Godzilla (2014) - General Discussion Thread

[king_ghidorah]

It’s great! Gareth crushed it. Same with Rogue One. It’s a shame I haven’t liked his last two films very much.

[GojiDoobyDoo]

Godzilla (2014) has aged like a fine wine. The more that time passes, the more I recognize Godzilla (2014) might be one of the last “old Hollywood” movies and it does so much right.

While I have my misgivings with the movie, I can agree with this wholeheartedly. It's got that more classical Hollywood charm, the kind you used to see in big budget blockbusters like Jurassic Park. While a huge production, you can see there was a lot of care and thought put into it, which I think becomes more apparent if you've every looked at the artbook.

I really think G14's biggest missteps was the lack of solid monster action and re-focusing the plot from a potentially solid main character to his less solid son.

[Jetty_Jags]

I actually have grown to disagree with the conventional Joe/Ford switch-a-roo complaint.

I think the change that would actually take it from being really good to great, would be to put more emphasis on how the Joe/Ford dynamic developed, and allow Ford to finally start moving away from his quiet brooding. It's baked in there, but the film never really connects the dots, and I think Ford becomes a much more interesting introspective protagonist if we push the family drama a little bit further to make his father's push to (the ultimately justified) insanity the reason Ford is so stoic and dissociated from his own family. Obviously, the return to wife and son plot is still a bit cliche but becomes significantly more personal if he realizes he must break away from the parasitic generational trauma brought on by his mother's tragic death. Suddenly, it's not just going home to save what's left of his family from their physical demise, it's Ford finally becoming the father he needs to be and end his self isolating grief that consumed and killed his father (ugh, the parallelism here are so close to being perfect). And the funny thing is, I believe this change neither requires removing or altering Joe Brody's death, nor the contrast between their performances, but does require a more nuanced direction and performance by Ford's actor. I'm not sure if ATJ has what it takes, and I don't think Gareth (for as much as I like him here) had the capacity to direct that performance to this nuance. While I wouldn't want him directly, Ryan Gosling (or perhaps my all time favorite actor Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas) has done similarly nuanced yet introspective character's multiple times, and I think the film needs this kind of performance to really sing, rather than making him a more vibrant action hero.