davidjaldred

Unlike some other reviewers, I did not shed a tear. I just have some dust in my eye. Sniff. Honestly though, I am feeling quite weepy having just watched it, because this Godzilla movie is by far the best I've seen (even including Shin Godzilla, which should be in its own category really). What separates this new movie from others, in my opinion, is that the human story would work - indeed does work, even without the monster. It's a hero's journey, but you could swap out the creature for some other kind of antagonist and it wouldn't affect the young man's dramatic arc. Okay, it was an action movie, but it had the feeling of a parable, an epic tale of a guilt-ridden protagonist coming up against an angry deity whose motives are inexplicable, intending to redeem himself and win the hand of the princess. Things do not go quite according to plan. I loved it. The music was brilliant (much of it being drawn from earlier Godzilla movies), the acting was believable, if a little sketched out - but it was sufficient to tell the story. And all the special effects worked - I mean the monster looked really big, the ships looked like they were actually there, and the train carriages looked like they could actually fly.

As most of us know, no matter how good you are, it takes a long time to learn your craft. Most people learn it over many years, improving slowly, being offered more and more responsibilities as their talent finds its form. Others are catapulted into the spotlight seemingly instantaneously, and their flame burns bright and everyone flutters around it for a while. These prodigies seem to arrive from nowhere-although of course they don't. It takes a lot of hard work to get anything up there on screen, and that should always be respected. But they arrive before us apparently ready-baked geniuses, manna for our hungry eyes. I bought this movie. What I mean is, I bought the hype. Then I bought it on Apple TV. More fool me. I absolutely love Rogue One, but now I'm wondering about all those reshoots. Maybe the ingénue who made Monsters on a shoestring is just another director when all's said and done-a director who's surfed the zeitgeist a while, but who maybe ought to jump off that magic board and start learning to swim now, before the sharks eat him*; maybe he needs to learn his craft a bit more. I hope he does. So with great sadness I refer you to the eloquent, incisive and entirely accurate review written here by alex_with_a_P 1 October 2023.

*Apologies for the silly surf/shark metaphor.