newsfop

I'm a Star Wars movie fan. I grew up in the '80s and caught the original films on video. I anticipated and enjoyed the release of the prequel trilogy. And when I sat down to watch The Force Awakens I was immediately brought back into a state of childhood wonder where heroes are common people who put aside their selfish wishes for the sake of the greater good.

This new movie beautiful, rugged, and looks lived in. Everything you see looks and feels real. There are surprises everywhere. The characters are relatable and intriguing. It's good to see the old classic characters help pass the torch.

On the whole I was very impressed. The plot itself can resemble that of A New Hope with some improvements. That doesn't bother me though. I loved it. You probably will too.

I know one of the actresses in this movie, so it's with a heavy heart I must say that despite every good effort she put in, it wasn't enough to salvage the rest of the production. The film is shot as a found-footage genre piece. I don't believe the crew understood what all is needed to make a film look and feel like it was shot in that style. Additionally, the storyline is too brief and unnecessarily padded out in the beginning. The sequence featuring a hide-and-seek game is almost unwatchable. (It's ten minutes of the director yelling into a dark woods with only a small flashlight illuminating trees. The cast is large but underdeveloped. Most of the hearsay conversations are either badly lit or poorly recorded . . . or both. The script should have seen a revision or two before shooting began.

I qualify this review as someone who enjoys movies and critiques them on a case-by-case basis. I have a working knowledge of the original films by Toho mostly through other reviewers like James Rolfe. I never grew up with the originals, so my understanding for the phenomena of kaiju was limited.

Coming into this movie though I was anxious to see what would come of the work and devotion to the past, and I was for the most part pleased with what I saw. The portrayals of the main family in their efforts to stay in contact were well done. That storyline often carried some emotional weight that I don't often see in a summer blockbuster.

I liked the creature design on Godzilla and the M.U.T.O.s. I thought they showed true menace and were quite threatening. I only wish that I could have seen more discussion and portrayal of the titular character. Godzilla showing up halfway through a two-and-a-half-hour movie creates a bit of anxiety. And for a film that's supposed to be kicking off a new series, it really does very little to attempt to talk about the where and why of the giant lizard.

When I did get to see Godzilla though, I wasn't disappointed. All the elements that made him an intense fighting force were there made even better by grounded motion capture performance and trademark radioactive breath put to good use.

I left the theater feeling good, and that's better than I could have hoped for.