Now, I'd be lying if I said that it was all bad. Sure, the movie was an unmitigated disaster, featuring a giant iguana with halitosis and the (heavily contested) worst performance in Matthew Broderick's career, but it did have a pretty awesome spin-off cartoon, so there's that. Regardless, it was with some trepidation that fans of the old received the news of a new US Godzilla movie.
I still went to see it, not least because my daughter was so fascinated by the poster during Noah. As a result, my main impression is that the decision to devote a large proportion of the running time to close up footage of an adorable baby girl toddling as best she can around a darkened cinema was, while not unappealing, ultimately unhelpful to the story they were trying to tell.
Beyond that, however, these are my thoughts on the movie.
It's good.
Moving away from the spoiler free, I think that it got a lot of things right. The human drama was never allowed to completely eclipse the monsters, achieved in part by making the drama about the monsters, and the effect that they have on people. There's no tacked on romance; the father and son make leads are a widow and a married man, and the wife is largely off screen; the female scientist mercifully doesn't snog her boss in the bit at the end of the film where they all cheer.
In fact, I don't think that there is a bit at the end where they all cheer.
Despite the fears of early Japanese commentators, Godzilla himself is a) referred to as 'Gojira', thanks to Ken Watanabe's Dr Serizawa and b) basically the hero. The film takes itself very seriously, perhaps too seriously, but that is clearly in the mould of the original Gojira, and for my money more witty banter would have just shifted the focus too far towards the human.
Oh, and Big G is awesome, from the look to the roar to the atomic breath. I presume that they're saving the tail slide for a sequel.
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