We need to consolidate some of these threads! The Godzilla reviews need to be in the Reviews section, and perhaps your review should be presented along with mine on the Blog. Im going to consolidate the new Stargate Trilogy threads too.
Now that I have this on HD downloaded, I was able to do two things.
1) Use it to properly tune and color balance my HDTV.
2) Experiment with fast forwarding through a lot of Act Two and see what the effect would be. Basically if I pick the right timeframes to skip the plot is effectively intact and it cures the pacing issue completely. Once I get the exact times I'll post them.
Oh, and when I did this I had myself a killer Kaiju film. Plus it was about 30 minutes shorter.
OMG this movie was bad!
I have to agree....not because of the effects or because of Godzilla, but because of everything else NOT about Godzilla. The story they chose for the movie sucked IMO. They spoiled the movie by focusing on the Brody's instead of the AWESOME new Godzilla. Im excited about the next one but this first one...meh. If Brody shows up in the next one's previews or spoiler leaks, I will just wait till I can download it or catch it another way.
Why does every movie have to move at a breakneck pace? Frankly I enjoy having a movie move a bit slower and actually work at setting tone properly. The main flaw with Godzilla 2014 was that the second act was too long. Calling it bad is in my opinion an exaggeration. This is why I made the suggestion about fast forwarding through a good deal of the second act (start at 57 minutes and FF to 83 minutes). It speeds the pacing up some but not excessively and does not compromise the main story in the process.
They took too long to actually show Godzilla. The story moved slow and didn't get any better. If the point of this movie was to see a cool monster, well, kudos. The same thing could have been accomplished with a short video feature like these and just get to the point:
However, they decided to pad Godzilla with a shit story that was painful to watch.
I said in the very beginning of this thread that I felt that the movie was too much people and not enough Godzilla, and this seems to be the biggest complaint about this movie in every market it has shown in. And we are not talking about "every movie", we are talking about Godzilla, coming back after a long hiatus and hyped to the max in the media. I have watched it twice now and I am still of the same opinion. I would not say this movie is "bad" like Bluce did but, it wasnt great despite how much money it is making. The fact that you have created a fast forward in the second act tells me you wish the pace was quicker too... The MUTOs got the amount of airtime that Godzilla should have had. If only they had found Godzilla under the nuclear facility, had him stomping in Vegas and the Phillipines and such, then bringing in the MUTOS near the end and having Godzilla vanquish them and them go back into the sea?
The whole Brody thing weighed down the film and that story felt like the ads in YouTube videos you have to endure before you can click SKIP AD. Even if you fast forward to edit the film, you are still expressing dissatisfaction with the film that was actually released, no?
Your sentiments almost parallel mine, though I disliked this movie. It was called "Godzilla" and we got 5 minutes of ACTUAL Godzilla, figuratively speaking.
Note that in the same article you pulled the time onscreen from the person who tracked it stated they were fine with it. Me, I could have done with some more (principally the Honolulu engagement should have been shown flat out and not through a TV screen) but I am not as negative about it as you guys are. But that doesn't mean I am a "goji homer" either - remember in the original review I pointed up the pacing problem and the flat human characters. I just appreciate the things done right (the whole look of Godzilla and how it behaved, tone setting, faithfulness to the genre) more. So ON BALANCE I like the film.
"Wrong thing #1: Pacing
Simply put, a big studio film like this needs a quicker, more even pace. Godzilla felt a bit like a small studio film where the pacing in act 2 was too slow. Ironically, Monsters had the exact same issue. This had the side effect of making Godzilla himself feel like he was on even less than he actually was (the 20 minute figure bandied about is off – I timed it and he was for 36 minutes out of the 120 minute film). Really the film could have been about 15 minutes shorter and lost nothing simply by trimming act 2.
Wrong thing #2: Acting outside of Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe
When one actor is flat, I generally lay it on the actor. When more than one is not only flat but the same kind of flat, I look at the director. Cranston and Watanabe did well in their roles. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elisabeth Olsen were both very muted and dull. Again, go back and watch Monsters and you see the same thing with the human characters – a couple standouts and the rest are kind of human paste in the background.
Im certain Joelist will argue that. Fortunately for you, I have the EXACT number of minutes Godzilla was on screen:
http://www.godzilla-movies.com/community/forums/topic/37087
Out of 123 minutes, Godzilla was on screen for 10:28 +/- 3 seconds.
UNACCEPTABLE.
WOW! I was off by 5 minutes.