Godzilla's fiftieth Anniversary project, in which Godzilla travels around the world to fight his old foes plus a new, mysterious monster named Monster X.
From Earth's pollution a new monster is spawned. Hedorah, the smog monster, destroys Japan and fights Godzilla while spewing his poisonous gas to further the damage.
Years into the future and the human race has been defeated several times by the new ruling force of the planet: "kaijus". And the ruler of that force is Godzilla, The King of the Monsters. ... See full summary »
Directors:
Hiroyuki Seshita,
Kôbun Shizuno
Stars:
Mamoru Miyano,
Takahiro Sakurai,
Kana Hanazawa
An unknown accident occurs in Tokyo Bay's Aqua Line, which causes an emergency cabinet to assemble. All of the sudden, a giant creature immediately appears, destroying town after town with its landing reaching the capital. This mysterious giant monster is named "Godzilla".
At one point in the film, all the TVs in an electronics store are showing the live footage of Godzilla's destruction of Tokyo except one which is playing the anime "Ochibisan" created by Moyoco Anno, who is director Hideaki Anno's wife. This is also a reference to the fact that one of Tokyo's six broadcast TV stations is notoriously reluctant to air breaking news. See more »
Goofs
The drug that the government uses to kill Godzilla is described as something that will "disable his internal cooling system". After the drug is used at the end, Godzilla freezes. If the drug was supposed to disable his internal cooling system, it would have overheated him, not frozen him.
But it's a bit more complex than that... In fact, in the movie the drug actually does manage to disable Godzilla's cooling system, but in stead of overheating him this triggers a SCRAM-shutdown (=Safety Control Rods Activation Mechanism) as a kind of involuntarily overreaction-thus freezing him in the procedure.
By freezing himself temporarily, Godzilla is able to survive this potentially critical trauma. See more »
This is an excellent show that differs from the standard hack-and- slash and action-driven natures of other recent films (Independence Day 2 etc.). It is one of the most narrative-driven films that I've watched in the last 2 years.
PROS:
The acting was great as a whole, comprising of much seriousness and focus, typical of the exigency of a nation-wide disaster, in the top politicians of the diet.
It is full of political irony, satire of the Japanese government's and bureaucracy's indecision and red-taping. There is great intelligence imbued into movie, and it shows that much research has been done prior to filming. It also shows the way in which foreign and indigenous affairs have been interwoven together in governmental decision-making. I greatly appreciate this as a whole, as the narration is full of meaning and subtlety.
The special effects of Godzilla were absolutely wonderful, portraying both scale and grandeur in Godzilla's size and style. I greatly enjoyed the four main scenes where Godzilla made its appearance, especially its climax at the latter two.
The pacing was fast-paced, and little time was wasted. A lot of content had been packaged into a duration of just 120 minutes. While watching, I thought that the film lasted for 4 hours, as there were so many occurrences!
The style and pace also remains true to the original Godzilla classics. So is the provenance of Godzilla.
CONS
Ishihara would not have fooled us into thinking that she is a Japanese-American English speaker!
Overall, it is very dialogue-heavy. This is both a strength and weakness. A strength as there is much character development, but also excessive to the point that it sometimes can be dreary and draggy. This is the greatest setback of the film, and could have been further streamlined. Minus 1 star for this.
CONCLUSION:
As a whole, I rate it 9 out of 10, and will watch it again.
Most people who have an appreciation for subtlety and nuance, and also of vivid storytelling will like this film.
However, those who prefer a CGI roller-coaster like Independence Day 2 or 2012 may be turned off by the extremely heavy dialogue.
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This is an excellent show that differs from the standard hack-and- slash and action-driven natures of other recent films (Independence Day 2 etc.). It is one of the most narrative-driven films that I've watched in the last 2 years.
PROS:
CONS
CONCLUSION: