I liked this movie. But many things in it stood out as being hard to take.
- Off the top...the cast is 100% Asian, with 98% of them being Japanese. Being American, and from a minority, this seemed extreme and jumped out at me.
- The scenes where there are committees and government conferences regarding Godzilla are stoic and boring to the point of being almost comical. People sitting around with perfectly stacked booklets of paper, identical notebooks, and copy machines set up with the regiment of a military unit.
- Godzilla in his second form. He had very large eyes and the face was...cute. Even cuter than Minya. I thought he was going to blow bubbles!
The story worked quite well. The evolution of Godzilla was logical and made sense, even with his existing history (which has now been rebooted). This is an origin story, and is very much the result of a more scientifically advanced audience than it was for the original post-war audiences who saw a more symbolic Godzilla than what Shin Godzilla gives us.
This movie is not dubbed. It has English subtitles, which in this movie seems to work because then you do not have to stare at perfectly arranged coffee mugs and boring lookalike suits. It's one of the most drab things to see in the movie. The subtitles allow a clear understanding of the story and the font used is pleasant and does not block the scenes.
Godzilla himself, well he starts out in an interesting fashion, and then "evolves" through several stages before becoming Godzilla that we know. The second form where he has rudimentary rear legs and gills is...disappointing. Although it is said that this film uses CGI, they manage to still make Godzilla look like a man in a rubber suit. The look is pure kaigu (OG style). I think that this look is in it's sunset. Like even the very best most sophisticated stop motion, there is a threshhold where the best is not good enough. Pacific Rim has raised the bar.
Overall, I give this film FIVE STARS for a kaigu film, but for a regular film, I will give it a 3.