Godzilla (2014)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Writers: Max Borenstein & Dave Callahan

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Ford Brody), CJ Adams (Young Ford), Ken Watanabe (Dr. Ishiro Serizawa), Brayan Cranston (Joe Brody), Elizabeth Olsen (Elle Brody), Carson Bolde (Sam Brody), Sally Hawkins (Vivienne Graham), Juliette Binoche (Sandra Brody).

The opening credits rolls to an old footage of nuclear tests sometime in the 1950s, the sequence makes it look like the film was recorded by an old projector, the white stripe shooting vertically while the film is running shows something large, a creature, a dinosaur from the past briefly emerges from the depths of the ocean.  The military wearing protective eye-wear, stand clear from the beast, they're trying to kill it, but it's strength absorbs the blasts, instead it angers the beast which submerged into the depths.

1999:  a Japanese researcher named Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his assistant Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) find readings of uranium in a excavation site in the Philippines.  The carcass of a giant creature fills the cave, Monarch (Company name) splashed over all of the equipment at the site.  stalactites or a cocoon hangs over the monarch employees, some notice a hatched cocoon, some thing, or creature crawled from the cave to the sea. 

Somewhere in Japan a nuclear processing plant, the nuclear reactor has been breached and Brody (Bryan Cranston), is concerned about the seismic activity.  he thinks the nuclear plant should be shut down.  The activity continues as the another shaker brings the employees to there knees.  Brody (Cranston) races downstairs to save his wife, but the protective door will close to keep the radioactive cloud from escaping.  Brody races to help his wife, but realizes it's to late, the cloud engulfs the researchers, as his wife tells her husband Brody not to open the door, watching his wife being taken by the radioactivity.  

Godzilla (2014) hits us with a plot line of nature vs humanity, the outcome of course comes with a dish full of blood.  The typical Godzilla films is the King of Monsters fighting creatures, military, the overall plot has to mean something.  The Godzilla exposure came about in 1954, then it created an explosive following, hence the King of all Monsters was born.  As a kid i watched many creature films and love them, not because of the cheesiness of the movies, but the cool simple plots.  The films in my opinion should be all about the monster, and that's it, period.  I understand the reasoning behind the big time actors, but, all in all it's about the monster.

The 1998 version of Godzilla stars Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, and more, and this film unlike the other Godzilla films, the bigwigs of the production team had to change the overall look.  Fans hated this version, because it changed the look, made it a unique, but overall it really sucked! a big production, special effects monster the film died before it had a chance to take off.  Roland Emmerich the mastermind behind the film admitted that he did not like the original Godzilla.  The fans conceived a nickname to distinguish this bad film from the original, G.I.N.O., the acronym for Godzilla in name only, pointing out the "Dislike." Love it or hate it you are making a Godzilla film, at least try to keep the creature the same, change isn't good when you have to deal with huge fans that came to see "Godzilla" on the silver screen.  Hollywood thinks that changing things can be a big money maker for studios, but that is not the case, "Keep it simple stupid."   

Flash forward to 2014 the Gareth Edwards version; had to make a comparison not because i wanted to attack Roland Emmerich for his crappy film in 1998, but i wanted to point out the good from the bad.  There is a saying, " If it ain't broke don't fix it" why? change the look of Godzilla, it made no sense, and to be frank the plot really sucked as well.  The 2014 version even though the king of Monsters had a big eight minutes of screen time, it didn't really matter, because the cast and the acting made this film bigger than the production team thought.  An estimated 160,000,000 in costs with a worldwide gross of 507,961,309.  The US opening weekend was about 93,188,384, not bad for a creature feature.  The film has it's ups and downs, maybe because the monster fights were limited, and the exposure was limited as well, if you think about it eight minutes isn't a long time. Really have no idea, but at least we got cool fights, and the military jumping out of a plane was really impressive.  The music was very dramatic at times, it was more than a monster flick, you felt kinda bad for Godzilla, it was as if your pet just got hit by a car, that feeling of loss, sadness.  The geek is coming out now! anyway check this version out, not because i said so, but because your a monster, Godzilla freak.