought the build up to his reveal really good. The movie dragged in some parts too but all in all i really enjoyed this and am excited for the sequel.

One last thing which i'll include as a spoiler just in case

SPOILERS:
When Godzilla used the atomic breath, i got super excited like a little kid
END OF SPOILERS

SPOILERS...........




SPOILERS...........




SPOILERS...........



SPOILERS...........
One thing that bugged me was, the story presented the theory that Godzilla was the top predator to the Muto. But they never showed Godzilla eating the Muto. Predators eat their prey.

The fact Godzilla didn't eat the prey made Godzilla honing in on, and killing the Muto, rather odd, confusing, and begging the question.

Also, the original Godzilla had no Planet-X connection. I wondered if this film would. With the Godzilla universe, I'd expect space aliens to come up eventually.

Remember the skeleton and the parasite attached to it? That shows a natural enemy sort of thing (although referring to Godzilla as an "alpha predator" is a mistake).

There's the territorial angle as well. "Stay away from my turf!"

With the sequel now greenlit, all sorts of possibilities have opened out. We might even see Jet Jaguar!

Might even be really lucky and get the song in too


Whilst realism certainly isn't an issue in the Godzilla world so I don't consider this a real flaw of the film so much slight oversight, I guess I did wonder about the predator idea - mostly that it's suggested Godzilla, the MUTOs and the creatures from that time feed on radiation emittedfrom Earth - for Godzilla it comes from deep in the Ocean etc. In this situation...why would anything need to develop a predator prey relationship?

As V said, referring Godzilla as an "alpha predator" thing was mistake or just to put a reason to create "Let them fight" scenario. I think the territorial dispute would be more reasonable one or for their limited amount of 'food' source availability. But I'd like to mention, besides all of these flaws, one thing they did clever was making one of the MUTO monsters 'fly', cause without that flying MUTO, I've doubt on how much exciting the war between Godzilla & MUTO couple would look like. When Godzilla arrived at San Francisco and at the same time as the flying MUTO showed up, the jets were dropping around & thus the pilots were Parachuting to save their lives...I loved those scenes! Great build up...that eventually ended up just at the peak of the moments..MUTO attacked Godzilla & the screen goes black as some door/gate was shut right in front of our view/the camera!


Found this 1 on a facebook Godzilla fan group...::big grin::

::big grin::

I should hope not.

Oh... at the beginning, that was Godzilla bones, and the 1st Muto was a parasite that fed off a Godzilla? I didn't really get that the Muto was a parasite from that. I'm not saying it wasn't, it just went over my head. Well that makes more sense, but I think the movie should have made that more clear for the remedial audience members.

And please, no Jet Jaguar!
Good question. I thought about that too. If they feed on radiation released in the ocean depth, why come up at all. If that was the key situation, why not say climate change has stifled radiation in the depths so they are looking for new sources, or something like that.

Yes, that's true. If godzilla and Mutos are in competition for radiation sources, then after Godzilla was done killing the Muto, godzilla should have started attacking and feeding on nuclear power plants in the area. That's what I was expecting Godzilla to do. He's dead. No, he's alive. Ah, now he's going for some nuclear power plants...

Ah! LOL! that's hilarious!

So...there's some Frank Darabont treatment in the movie!

And even from Andy Serkis:
Source: empireonline.com

This thread is KILLING me. I'm avoiding it until I see Godzilla - WHICH WILL HOPEFULLY BE TONIGHT!! ::cool::

Yeah I didn't think the original was that bad at all. Matthew Broderick is a decent enough actor and the CGI was well up to standard. I get what people are saying about the Jurassic Park element - the ending with all the baby Godzilla's was a little pathetic but overall the film was alright. I do wish they would up some of these movies in age rating though - letting in 12 year old's to watch these types of movies removes the option to make them more 'shocking'.

Heard about the new movie ( the guy off breaking bad's in it apparently! ) but haven't seen any decent reviews on it yet!::confused::

Did you just refer to the 1998 Godzilla as the original?

The original modern-day remake mate! The Asian category is a whole different ball game

OK that worried me for a minute. In the future you should clarify better

I wouldn't say that was "original modern day remake"; calling an 'attempted remake' would be more appropriate, IMO.

So. Godzilla.

For the most part, I pretty much entirely align with Ferret's well-written review, both in my disappointment and opinion of the myriad of missed opportunities here...

I'm just going to dive right into it, so - ***OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING***



The only humans that I remotely cared about were Bryan Cranston's Joe and Juliette Binoche's Sandra - I actually loved the beginning of the movie, thought they had good chemistry and was truly heart-broken when he essentially had to shut the door on his wife and watch her die. I totally bought into the tragedy and thought to myself, "Wow, finally an action movie where I feel feelings..."

But I was wrong.

Joe is really the only compelling character in this movie, which made his death all the more upsetting to me (I knew he wasn't going to last long, though, so I was at least slightly prepared) - I really loved the disgraced scientist who was crazy and obsessive and desperately trying to uncover the "conspiracy" - In fact, why wasn't THAT the core human element of the movie? I thought the rest of the Brody clan to be cookie-cutter, boring, and poorly-written, and it turns out that Aaron Taylor-Johnson, on top of all that, is just not that great an actor at all. I LOVED the scenes where Joe and son were in the quarantine zone; so very creepy and full of promise... I also like Ferret's idea of Ford being the one who dies so that the story centers around Joe seeking some kind of revenge - That would have been a fantastic foil for what (I believe) Dr. Ishiro Serizawa was supposed to stand for (nature, balance, etc.) -

I only say "I believe" there because Ken Watanabe was so incredibly wasted. Serizawa was desperately under-written and, quite frankly, a bit of an idiot... I mean, WHAT, you've been studying this thing for YEARS but it takes a CRAZY GUY ten minutes to get you to realize that it's echolocation? SERIOUSLY?! That's super-lazy writing. So is Serizawa asking the lame Ford to stick around BECAUSE HE MUST KNOW SOMETHING - HE'S THE SON OF THAT SMRT SCIENTIST GUY.

*facepalm*

Ford's whole path is filled with too many coincidences and that just drove me crazy - The Monster just HAPPENED to be where his wife and son are... He just HAPPENS to be a bomb-disarmer who just HAPPENED to survive... Ugh. Again, lazy writing.

And I really just didn't care about his wife and kid. I really didn't. Giant Monsters are seriously decimating America and I'm supposed to care if this snot-nosed brat and waif survive? Really??

That was another thing - It was confusing to me how we're supposed to feel about all of the INSANE AMOUNTS OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION happening because they seem to be treated as though we're trampling through a paper doll's house... But I digress...

Enough about complaining about the HUMANS - One might argue that IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT THE HUMANS... Ok, then, let's talk about Godzilla...

Godzilla.

Uhm - Well, he looked pretty cool and I loved scale and especially the scenes of him swimming... But unfortunately we don't get a whole lot of that. What we DO get a lot of, however, are the MUTOS... Also, I thought that they looked pretty cool, they were interesting, and I suppose were pretty threatening, but here's my problem...

We really see a LOT of the MUTOs. Ferret brings up that it plays more like a MUTO movie featuring Godzilla and not the other way around, and I couldn't agree with him more... We see a lot of the bugs... We see them emerge from the ground... We see them destroy stuff... We see them fall in love! We see them follow their biological imperative and "mate" (I put this in quotation because it's not clear to me if they have sexy time to create the egg sack or if he just pollinates it like a fish... I probably spent waaaay too much time thinking about that after the movie)... As a matter of fact, we see so much of the MUTOs THAT I ACTUALLY FELT BAD WHEN THE EGG SACKS WERE DESTROYED.

Seriously.

Mamma MUTO was heart-broken when her baby eggs are torched and I was too - Outside of Joe and Sandra, the MUTO relationship is really the only interesting familial relationship in the movie... If this movie is about New World Order, then it's the MUTOs that are just following their biological imperative in order to breed and survive... I mean, they don't MEAN to go and destroy cities! They're animals! They just want to eat radiation - In fact, you don't really see them chomping on humans; just metal - Which leads me to believe that we are not prey to these creatures, just incidental casualties.

Ferret made the appropriate connection that Ford was told to "Save the family at all costs," well, that's what these MUTOs are trying to do too.

Yes, I was oddly invested in the MUTOs. Heck - I didn't see them as Monsters - It's not like in Aliens when you CHEER for Ripley to torch the queen's eggs - I felt BAD when the MUTO eggs were torched.

And perhaps Ford should have paused too.

Which brings us back to Godzilla I suppose... Unfortunately he's really just a bit part in his own movie... Between the MUTOs and the Brady family, Godzilla gets so little screen time that mourning at his supposed death didn't feel very earned; it felt false and bizarre... And when he woke up, I didn't feel relief either; I felt very conflicted because even though I am interested in the concept of Godzilla being Earth's protector, I wanted there to be SOME kind of horrifying monster... The MUTOs weren't horrifying because they're not like a Xenomorph that explicitly targets people... They're just two big clumsy bugs trying to settle down and make a family (daaaaw)... And Godzilla, well, early on it was made clear that he was going to be taking on his protector role instead of destroyer role, so where's the explicit threat there? Sure, there was lots of damage, but it's just portrayed as unimportant and collateral. The only time where I thought that post-"monster" damage was impactful was when we were in the quarantine zone.

Eh - I'm been typing about this enough I think. Ultimately, I was confused and disappointed. There should have been more Brian Cranston and more Godzilla. Trash the story of the younger Brodys and family. Make Serizawa a foil to Brian Cranston and make the Monsters really be monsters.

HUGE disappointment.

2.5/5

Wow great points Chrono. Really well thought out and interesting. I pretty much agree with all of it. I enjoyed it, i really did. I just wished it had been better because it really had the potential.

Great review, Chrono! Agree with you but like Villain, I still couldn't left the theater with only disappointment. I guess, for fans like us even that limited amount of Godzilla showoffs resulted bit of satisfaction also.

Anyway, certainly you've made plenty of very reasonable points like FC did but I'd like to share some views about THE THREAT. I understand & agree with your views & sympathies about the MUTOs (you can open a facebook page: 'SAVE THE MUTOS' :D) and about their "horrifying appeal" but I think any giant & destructive monsters should certainly be consider as a threat for us (whatever their intentions are). We just can't let any man-eating (though MUTOs are not, just saying), giant or destructive animal/monster to move around & breed freely in any human establishment; can we? Whatever their intentions are, that may stimulates huge public panic & chaos as well as deaths & destruction at any point of time. But if their premise for nesting, feeding & fight for survival was different...let's say, in a remote island or jungle, abandoned or untouched by human civilization (i.e. Skull Island) then that would be totally different.
2014 Godzilla is kind of a homage to those Japanese sequels where Godzilla played the good guy role & intentionally or not, fought alongside humanity against common threats but yeah...I'd definitely more like to see an unpredictable, badass Godzilla like in the very first & original film. And the thing that often bugged me is why in any of the Godzilla sequels as well as in this American revive they didn't go with his "metaphor for nuclear weapons" concept, I think that would give more perspective & much more darker & interesting angles into a movie(s) which would also generate a great human story easily. Not in a great length may be but I'd love to see more closely destroyed cities & devastated human lives fighting for survival after Godzilla or any other monster's rampage. And last but not the least, when there are monsters who feeds on radiation then it'd be better to see some radiation poisoning things in an aftermath scenario more or less like the way the original depicted...and this all, as a whole could offer a great deal of threatening scenarios which even could lead into an apocalyptic warfare premise for any later sequel.

That's the HDC quote of the year so far. Well said, I felt the same way. That pretty much sums up the negative on Godzilla 2014.

I agree Cranston should have been the star throughout the film. It's fine enough that we follow his son into the military actions, but keep his wife and son the minor part it was. Let Cranston and Watanabe take center stage.