A decent popcorn flick that entertained me, but left me feeling hollow in regards to the human storyline it presented, "Godzilla" is the current representative of the "giant creatures fight each other in iconic locations" genre, at least until Transformers 4 comes out next month.
The large scale action scenes in the film are well done, which is truly no surprise. There would be no point to making a film like this if you weren't going to come through in that regard. The enormous size of the creatures (particularly Mr. Zilla) is well established, most effectively in shots that show just a small part of them, like a foot, next to large man-made objects. The skyscrapers unlucky enough to become collateral damage crumple as if they were made of tissue paper.
These brutal fights are a visual feast and the highlights of the film, but they could have carried more weight had they been placed in the context of a more accessible human story. As I see it, there were two ways to make the film's main storyline a better viewing experience. The first would have been to develop stronger characters. While the film has a very good cast, and each member of that cast acquits themselves well considering what they're given, most of the roles are written very thinly (and the few that are better written often end up getting the least screen time). The main plot thread follows Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a Lieutenant with the Navy, as he tries to get home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and child in San Francisco before Godzilla and his Monster Frenemies arrive in the city. It was hard for me as an audience member to feel much tension in this set-up, as Taylor-Johnson and Olsen barely got to share a single scene together before the plot got rolling, leaving them without adequate time to establish a relationship to care about. The basic concept of a man trying to save his family is easily understandable, but works so much better if it is more than just a nebulous idea--we need to see what the protagonist has before we can worry about him losing it. The other way they could have made the storyline more accessible would have been to give the film a lighter tone. The film goes with the approach a lot of films have taken ever since "Batman Begins"--darker and grittier. Some elements of the film (the under-written characters among them) clash with this tone. For example, Brody's journey from Japan to San Francisco involves several stops along the way, each of them coincidentally involving an appearance by Godzilla or one of the other monsters. This is necessary to get more giant monster scenes into the film, but the coincidences become too much for a film going for "dark and gritty". In a film that took itself a little less seriously, I'd be quicker to shrug my shoulders and let them get away with it.
With the effective monster scenes, this film accomplishes what it needed to in order to be considered a success. It overreached too much in attempted to tell a serious-themed story alongside these scenes, but I'll give them points for trying. A couple script rewrites could have helped tie things together and develop certain characters more, and might have resulted in the film living up to its ambitions.
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