djmomo17

I only checked this out because the score was done by Don Davis, composer for the first 3 Matrix movies. You can definitely hear some proto-Matrix music here and it really lifts the material.

Expecting this to be a slog, it turned out to be pretty damn engaging, somewhat reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and V (the original miniseries). What really amazed me is that they created a fairly decent alien invasion story with a TV budget. There are also deaths/conversions aplenty for costars, which ups the ante suspense-wise. Don't go in expecting Arrival or Independence Day, and I think it will be worth a slow night's watch.

I hate to be so against the mainstream critical wave, but this is probably my least favorite Godzilla film (and I have seen every one of them), next to All Monsters Attack (the one where Godzilla's dough-boy kid teaches a school boy to fight back against his bullies).

It's possible that I came into this expecting too much. I kept hearing phrases like "masterpiece", "possibly the best Godzilla movie ever", "most scary since the first one". I have to say the trailer didn't really make much of an impression (aside from the upgrade in digital effects). And just prior to the screening I found out that this was made by the same guy who directed the live action "Space Battleship Yamato". So that says a lot.

OK, so this film takes place over the course of 1945 to 1947, and the primary theme is obviously post-war melancholy and regret in Japan. The main focus of the film is a melodrama revolving around a failed kamikaze pilot, a female hanger-on and an abandoned baby the two of them adopt. During the rest of the film Godzilla makes less appearances than the fingers of one hand. Does he wreak havoc? Yes, there are one or two moments where it shows Godzilla at his most powerful. Unfortunately where the movie fails is that there is no dramatic build up to his appearances. For example, (and this is a spoiler for just the first 5 minutes) G first appears with about the same dramatic treatment as one might find in a cat-on-the-loose YouTube video. He just shows up and starts running around. He's lethal yes, and racks up a healthy body count, but the actual action is on par with something from the Discovery Channel. Godzilla should be a near-mythological force of nature, not an over-large dinosaur.

In future appearances he just swims over, lifts up his head and starts biting/stepping on things. One of the great things about the "classic" Godzilla films is that there is some sense of dramatic style/suspense/dread about G's approach. Here, it feels more like a newscast cutting in on the disaster scene as it happens (omitting the "shattering of the peace" anticipation element). The end result was that I felt this was FAR from the "scariest" Godzilla ever. Actually it seemed more like a day at the office for G than anything else (for perspective, I would consider "Godzilla" (1954) by far the most terrifying Godzilla, followed by "GMK", "Shin-Godzilla", and "Godzilla" 1984).

As far as the score, I hate to say this, especially because I am a fan of Naoki Sato's work (especially his "Rurouni Kenshin" scores), but in the film he primarily used droney sound design (overused but sometimes effective), saccharine guitar strum loops (for the romance scenes) and verbatim rerecordings of Ifukube themes. In "Space Battleship Yamato" Sato actually did reuse themes from the TV series, but there they had fresh arrangements - here, they seem like straight renditions. Honestly, I would say the homage approach Bear McCreary did for "Godzilla King of the Monsters" was much more wondrous.

Now the characters: Wow, where to start? There's not one character I found to be likeable or sympathetic. The acting and characterization where essentially on par with a TV-drama from the 90s. I'm not against stereotypes (they practically come with the territory), but they should at least have some interesting lines. And if you can't produce Breaking Bad-level characterization, then at least go for camp like Kitamura's "Final Wars" did.

I'm sorry to be so down on this film. I was able to catch a free advance screening which I am grateful for, but never did I want to hit the FF 4x button so much in a movie theater. Now, in all honesty, the crowd I saw this with clapped and cheered at all the "correct" moments, so maybe I was just expecting to much from a "masterpiece". Perhaps there's something to be said for not reading the hype.

Not to be totally down on this flick, I do want to praise the sound-design, color palette and script continuity. The concept is also a good one: show how Godzilla became Godzilla and his first attacks in the years before the 1954 movie. But the execution...