Reviews Film / Godzilla 2014

What would you do if a giant monster attacked?

I've been seeing the new Godzilla movie get a lot of criticism for how much, or little, it shows Godzilla and his fights, and I've seen a lot of defenses about how most good Godzilla movies-and indeed most good monster movies in general, don't show the monster very much.

That is true, for both artistic and technical reasons (the shark robot not working in Jaws, the cost of cgi, ect). However, it doesn't address the movie's tendency to cut away from the action. To address that point, the way the monsters and their fights are shot needs to be considered.

The movie goes to great lengths to show the monsters from the point of view of the humans they tower over, the better to get across their size and impact. This means that we are not being shown that much more of the monsters than the people who are unfortunate enough to be close enough to see them.

And what happens when a 350 foot monster starts knocking down buildings near you? Do you try to get a better view? Of course not. You run away, or you die. In either case, the human POV is not going to be focused on getting a good look at the monster fight.

That is why the action is cut away so much. Because the people whose point of view we could be seeing from are either running like hell away from the action or dead. It is only when the military sends people in with a mission that prevents them from running away that we get an extended look at the big rumble, mostly from the military's POV.

Whether this was a good choice (or rather, decision to follow it so closely) is debatable. I think it was, even with the film's other problems like a lack of interesting human characters. No one got on my nerves like pretty much every character in Transformers did, so I was able to keep my interest in the plot. And I really appreciate the excellent cinematography.

It doesn't match the original Gogira, but the future of the franchise has never looked brighter.