Box Office Discussion

[Benjamin Haines]

[Gwangi]

[Gman2887]

[Jorzilla]

I'm sorry, but the simple fact that Edwards DID take an Anti-Nuclear edge with this film, only to assign it to the MUTO in this film, complete with a nuclear submarine, a staple of the franchise, invalidates a lot of these points.

This movie feels like Godzilla is fighting against the worst elements of his own character. Anything that the MUTO's do, you can easily see a Japanese Godzilla in their place (aside from birthing). Godzilla is propped as a hero of the day in this picture by fighting against the very same elements that made him so iconic in the first place.

[Gman2887]

It doesn't invalidate anything. I just don't think fans like that the elements are shared with MUTO.

[Jorzilla]

Godzilla is nurtured to fit his role in this film.

[king_ghidorah]

[Benjamin Haines]

[king_ghidorah]

Vegas is essentially a one minute long scene and then it's over. There a direct path cut through the city, which is different than the whole city being razed to the ground. Again, we're TOLD how dangerous these things are but Godzilla causes just as much if not more destruction than the Mutos when he makes landfall in Hawaii.

If you're trying to get through to the audience how dangerous these creatures are then they should have paid more attention and time to what happened in Vegas and not had a minute long scene which culminates in an Elvis joke.

And you guys are reading too much in what Godzilla was or was not thinking. Point is, he no longer has ANY nuclear origins. Done. Yes, we dropped a bomb on him once but that's it. It didn't even piss him off seemingly. He didn't retaliate by destroying a city or anything. He just took it, and moved on.


Seriously, GINO tied that version of Godzilla in with the bomb more than this film did for all of its uber-seriousness and adult nature.

[Benjamin Haines]

[king_ghidorah]

I think you and I saw different movies.

[Legion]

[Gman2887]

[Jorzilla]

To a cold viewer, there is simply nothing in this movie that gives a viewer that Godzilla is a vengeful force of nature, aside from the Tsunami scene. In fact, of the monsters that are actually causing damage and need to be stopped, those are the MUTOs. The viewer IS told this about Godzilla: He is the monster that can restore balance to nature.

Okay. So how the hell has a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, typhoon, volcano, etc., ever been a GOOD thing that has helped 'restore balance?' From the audience's perspective, Godzilla is the anti-disaster in this movie. It's only the commentary from the studio and the director that even hint at the larger symbolism that Godzilla was intended to represent.

This would not necessarily have been a problem in the film, but after 3 years of hype about the tone of this movie, Legendary and Gareth Edwards did a switcheroo on the audience. This includes the trailers. I've heard a LOT of people complain about this fact too, even if they didn't know much about the character.


The second time I watched this movie, I remember the Hawaii scene with the slashed nuclear submarine in the middle of the jungle. That was a neat detail. It reminded me of scenes in other Godzilla movies, like King Kong vs. Godzilla, Return of Godzilla, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, GMK and Tokyo SOS. Then I remembered/they show the MUTO the one actually causing the damage. This REALLY rubbed me the wrong way in the film, and it's an iconic scene in my mind, only because how much of a misstep this was in the movie.

Now, before someone says, "Yeah, but Godzilla has been dark and brooding for the last 40 years, this was a nice change of pace." To that Is say: In the Showa films that portray Godzilla in a positive/hero light, the anti-nuclear message of those films are NOT the focus of the pictures. I can accept them for what they are, and they have their place. Godzilla 2014, however, DOES have an anti-nuclear message, is a disaster movie and is one of the darker movies. I'm fine with that as well. What I am NOT cool with is Godzilla being portrayed as the hero to fight, and kill the elements of his character that made him villainous in the first place. That misses the mark completely. Maybe if they make another Freddy Kruegger movie, he can fight another monster/demon/killer (since audiences obviously want to see an onscreen conflict), and in this movie, Freddie still has his claws, a sweat shirt, burns and gills (so the bathtub scene makes more sense ) and the monster that he's fighting is invading the dreams of teenagers and killing them in their sleep. I mean, that IS in the spirit of the first movie, isn't it?

[king_ghidorah]

Right on! I agree to the fullest extent possible Jorzilla!

[HannibalBarca]

Even the tsunami scene seems like it was included because someone somewhere decided they "had to" include it, if only to make Godzilla as force of nature make ANY sense at all. But the impact of the tsunami scene is completely non-existent for me. No one in the film mentions it at all. Not even an oblique reference to it. It's as if it never happens. If none of our characters, who we spend most of the movie with instead of the monsters, seems to know, much less care, about the tsunami, how am I supposed to care as a viewer?

And that's not even mentioning Gareth's quote that Godzilla is "the punishment we deserve." Punishment? Who does Godzilla punish in this movie? He never intentionally hurts people, and I'm pretty sure that punishment has to be, you know, deliberate to count as punishment. And the people who he does hurt are a bunch of tourists and national guardsmen (off screen, of course, because Godzilla can't be shown actually hurting American soldiers, Heavens no), and some school buses full of kids! How did they "deserve" what happened to them? No one involved with MONARCH, the nuclear tests, military high command, or anything like that ever even encounters Godzilla except for Serizawa and Graham seeing him at the end, and they certainly don't get punished by him! One is left to wonder whether Edwards was lying when he said that, whether someone upstairs made him say it, or if he honestly thought that was the sort of movie he was making. I'm not sure which of those possibilities is the most disconcerting.

[Jorzilla]

And ANOTHER thing:

I've heard multiple people state that nuclear tests were what awoke Godzilla. This is not canon to the universe. Until proven elsewhere or ret-conned, the graphic novel is the source of truth on this tid-bit. The first nuclear submarine in this the universe, the USS Nautalis (which is the filming name of the movie) actually awakens Godzilla when it does a deep dive in the South Pacific. The nuclear tests were only an attempt to destroy the monster. They never woke him up.

[HannibalBarca]

That didn't sit well with me either. G'98 was a complete and utter mess of a movie, but at least it put the blame for the monster squarely on the shoulders of irresponsible nuclear testing. It may have had to pass the buck to 1990s France, both for the sake of staying topical, and in order to avoid any uncomfortable questions about the history of America's relationship with nuclear weapons, but at least G'98 didn't have the gall to just throw out the nuclear origin entirely. The nuclear tests in this movie, like so much else, don't seem to serve much of a purpose, beyond acting as a framing device for the introductory credits. We're never told why the nuclear tests were used against Godzilla, what the effects of them were, anything about them. They just happen. There's no context. It's empty.

[Gman2887]

[king_ghidorah]

I don't want to get on the hate-train so-to-speak. I like the movie for what it is...an American attempt at something very Japanese by nature. It is THE American version of Godzilla. I just happen to find that the Japanese version is superior and has more substance.

I'm not sure what the right answer is with how they "should" have made an American Godzilla film. This might be as good as we could have gotten. It could have been very awkward for the only country to have ever dropped atomic weapons in combat to suddenly come out with an anti-nuclear weapons themed movie. Part of me will always think that maybe, just maybe, that could have been even more powerful and poignant coming from the U.S. "We are ones that awakened a monster and we are the ones to have to pay the price."

[HannibalBarca]

Yeah, I agree. In broad strokes, this was the best Godzilla movie that HOLLYWOOD (not necessarily America, but Hollywood, the maker of mass marketable populist American entertainment) was going to be able to make. Obviously a lot of problems with the movie's script, casting, pacing, etc. could have been fixed for the better, but in terms of tone and meaning and respect for the franchise, we're not going to get much better than this.

That being said, there are spots of brilliance in this movie here and there. The best example of this, for me, is the stopped watch scene, when Serizawa and Stenz are talking after Stenz has authorized the nuclear option. That scene, where Stenz realizes that he's running the risk of unleashing another Hiroshima onto San Francisco, is what comes closest, for me, to what you said about the realization that "We are ones that awakened a monster and we are the ones to have to pay the price." The stopped watch scene was, far and away, the best human scene in G'14 in my opinion, and honestly felt like it belonged in a different movie. A better movie.

[Gwangi]

[walshiam]

Really? You guys are not bringing up anything about Godzilla that hasn't already been done before by Toho. Godzilla has flip-flopped from villain to hero to anti-hero many times and the one thing that puts him in that position storywise is the opponent. Which is the greater threat? Once that is clear there's no question which Godzilla we're getting. Another thing. It was explained that both Godzilla and the MUTOS were radioactive by NATURE during earth's prehistory. These creatures were exposed to high levels of naturally produced radiation. Remember a certain statement....."When man comes in conflict with nature, monsters are born"? The only thing that was changed in this film was that the monsters were already there. Nuclear power was the wake up call that was supposed to be the same message from the very first film. If man plays with "the fire of the gods", he faces the consequences.......nature's retaliation. Again Godzilla and other kaiju have ALWAYS been linked to natural disasters because of Japan's history. No country has suffered tragedy, both man-made and naturally produced as Japan has. In a land were earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes, mega storms (like the one approaching Okinawa) and the atomic bomb have produced some of the worst disasters any country has faced, it forces humanity to realize the inevitable.

[angilas]

[Jorzilla]