Instead of focusing on the giant monsters fighting, Gareth Edwards tells his Godzilla from the human perspective. It's too bad because Edwards occasionally will set up an action shot well–he's inept at following through with these setups and actually doing a good action scene, but he's always terrible with the actors. The most interesting question Godzilla raises is in regards to its character actors… why can David Strathairn keep it together with Bryan Cranston looks increasingly more humiliated to be delivering Max Borenstein's terrible lines?
There's nothing good about Godzilla. There's not some gem of a little performance, there's not some fantastic sequence to partially redeem the film. Borenstein rips off a plot point from the last American remake (with some garnish) but it's all right because most of the first half has Edwards ripping off everything he can from Steven Spielberg. Poorly, of course, because Edwards, Borenstein and Godzilla are all terrible.
Particularly bad also is Alexandre Desplat's score. There's not a single good note of music, but given the film's atrocious sound design–which is usually meant to heighten the emotional impact of leads Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen's lousy acting–one would be unable to hear it.
Real quick–Taylor-Johnson's awful, Olsen's awful, Cranston's embarrassed–Sally Hawkins looks like she's ready to cry being in this turkey. Ken Watanabe gives the second best performance (after Strathairn); Borenstein gives him the most idiotic dialogue.
Godzilla's truly American now. The film would fail a fourth grade science quiz. It's exceptionally stupid. And bad.
ⓏⒺⓇⓄ
CREDITS
Directed by Gareth Edwards; screenplay by Max Borenstein, based a story by Dave Callaham; director of photography, Seamus McGarvey; edited by Bob Ducsay; music by Alexandre Desplat; production designer, Owen Paterson; produced by Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Mary Parent and Brian Rogers; released by Warner Bros
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Ford Brody), Ken Watanabe (Dr. Serizawa), Elizabeth Olsen (Elle Brody), Juliette Binoche (Sandra Brody), Sally Hawkins (Graham), David Strathairn (Admiral Stenz), Richard T. Jones (Captain Hampton) and Bryan Cranston (Joe Brody).
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