No, Watanabe specifically tells Taylor-Johnson’s character about Godizlla and he has no clue about it. It’s news to him for the first time. Also, he says a line to the effect of “all those nuclear “tests” they did in the Pacific? Those weren’t “tests” at all - they were trying to destroy him.” There was definitely a cover-up of the whole existence of 'zilla.
She’s the younger sister of the Olsen twins, not one of the Olsen twins.
On another note, it may be a bit squicky watching the Avengers to where her husband from Godzilla plays her husband.
Agreed!
It reminded me very much of Jaws, where the shark gets very little screen time until the end.
Personally I think the director gave a nod to that by having Bryan Cranston and Taylor-Johnson named “Brody”.
Like I wrote up thread, I agree with this but I think Godzilla erred on the other side of the fence.
Wait…what now?
Well, there was the Ultimate continuity in which Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were incestuous lovers.
Which makes the actors playing them being husband and wife in this movie pretty goddamn hilarious.
I knew that Bree was Scarlet Witch…but I didn’t know that ATG was Quicksilver…that’s awesome
I have to say I was kind of disappointed. Too much human melodrama and not enough monster drama for my tastes.
But…on the way home I picked up the newly-issued Godzilla/Gojira DVD*, and I had to revise my opinion. Wow, I didn’t remember the love triangle in the original at all, it was just as weepy as the Cranston family drama. Maybe I should go back and watch the new version again.
*If you’re a fan, the new 2-DVD set is less than $10 and has some nice extra features.
The Friday Box Office estimates for the big guy’s 2nd weekend are in: $8.4M.
That’s a drop of over 75% from last Friday! Most one-and-done horror movies do better than that. The X-Men shouldn’t have hurt it this much.
On the bright side (?), last weekend had Thursday night previews included in the Friday numbers, it’s a 4 day weekend, etc. But, still not good.
Much better than the average prediction for weekend 1, then kerplop.
I wonder how this will effect sequel plans? $90+ opening weekend means sequels. Big drop 2nd weekend means cheaply made sequels.
So seriously, big nuke warheads have countdown clocks right on them???
I don’t know how you missed that this was a mechanical device installed, so that it wouldn’t be knocked out by an EMP.
I enjoyed it for the most part. I’m not so sanguine on the poor characterization. Just because it’s a monster movie doesn’t mean you can’t have solid characters. Jaws did. Also, the “eating radiation” thing didn’t really work for me. I would rather have had the monsters be unexplained brute facts.
But regardless of that, it was great to see the big guy in proper CGI glory, smashing another monster who dared to challenge him. The atomic breath and roar were perfect, even if he did need to hit the gym a bit. The moody rainy jungle scenes were cool, as was keeping Godzilla under wraps for a while.
Felt a bit sorry for the MUTOs when their eggs got torched.
I’d recommend checking out Gareth Edwards’ earlier movie Monsters. It has a lot of the same flaws and strengths as this movie.
Saw it yesterday. Interesting flick, but I had many of the same thoughts Chimaera wrote above. It really is all about the dramatic presentation, with logic taking a seat 'way in the back. That they didn’t trash the MUTOs when they wre still gestating is absurd, but then there wouldn’t be a movie.
(MUTO design flaw –
the damned things are virtually indestructible, no matter what you throw at them. But their eggs can be torched with ordinary fire.)
I’m one of the people who actually kinda liked the 1998 Godzilla. It’s pretty clear to me that they stole the plot from Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the UR-1950s Monster Movie, right down to the creature coming to the city to spawn. For the 2014 movie, they took a cue from Rodan – you don’t show the main monster first. Instead you show an insectile thing, hatched from underground eggs, which impresses people because it’s so big and destructive. Then you introduce the main monster as the predator of these insect things, to really blow things away.
Apparently this film also did a lot of things that the proposed-but-never-made 1994 American version (that Wiliam Stout was workin g on). According to imdb:
The movie shares many similarities with the unmade 1994 American reboot. The script for the 1994 film was written by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott. Both versions feature an opening segment set in the past during which one of the main character’s parents is killed. They both jump ahead to present time to show the opposite parent obsessed with solving the prior mysterious events. In the 1994 script, Godzilla travels to San Francisco, destroying the Golden Gate bridge. Both feature ancient enemies that are reawakened. Both feature Godzilla battling a flying monster, which he hunts to kill. Both films end with Godzilla blowing atomic breath into the enemy monster and decapitating it. Both end with a shot of Godzilla returning to the sea.
The other references were neat – “Mothra” on the terrarium, “Dr. Serizawa” as the scientist, as in the 1954 version, except his first name this time in Inoshiro, like Inoshiro Honda, who directed that film. The use of Lygeti “REquiem” music (also used in 2001) during the HALO drop. The concentration on the single family and its repeated involvement (despite the need to really wrangle the plot) was good. Despite being about Giant Kaiju beating the crap out of each other, a drama really needs to be about people.
The thing that rerally bothered me was Godzilla’
s motivation – why the heck was he so hell-bent on killing the MUTOs? Not to eat them, certainly, because he doesn’t. Not out of concern for humanity. Serizawa says something about 'restoring balance", but that’s mystic mumbo-jumbo. The real reason is that without this enmity there’s no film. But it’s a bit annoying, just the same.
I do like that, at the end, the way Godzilla dispatched the last MUTO was top
“rip off its head and spit down its neck”, a slightly less vulgar version of that famous quote.
They do offer some rather half-hearted explanations for these in the film. The Muto at the plant was consuming the radiation from the damaged reactor - they kept it alive because it was preventing the damaged plant from irradiating a large chunk of Japan.
And slightly more inferential, but at one point the Mutos are described as parasites, and the skeleton they found the original two eggs in didn’t appear to be the same species. My WAG is that part of these creatures’ reproduction cycle involves infesting and eventually killing another Kaiju. Perhaps Godzilla is intelligent enough in some way to understand that these things represent a threat to him, and thus knows to wake up and destroy them before they can reproduce.
I noticed it, yeah. It greatly amused me. 
Just saw Godzilla last night. It was very silly at points, but fun.
The acting was wooden, other than Bryan Cranston who was over the top but in a perfect way. Him at the beginning with Juliette Binoche really got to me. And later when he was raving about his theories he was hammy, but in a way that worked for a giant monster movie.
You’re right, I just saw Monsters this weekend and it does have a similar feel. Monsters is on Netflix Streaming for anyone else who is interested.
It was beautifully filmed. I enjoyed Pacific Rim last year, but I couldn’t always tell what was going on. I don’t ever remember being lost in what was happening with the action for Godzilla. And the redacted credits were great, if I was watching on DVD I would have skipped back and watched those again.
Ha!
The wife and I saw it today and thought it was slow and boring. Maybe you really have to be into Godzilla.
Damn, the one building in the Bay Area that should have been destroyed, the Oakland Coliseum, was pointedly not.
And Godzilla tore huge chunks out of the main cables of a suspension bridge without the deck dropping even an inch.
But it had all the big monster fights a Kaiju movie needs.
I saw it last night. It was Japanese disaster porn taken as far as it can go, and that’s the best I can say about it. Otherwise it was pretty much a dog.
I noticed that the carrier in the movie was the USS Saratoga. Since the original Saratoga has been retired since 1994, and the carrier in the movie looked like one of the Nimitz class, maybe the name was changed to imply that in the movie timeline, there were still conventional carriers in service, which may explain why the monsters weren’t interested in the ship.