Godzilla 2014: Review

Spoilers Ahead!!!

      So I just got back from seeing the new Godzilla movie. Now I will admit I love the 1998 version, I was only 9 at the time so the movie was pretty cool back then. For me it is still a pretty classic movie. I had fairly high expectations for this version considered the movie industry has come such a long way in terms of technology. 

     The movie started out by setting the scene in Japan at nuclear plant. It shows the back story of a scientist (Bryan Cranston) and his family and how tragedy changes his life. The nuclear power plant in which the scientist works collapses, killing people that he cares about. He knows that it wasn't just a malfunction that caused this to happen. We don't find out until 15 years later why Godzilla relates to his story. 15 years later introduces the true main character of the film, the scientist's son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The scientist along with his son, go back to the power plant to try and get some answers as to why the plant crashed those many years ago. They find out the truth and it is not what anyone expects. The government is hiding some weird looking monster egg. Well it turns into a real monster that looks sort of like a cross between the Cloverfield monster (L) and Skitters from Falling Skies on TNT (R). 

    So of course said monster escapes because it has been calling to it's female mate. They are headed to San Francisco and this is where Godzilla finally comes in! Godzilla wants to restore balance to the Earth and his enemy is this new monster. The scientist's son has a pretty big role to play in this half of the movie. He helps the military with their way of ending the terror of the monsters. Without giving the rest of the movie away, I am going to stop here with my little summary. All of the good stuff happens after you finally see all of the monsters. 

     This brings me to my opinion of the movie. I felt that there was a lot of back story in the first half of the movie. You don't see any monsters until maybe half-way through and you see Godzilla a little later than that. For a Godzilla movie, you really do not see a lot of him! I did like how they brought in more monsters, it added more to the movie. The battle scenes between the three were very entertaining and well done. The human aspect of the film was great too. It made you really root for the main characters. The one thing that I didn't like was that there really wasn't a lot of focus put into where Godzilla came from. By the end of the movie you know where the other monsters came from but not Godzilla. Well this movie made a lot of money so maybe that will be in the second one ;-). 

      Overall, I would see this movie again and I will be buying it when it comes out on DVD. I give it a B+ for action sequences and relating to the human character but graded it a little lower for lack of Godzilla. 

Thanks for reading!

Cecelia