Godzilla

Ein Knüller, der zwar bei sicheren Klischees bleibt, den Kinder besuchen dürfen und welcher für das Publikum keine Überraschung vorbereitet hat, der aber wenigstens zusammenhält (Pacific Rim war mutiger und cooler, aber aus dramaturgischer Sicht funktionierte er nicht). Im Unterschied zu Emmerichs Version achtet er auch auf die Regeln vom japanischen Kult und mit technischen Hollywood-Möglichkeiten ermöglich er den Jánošík so zu genießen, wie man ihn noch nicht gesehen hat. Die Figuren, obwohl sie von geschätzten und für Blockbuster ungewöhnlichen Schauspieler*innen dargestellt werden, sind zweitrangig; wichtig ist der epische Charakter und die Stimmung der visuellen Seite wie bei Spielbergs Abenteuern. An den erinnern auch konkrete Szenen wie der Helikopterflug auf die Insel am Anfang oder die Anwesenheit von Kindern bei jeder spannenden Action. Heute bin ich zufrieden, vor fünf Jahren wäre ich begeistert. (14.05.2014)

It couldn't have gone better and Edwards delivered what he promised. He artfully walks the line between paying homage to his beloved Spielberg (so that, like Spielberg in Jaws, he entices us with mere hints for much of the runtime) and paying homage to all 29 of Toho's giant lizard movies and the four Godzilla generations that began in 1954 and closed up shop with great aplomb in 2004. Especially with the last two – the alternate reality series and the following new generation series – the new Godzilla has a lot of similarities in characters and narrative style. I laugh at some of the criticisms of the wise-cracking teens here, who at most have seen Emmerich’s movie and marvel (quite rightly, of course) that Godzilla shoots flames, swallows nukes and has legs like an elephant; that’s how they show their ignorance. I applaud Edwards for doing the almost impossible – finding a balance between classic Hollywood and the Japanese poetics of the Godzilla franchise, where everything was, is and hopefully will be possible. PS: The actors here, as with the Japanese originals, are essentially redundant, and the resolution of their family ties is also no different from their Japanese brethren, so it's pointless to fret over it. (16.05.2014)

SPOILERS AHEAD. Godzilla is like playing a video game made up exclusively of cutscenes. The characters are there more or less only so that through their eyes we can marvel at the monsters, which the film tries to obscure much less than in Jurassic Park, for example. The film acknowledges that people are important for it primarily as means of focalisation, so that, for example, we don’t see a fight that was not witnessed by any humans or, at the very least, by a main or supporting character (even though the “earthbound” human perspective here is not maintained as consistently as in Battle Los Angeles). The characters are repeatedly deprived of their agency (the impossibility to rescue one’s wife trapped in the exclusion zone) or it is made explicitly clear that they cannot do much against the monster and they won’t be able to coordinate their actions anyway. The real power belongs to nature and instinct, not to rationally behaving humans (regardless of whether they represent the military or science, or stand apart from established institutions), who are turned into a mere negligible part of an uncontrollable ecosystem (the only time I have felt similar helplessness from an American film was at the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man). People don’t have control over either the present or the future (their plans don’t work out for them); they can only learn from the past, which is an idea that is subordinated to the spiralling dramaturgy of the narrative with clearly indicated parallels between the situation in which Brody senior finds himself at the beginning and the situation in which Brody junior finds himself later. By constantly passivising the human protagonists and the predictability of the one-dimensional characters (the film is built on the most banal gender-based allocation of roles: a woman is a caring nurse, a man is a protective soldier), the Oedipal formula with an absentee father is sidelined in favour of the remarkable transformation of Godzilla, which bears the hallmarks of a villain (indestructibility, terrifying appearance), yet functions as a positive hero in the narrative (because it is the only one that can restore order). Using human characters to causally connect the individual scenes, the plot is developed in such a way that we end up siding with the monster, which is what whole film is about. How else should it be with a monster movie? Before I forget…the film also has brilliant sound effects (after all, using echolocation to track the monsters is one of the motifs of the narrative) and very convincing visual effects (i.e. I believe that a giant lizard could really look and move like that), while also offering breathtaking scenes as if from an art film, impressive only in how they look and how imagery and sound are harmonised within them (the night jump). The bar for other summer blockbusters has been set monstrously high. 85% (16.05.2014)

Indie directors shouldn’t get into commercial blockbusters, so I wouldn’t look forward to it only to be disappointed. There’s enough action, I believe, but it’s not exciting, which is a far bigger problem than if there was not enough action. The most interesting characters are removed in the first act, and for the remainder of the film, everyone stands staring like a moron, or either think up some bullshit (the bomb here is used in the same weird way as in the last Batman from Nolan) or try to arouse the emotions of the viewer (unsuccessfully). If they had “forgotten” about the story and just let the monsters beat the crap out of each other, it would’ve been better. But they didn’t and the result is painful several times. Visually it’s great, as expected, I would love to print out some frames and hang them on the wall, but when things move it’s really bland. And what pissed me off the most was that the unidimensional protagonist always shows up by chance exactly where the monster is heading. Were the Japanese Godzilla from the past the same? If that is the case, the bullshit has remained bullshit. And I don’t like bullshit. (15.05.2014)

Watching a blockbuster that is heavily schematic (the family archetype of soldier-sibling, the chessboard of supporting characters) while in many ways scrupulously circumventing genre stereotypes (the edited monster fights!), all the while building up space with precise camerawork and unnerving music, is simply a pure joy that is amplified several times over in the final battle to the required epic scope. Or it's been a long time since a destruction genre film made me so happy by actually being a conversational drama. PS: It will probably not be possible to beat the visual highlight of skydiving this year. (28.08.2014)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to avoid comparisons to the previous Godzilla movie. I’m not reviewing the movies as such, but rather the times when I saw them. I think I would give both movies the same review today, but the first American Godzilla will forever remain the better movie for me because I didn’t have to stand in line at the video store to see this one and it wasn’t talked about so much, either. Also, I was younger and I didn’t really notice all the stupid stuff that Emmerich squeezed into his movie. I simply took it for a fact that everything was supposed to be so monumental and I sort of enjoyed the whole thing. Here I take it for a fact that Gareth Edwards finally managed to make a Godzilla movie that a Japanese person wouldn’t complain about. I also like that the story actually contains a whole different world, which is something I’m actually glad about. Emmerich’s Godzilla was a brutal piece of nonsense and had nothing in common with the original Godzilla. I also like the way Edwards approached the digital effects. Despite the fact that with a movie like this it might actually have been a bad idea. He did the same thing he did in Monsters and I‘m not sure a lot of people will like it. I don’t think this underground approach really works for Godzilla. Night action scenes where I could barely see anything really pissed me off. On the other hand, they still have their magic, which is why I’m going to stick with a three-star review. (29.10.2014)

Das Drehbuch beruht auf dem Zusammenprall der Zivilisation mit der Natur und basiert demnach eindeutig auf der Annahme, dass die Menschheit quasi etwas Veraltetes ist. Wie könnte man es sich denn sonst erklären, dass die Charaktere schablonenhaft wirken, manchmal sprechen, als hätten sie gerade psychotroper Substanzen eingenommen und keine bedeutungsvollen dramatischen Spannungsbögen aufweisen? Was bleibt ist lediglich die abgedroschenste Peripetie überhaupt - Papi muss eine Familie finden. Den Rest packen wir schnell in Säcke hinein oder wimmeln das alles mit ein paar ungenauen Sätzen ab. Es gibt hier keinen Realismus, keine Tiefenpsychologie und auch keine provokative Arbeit mit vertrauten Motiven (vielleicht sind hier nur der Tod/generell tauchen hier ernsthafte Stilisierungen ungewöhnlich häufig auf). Das zweite (anscheinend) verdeckte misantropische Element sind die Handlungen der menschlichen Leitung, welche mit einer an die Steinzeit erinnernden Weitsicht plant, wobei sofern jemand in den hiesigen Handlungen eine tiefere Bedeutung wahrnimmt, lassen Sie es mich bitte wissen, idealerweise schriftlich und mitsamt Zeichnungen. Also, es bleibt uns Godzilla vs. MUTO + die menschliche Ameisenperspektive, welche das Aufeinanderprallen der zu fragmentieren, rechtzeitig zu verdecken oder versehentlich in der gigantischen Majestät zu betrachten vermag. Die Menschen dienen hier einfach nicht dafür, um zu handeln und an sich interessant zu sein, sondern damit sie sich umschauen können und der Film kann mit ihren Perspektiven gesättigt wird. Hier belegen einmal Gareth Edwards mit seiner Crew, dass es manchmal schlichtweg ausreicht, deftige Nahrung für unsere Augen und Ohren bereitzustellen, und der Effekt stellt sich inmitten einer dysfunktionalen menschlichen Story letztendlich dennoch ein. Sich von der Größe eines Monsters, dessen cleverer Ästhetisierung oder Einrahmung in fotogene Kompositionen berauschen zu lassen, ist ja die Quintesenz des gesamten Godzilla, der langsamer und majestätischer als üblicherweise ist. Genauso wie ein paar exzellent getimte Szenen sowie Alexandre Desplats Old-School-Donner im Orchestergraben. Die Monster aus den Tiefen verfügen hier exakt über den eingeweidenzerfetzenden Vibe, den ich bei Pacific Rim erwartet hätte. Ein Jahr später kommt dieser schließlich in bekömmlicher Form. Wir können nur darüber spekulieren, ob im nächsten Jahr zur Abwechslung jemand das liefern wird, was wir von Godzilla erwartet haben. [75%] (13.05.2014)

Waiting for Godot... Uh, no, Godzilla. Which wouldn't matter if it was waiting for “a battering" and not a "wannabe father figure Spielberg"; after all, with its focus on the action side "from the subjective point of view of human ants who worship the family above all", standing on insinuation and the unseen rather than full frontals, it is perhaps too reminiscent of Jaws or War of the Worlds. This is mainly due to the overuse of this approach, because what is pleasantly hidden and inspiring in the first half, becomes tiresome in the second half to the point that one loses interest, because if you are merely insinuating for the hundredth time but nothing happens, and for the hundredth time again at the last possible moment… nothing happens, then what’s the point of it all? Just a filler plot and shallow characters, more filler, more filler, Watanabe explaining "what the hell is happening" and all interlaced with "I have to return to my family and although I will not be able to see Godzilla, her roars will be heard constantly" in a thousand and one variations, and without at least one interesting character. To make matters worse, in this scheme that takes itself so deadly serious, this otherwise likable classic that honors the concept of a heroic monster is like Godzilla in a china shop. After all, when the best and the most playful parts of the movie are the opening credits, there must be something wrong. (14.05.2014)

What was promised the most, namely a new look at that notorious destroyer of skyscrapers, ultimately never came. The human factor brings a lot of unnecessary subplots and surprisingly transparent clichés, while the scientific background hides an elusive mass of rapid-fire technical jargon. And it is in vain that Gareth Edwards painstakingly conceals the monster in all its glory, so much so that I was literally exhausted from the eternal waiting and postponement even before the main attractions arrived. Given how high this was aiming, the letdown at the beginning of the closing credits was painfully sobering. The numerous explicitly nerve-racking scenes (the tunnel) thus manage to salvage at least some kind of experience only occasionally. (14.05.2014)

Hollywood Made in Japan. Ich scheiße auf flache Charaktere, ich scheiße auf nervige Hollywood-Klischees und immer wieder scheiße ich auf die harte Kritik anderer. Der neue Godzilla ist so großartig, dass er auch die paar zahnlosen Äußerungen angeblich gebildeter Schlauberger aushält, die sowieso unter der Last seiner Monumentalität enden werden. Hier geht es um größere Dimensionen. Wo Pacific Rim an ein buntes Transformers-Malbuch erinnert hat, erfüllt Godzilla endlich die feuchten Träume seiner Fans. Manchmal erzeugt er Atmosphäre und Angst vor dem Unbekannten, an manchen Stellen (vielleicht auch ungewollt) amüsiert er und in zwei Fällen hält er sogar den Atem an (die Szene auf der Eisenbahnbrücke und der Fallschirmabsprung). Das Design von Godzilla kehrte zum ursprünglichen japanischen Konzept zurück (und auch zur gleichen Naivität), und Mutadächer erinnern an das Schwein aus Cloverfield, und man kann nicht anders, als bei dem finalen Kampf mit der letzten brutalen Bestimmung den stößigen hundert Meter langen Echsen zuzujubeln. Das Erlebnis im besten Kino in der Tschechischen Republik schallt nicht nur wider, sondern verstärkt sich. Ja, es war großartig! (15.05.2014)

Japanese mega-monsters were some of my first movie theater experiences in ancient times, and for a five-year-old boy, they were incredibly impressive with their sneaky special effects. Since then, a lot of time has passed, and my demands have multiplied many times over. I am not a fan of blockbusters and genre-wise, I am not interested in the genre of Edwards' film, so my expectations were low, and if the television hadn't served the film right under my nose, I wouldn't have bothered with it. I consider the subject matter even more infantile and outdated, especially in a time of booming special effects-based fairy tales for the whole family. However, with proper oversight, craftsmanship, and the ability to work with exaggeration appropriately, something interesting could have been created. Unfortunately, the film does not meet even minimal expectations. Once again, I had the feeling that someone had put my testicles in a vice. Edwards' Godzilla ultimately fails as an undemanding, entertaining big-budget spectacle, and it fails again in that it wants to break free from this label, using alternative elements and being more distinctive. Above all, it is simply stupid. Even within the framework of a fictional world, there should be some rules, motivation, and behavioral patterns. This is made for viewers with the intellectual level of a five-year-old child. I don't blame Godzilla for not being realistic and intelligent. You simply can't expect that from it. I do blame it, however, for not being smarter than its 70-year-old predecessors. I may have appreciated Edwards' debut film made in modest circumstances (appropriately), but here I get the feeling of insulting mediocrity. Sure, with such a high budget and technical means, it might be impossible not to shoot a few impressive, atmospheric shots, but as a whole, Godzilla is a painful defeat. An entirely different chapter is the enthusiastic comments and high ratings from some film critics, where one would expect expertise, objectivity, and an analytical perspective. Instead, I feel like they behave as if they are in a joke where a blind, deaf, and armless person is supposed to analyze an elephant. I declare that I will never watch a film about overgrown radioactive lizards again. Overall impression: 5%. (11.05.2017)

A tribute to the original Godzillas. As a kid I used to gulp down this type of movie via satellite and it seems that Edwards had the same diet. But this more realistically conceived disaster movie is miles away from my popcorn chum of the 1990s. Tubby is presented here as the good guy and people appear only to be trampled or devoured. A big shame about the shaky screenplay that on the one hand deftly fills us in on the entire mythology very refreshingly, on the other it fails on a human level, where, also thanks to the appalling Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the viewer feels nothing towards the main protagonist and often curses human stupidity in general (in a way this is due faithfulness to the originals, but that’s unnecessary). Just Bryan Cranston squeezes the maximum from his character and is a passable foil to the monster. The effects are first-class, the ending a revue of eye pleasing shots that combine the modern filming style with the Japanese kaiju movie tradition. Change the people and bring on part 2! (18.05.2014)

Something between Emmerich and the classic. It takes the strong visuals from the former, which are similarly high-quality, with equally strong panoramas and even more detailed visuals, while it takes the appearance of the monsters and the main storyline pattern mainly from the classics. Emmerich was much more flashy and spectacular, but this one is heavily effective and within the limits of down-to-earth filmmaking, although it doesn’t lack a big finale. The linear intensification of the atmosphere is great, the main characters and their presence on the screen are unexpectedly variable, and Godzilla's appearance brings a smile to your face. It is an interesting blockbuster, not as robust as its predecessor perhaps, but certainly smarter, more cleverly crafted, not relying solely on destruction of everything possible and formal attractiveness, but also on directing actors, screenplay, editing, and above all, it carries a sense of homage to the original films in the air. (16.05.2014)

Once the you know what to expect and have no problem accepting Edwards's imaginative and daring play, there is simply no choice but to be thoroughly satisfied with Godzilla and enjoy it from start to finish. (17.05.2014)

A big beater that goes about it differently – and very cleverly. Thanks to Edwards's thoughtful staging, choice of camera angles and point-of-view shots, we don't just watch the protagonists, we are them or with them most of the time. And the expectation game set up with this, which often misses a spectacular scene at its best (the absolutely phenomenal sequence at the Hawaiian airport is a prime example). This may annoy some people, as the monsters have long been shown only on the basis of visual cues from the human perspective, but for me it's an unbeatable masterstroke that builds an atmosphere almost as dense as James Wan's. The story is not overwhelmed by unnecessary diversion, but rather balanced between its Japanese models and the requirements of American blockbusters (spectacular action and visuals + clearly developed personal conflicts and the story of the main character). The spectacular action is truly spectacular (the entire final half hour in "hell" and the breathtaking parachute jump), and the human heroes are not annoying, both because of the brilliant casting (even the routine role of the militant boss is played by the charismatic Strathairn), and because they serve a secondary function in the eyes of the narrative, and their actions and perspective continually set the stage for the main stars – the monsters. In short, everything is so well put together that the story itself doesn't even have to make complete sense – an incredible win for a monster blockbuster. 90% By the way, it amazes me that the editors of Moviezone, people so widely familiar with filmmaking language and genres, can't appreciate such an impressive big film. Perhaps they should stop with the navel gazing every now and then. (27.07.2018)

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie that you can talk about so much and so well. Judging by some of the reviews already, some are already enthralled by the creative team's pious reverence for the Japanese original (atomic breath!), others by the director's method of following the peripeteia of the giant monsters always from the position of an anonymous humanoid, others by the transformation of the central character into a giant monster who deserves our love but is never able to return it. I too must confess that when, at the end, the camera chased the sinking Gojiru, but did not go underwater with it again, I was moved by my smallness and insignificance compared to a creature so perfect and wise, who would no doubt never have known of my feelings for him and I would have pursued him to the ends of the earth. And I’m not into chubbies. Edwards fully lives up to what we expect from an aspiring indie director when someone injects 160 million into his veins. It's packed with auteurism and individual ideas. I liked the incorporation of crucial scenes from modern video games (fighter jets falling from the sky à la Modern Warfare 2, a submarine being blown up in the jungle with an insectoid creature in the background – Crysis, soldiers jumping out of a plane into the rising sun – Battlefield 2), I loved the religious rapture of the pidihumanoids towards something so vastly unreachable, I loved every entrance of the giant lizard onto the scene (flares), I was tense during the silent scene on the railroad bridge, I enjoyed the incredibly destructive picnic of the ancient creatures in San Francisco. No point then in addressing the total lack of logic or the unnecessary main human storyline right after Bryan Cranston jumps in. The movie should have been shot entirely from the perspective of random bystanders. Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins (for her, of course, as usual) were practically unwatchable. But these are minimal compromises compared to what the film offers. I can understand the lower rating – this movie really doesn't shine when you watch it on a bus with your cell phone. (02.09.2014)

Von allen Genres gibt es nur eines, das ich nicht besonders mag, und das ist das Katastrophengenre. Ich verstehe selbst nicht, warum ich mir Godzilla immer wieder ansehe, ich vermute, weil ich irgendwie von der Kreatur fasziniert bin. Der größte Teil des Films besteht jedoch nur im Warten auf Godzilla, aber es ist kein Hitchcock'sches Warten, sondern ein etwas langweiliges Warten, ausgestopft mit zwei nervigen Mutanten. Wäre sie nur von Elizabeth Olsen ausgefüllt worden, die hier nur als schmückendes Beiwerk auftritt. Vielleicht wird der zweite Film besser sein und mehr Godzilla enthalten. Ich verstehe, dass es am besten wäre, ihn im Kino zu sehen, dann hätte ich wahrscheinlich einen viel positiveren Eindruck. (14.01.2023)

I won't be so critical as to not see any mistakes in this film, there are quite a few of them in terms of logic, but this is still a movie that is based on kaiju films and essentially on B-movie production, where the story is usually a bit secondary and it's mainly about the monsters. I like that they are the main focus here because the human characters are not worth it. I was hoping that this would be somewhat like Japanese classics and in fact, it kind of fulfilled that for me. The American scenes also contribute to it, but the monsters are the winners and that's simply beautiful. I was expecting a messed up film, but I'm really glad with the result. (17.05.2014)

Gojira! Gareth Edwards kehrte zu seinen Wurzeln zurück. In seiner Begeisterung vergisst er jedoch mehrere Umstände, die Godzilla zu Boden werfen. Paradoxerweise war es vor allem die menschliche Linie des Films, um die sich Gareth anscheinend nicht sehr scherte und die er nur in den Film einfügte, um die Standardkontur eines amerikanischen Blockbusters zu erfüllen. Das Verschmelzen von schlechtem Drehbuch, Schauspiel und Dialog lässt einen bitten, dass die riesige Eidechse auf die Leinwand noch mal zurückkehrt. Die charakteristischste Figur stirbt auf unerklärliche Weise bereits im ersten Drittel, ohne Wendepunkt im Film. Am Ende bleibt nur noch der Visuele Aspekt des Films, der Godzilla die ganze Zeit in Trailern stark beworben hat, aber das wars auch schon. (16.05.2014)