Vampire Movie Review: Godzilla (2014)

Vampire Movie Review: Godzilla (2014)

Vampire Greg (not his real name, it’s actually vampire Steve) has lived for almost a 1,000 years. He likes humans who stay off his lawn, and movies. Well, sometimes. In theory anyway. Here is his review.

Godzilla (2014)

Godzilla movies have existed for 50 years. In that time special effects have improved, but one fact remains. People who go to a Godzilla movie hate seeing Godzilla. They really want to see annoying humans. This must be why the newest Godzilla movie is so scared of showing you Godzilla.

For the first 50 minutes, or almost half the running time, I was wondering if we would even see Godzilla at all. For the first twenty minutes I was excited. When we will see Godzilla. Then I became annoyed. Are we never going to see Godzilla? Then it became thrilling in a weird way. Would this be the first Godzilla movie to have exactly zero percent Godzilla? That’s ballsy. Did M Night Shamalyn direct this movie? Because that’s a twist. Would the boring nondescript white dude hero pull off his face and reveal he was Godzilla the whole time? Despite the movie being amazingly boring, I was on the edge of my seat. Then 57 minutes in, Godzilla makes his appearance. He is on screen for almost three minutes.

Quick, the star of the movie is on screen. Abort. Cut away. Show something else. Cut to a child watching the news, as all children do. (In a way this is the movie’s most powerful special effect as we see a child allow CNN to be on a television in front of him, and no one gets murdered. CGI has clearly come a long way.) Then cut away from that.

I get that Godzilla can’t be on screen 100% of the time. But if he can’t spend all his time squishing main characters than maybe they should not be all annoying. Maybe your main character shouldn’t be the dick that didn’t believe in his father. Maybe have scientists that don’t just spout exposition. Have a guy that doesn’t understand more just because he’s Asian. Don’t kill Bryan Cranston to replace him with lesser actors. Also you may want to update the plot.

Now stop me if this revelation blows your mind. The main military guy wants to use nukes on the monsters. Even though one of the exposition characters warns him that the radiation may make the monster stronger. His response is that he has to do something. As if he could just clasp his hands behind him afterwords and say, well I made the situation worse, but at least I did something. Just like every military person in every monster movie ever.

The reason we have to stop these monster is even stranger. The new monsters are mates and we have to stop them from making babies. And they say romantic comedies have run out of ideas. I think we all know that the biggest problem with Godzilla movies is that there is no part for Kathleen Heigel to play. Is this just a remake of Bride Wars? Can a man and a woman monster be just friends? I don’t mind so much if you get some chocolate (27 dresses) in my peanut butter (monster movie). But I do mind if you think to add acid instead. (Plus I’m a little ticked that they didn’t use the tag line: “If they fuck, we’re fucked.”)

I understand that I only see children as appetizers, who are not worth buying either a van or candy for. However I understand from watching the news that some people get upset when innocent children get bombed. (I lost my humanity a long time ago, but isn’t it odd that they have to specify that innocent children get bombed. Does anyone think, “Yeah, we took out those guilty children. They blowed up real good.”) It does however seem like overkill to have not one, but two scenes of children in jeopardy. One of the children we just meet seconds before they are threatened. He then disappears from the movie just as fast he appears.

The other child is surrounded by a bunch of children that are never given names. We are supposed to care about him because he is related to the hero of the movie. The only people were are supposed to care about are related, and that’s supposed to be the reason we care. If Sophie’s choice involved a child she’d never met it would barely be a pamphlet, let along a novel. No one has ever said “I can’t come in to work today because someone I barely knows dad has died, and I need to cry.” But the makers of this movie think that is powerful enough.

Many of these issues probably sound like nit picking. I know it’s a movie about a make believe giant lizard. Like the saying says, I’m just a simple vampire. But when my mind has nothing else to occupy it, this is what happens.

Agree? Disagree? Have any movies you want reviewed in the future? Comment below.