Hey youtubers it’s Charlie, I finally had a chance to see the new Godzilla so I wanted
to do a review.
The closest thing we’ve had to a kaiju film recently has been Pacific Rim, which was like
Guillermo Del Toro’s love letter to Godzilla.
But this new movie is something of a reboot.
So I’ll do a super quick breakdown of where it fits with the rest of the Godzilla movies.
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So before my review.
Here’s a quick breakdown of where the new Godzilla fits in the franchise.
It’s kind of a spiritual sequel to the original 1954 Godzilla movie.
Not really a direct sequel, but it presents the events of the first film as a real life
historical event and combines that story with things that happened in US Military History.
We can talk more about that during spoilers.
But for all intents and purposes this movie pays homage to a lot of the other Godzilla
movies.
You don’t have to have seen any of them to understand what’s going on though.
But if you’re a huge Godzilla fan you’ll notice all the bits from the older movies
that they used as names for things in the new movie.
So because the movie is just being released I’m going to do a non-spoilery review first
and then do a spoilery part where I talk about future sequels and specific events from the
movie.
Right off the bat Godzilla, I loved the way he was depicted in the movie, both as part
of the story and visually with the effects.
He’s the star, but I noticed a lot of people were surprised by the amount of screen time
he got and I saw some criticism from hardcore japanese audiences on his look.
I understand where a lot of complaints come from, especially given the way he was shown
in all the previous movies.
But I thought what they did totally worked and did a good job of setting up potential
sequels.
Which by all accounts will definitely be happening.
Right now the movie is crushing it at the box office.
So it seems like it’s going to be extremely successful.
And we all know what happens in the movie world.
If it makes a ton of money, then there will always be a sequel.
In terms of the non-Godzilla actors in the movie, Bryan Cranston was great.
Breaking Bad has been off the air long enough that I wasn’t thinking Walter White every
minute he was on screen.
Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen were a little surreal.
In case you didn’t see Winter Soldier.
They’re playing Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in Avengers 2.
So they’re brother and sister.
And in Godzilla they were a married couple.
All the X-Men Comic Fans can let me know if they felt weird watching them be married.
I think my favorite person was Ken Watanabe.
I’ll talk more about his character in spoilers.
But I just love the mythology he brought to the story.
The movie itself was pretty upfront about what it is.
A disaster event movie.
It’s not like a psychological exploration of Godzilla’s motivation.
If you want that kind of movie though.
Re-Watch Ang Lee’s Hulk Movie.
Which was made by Universal a company that originated a lot of the monster movies like
Dracula and Frankenstein.
I didn’t consider the film to be an origin story, just because the plot treats the original
godzilla movie in 1954 as a real life event.
But I do think it’s something of a reboot from a visual perspective.
If we’re just talking about the logic, you know, explaining how Godzilla can exist today.
I think all of the Godzilla films have operated from the idea that he is a prehistoric creature
that adapted biologically to deal with intense amounts of radiation.
If you’re brand new to the franchise there might be a few things you’re confused by.
Mostly as to how Godzilla could have survived for millions of years.
As a biological organism, at some point he’d have to age and die.
I didn’t take issue with any of the logic.
I try to operate based on the rules movies present.
Like if you can grow as big as godzilla, and you’re a reptile.
Maybe you can hibernate for millions of years too.
I don’t like to nit pick things like that.
Overall I gave the movie a solid B plus as a fun monster disaster movie that did a great
job of reinvigorating the franchise.
That was really the task it had to perform.
Make people excited to see Godzilla movies again in a big way.
And it totally accomplished that.
So let’s drill in to specifics and some of my favorite moments.
So careful for spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
But here are my top 5 moments.
Number 5 - Ken Watanabe discovers the first nest
The did a great job of hiding the fact there were multiple monsters.
So I loved when they found the Muto lair inside the Godzilla skeleton.
If you were confused by this.
They basically said that whatever that dead skeleton was, it was a creature that gave
off radiation that the Muto’s fed on a long time ago.
A Muto killed it, then laid it’s eggs inside the animal so that they could feed on the
radiation.
Like with the lair and the bomb later in the movie.
Number 4 - The Male Muto hatches
It’s like the world coolest science experiment, waiting for a monster chicken egg to hatch.
I loved the science behind it too.
The creature feeding on radiation for 15 years in it’s cocoon, until it hatched into a
beautiful butterfly of death and desctruction.
Number 3 - The Muto Mating Ritual
Part of me thinks that these animals aren’t evil.
They’re only doing what they naturally do, eat things and reproduce.
Kill Predators.
I wonder if the DVD special features will describe some of the science of how they reproduce.
Maybe if we ask Emily Grasile on brainscroop she can tell us how animals like that would
reproduce.
Number 2 - Godzilla History
I’m talking about the way they present historical facts as if they were true.
Like the atomic bomb tests in the pacific in 1954.
They invoke the Hiroshima bomb, but that one they don’t tie to a Godzilla attack.
I also really liked the way Ken Watanabe mythologized Godzilla as this warrior for balance.
He’s a hero, just not for mankind, he’s fighting on the side of nature.
So that makes me wonder at some point if he could attack man, like if they ever worked
mechagodzilla into the new franchise.
and my Number 1 moment - Godzilla Versus the Mutos
It was a great action scene that pushed all the right fan buttons.
We saw Godzilla’s nuclear breath, he got some really awesome close up moments.
I really loved Godzilla furrowing his brow.
Like he’s trying to do a schwarzenegger one-liner but can’t form the words.
But I also loved the way they filmed the fight scene.
They did a good job depicting scale and not showing you so much of the monsters that it
looked silly.
But there was this one point when I thought it looked kind of like a model.
Like they paid homage to the original Godzilla battles by making some of it look like three
rubber suits fighting in a model.
Just as a bonus, my favorite non-Godzilla scene was they 2001 Space Odyssey moment when
they all jump out of the plane and you see their red trails of smoke passing through
the city scape.
It was so beautiful, it was like a painting.
If you didn’t hear it.
They used that famous audio track from 2001 Space Odyssey that plays when Dave the Astronaut
is passing through dimensions.
I guess maybe that tied for my favorite moment.
Just because I’m such a fan of 2001.
But now it’s your turn, let me know what your favorite moment was?
And were there any easter eggs that you really liked.
Just to talk about sequels.
Since Godzilla didn’t die at the end I don’t expect them to do son of Godzilla anytime
soon.
But I do want to see a mech.
Maybe not a straight up mechagodzilla.
But now that everyone knows about Godzilla, how can the governments of the world NOT build
a countermeasure.
They mythologized the prehistoric creatures in a pretty clear way, so I think the next
film will just feature another creature like Mothra and a third one.
Let me know which Godzilla monsters you want to see next!
Like I said, I’ll be doing movie videos for Days of Future Past next week.
So be sure to subscribe to get it.
Orphan Black and Game of Thrones this weekend too!
Right now click here for my top 10 godzilla movies and click here to learn all about Ben
Affleck’s Batman Suit and the new batmobile.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tomorrow.
High Fives!