Board Thread:Movie Discussions/@comment-24868748-20140518055647/@comment-8683878-20140730034703

As someone who really, really wanted to like the 2014 Godzilla, I was upset that Godzilla was marginalized in a film that's named after him. Also, it's a film that's a little too much "for the fans."

Besides the fact that the trailer essentially lied about the entire thing (I thought it would be "Bryan Cranston trying to stop Godzilla," but it's not) there are the other main arguments mentioned before: Low Godzilla screen time, Ford Brody is uninteresting, and too much teasing. They all kind of roll into one.

The reason why Jaws builds up so nicely isn't just because the characters are interesting; it's because there's the establishment of a threat by the actual shark very early in the film. The reason people can tolerate the long scenes on Tatooine in the first Star Wars film is because minutes earlier they were treated to a spaceship battle, a gunfight, and an impromptu execution by a main villain. Alien also takes a little time to actually show the main villains, but the earlier threats still come from the main villains.

In many other Godzilla films, Godzilla is clearly established as a threat (or at least something to be concerned about) fairly early in the film. Heck, the 1954 film opens with an attack that is later confirmed to be by Godzilla, and he appears in the flesh not much later. In 2014, there are shots of destruction early on... but it's caused by the MUTO. What creature is the elder Brody suspicious of? The MUTO. What is Dr. Serizawa monitoring? The MUTO. The Japanese government is covering up the event caused by what? THE MUTO. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Godzilla is just kind of mentioned as a bigger threat, but we're not given any reason why he's supposed to be, and then the whole Hawai'i thing happens and he shows up, but you don't get to see that. You have no reason to be concerned about Godzilla; you barely have any sense that the whole giant-monsters-destroyed-Hawai'I incident is a big deal, except that the news reports tell you that it is.When the film does things like this, it's only teasing the fans, who just want to see Godzilla in action. To someone who isn't a big Godzilla fan, however, this was a wasted opportunity to establish Godzilla as something to be taken seriously.

Basically, my dislike for the film was setting the title character as a prop, and as an underutilized one as well.