I thought that was part of their charm. I saw the 1998 Godzilla, and honestly it was probably the best out of all the Godizllas I've seen. I saw a lot of the old Japanese movies, but they're just unintended comedies as far as I'm concerned, with all kinds of weird crap like a child Godzilla, tiny telepathic fairies/Japanese girls, and other stuff that made no sense and served no purpose whatsoever. Between the pretentious monster movie that tries to have some kind of thematic meaning and the monster movie that understands it's just here for explosions and awesomeness, I'll take the latter every time.
Unfortunately, it sounds like this newest Godzilla meanders between the two and doesn't achieve anything at all, so thanks for the review. I know not to go see it (not that I would probably have anyway, since it is rare for me to go to the movies lately). Of course, I had surmised about as much from the trailers, which were all over the place and showed so many characters and cliches that it was clear nothing good could come of this.
Cloverfield remains just about the best monster movie of this type in my opinion. It focused on a small group of characters and humanized them, its monster was actually pretty scary, unknown and unknowable (unlike Godzilla, who at this point inspires about as much fear as a movie about a 50-foot tall Pikachu would), and it had the story culminate in the inevitable. No movie that I've seen since then has come close.
Yes agreed, Godzilla movies are ridiculous, hence why I consider them good post-pub entertainment. Putting the original aside, which stands alone as a unique entity and a classic, from 2 onward it's just ever more ridiculous fights and nonsense, tongue firmly in cheek. Which is why Hollywood struggles so badly to nail it I think, they cant do a monster movie without spending over $100M, and you don't spend $100M on a tongue in cheek piss-take monster movie. You need to go big and bold and rain down destruction.
1998 sort of did okay as it managed to inject copious humour via it's human actors, whilst making the monster more serious and destructive. 2014 fails to do either, with so many big name serious actors they try and go serious but with no character development or dialogue to back it up. So when Ken Watanabe says Godzilla the first time, and indeed every-time, everyone laughs at how ridiculous it is.
Cloverfield was pretty good, but suffered from an uninspired monster design I thought. They really could have done with some japanese models at that point.
Anyway, I note that the review scores on rotten have fallen a lot since release, confirming that they are now pretty useless for early scores as the movie studios have them firmly in hand. Shame.
