Godzilla (2014) - Godzilla really needs to get himself a better agent

Okay, I can see it from his point of view... if I was a thirty-storey tall lizard, I would accept that I wasn’t going to get that many offers from Hollywood producers.  It’s not like Godzilla could star opposite Jennifer Aniston in a cute, cuddly little romantic comedy.  So, when the ‘king of monsters’ got an offer to star in a Hollywood retelling using his very own name as its title, he must have jumped at the chance (possibly causing a minor earthquake in his city).

However, what the poor misguided monster didn’t know was that his role in the film was little more than a ‘bit part.’ The producers probably mentioned that they also had the great Bryan Cranston on board, fresh on the back of his success in ‘Breaking Bad.’ I don’t blame Godzilla for being optimistic.  He probably expected to be engaged in numerous deep and emotional scenes with the man who played ‘Heisenberg.’ Yet it turned out that he was merely duped.  The trailer for the film made it look like the two of them would be carrying the film together.  How wrong they were.

For a start, Cranston isn’t in it much as the trailer and marketing would suggest and, secondly, you hardly get to see the monster!

The film is two hours long.  For the first half an hour we have Bryan Cranston.  And, as you’d expect if you’ve watched Breaking Bad, you’ll know he’s awesome.  He has the drama and screen presence (or at least right kind of manic nuttiness) to hold your attention.  Then he goes out of it.  So, does the monster take over?  Well, not really.

We see Godzilla’s back.  Sometimes we see his thighs (and, yes, he is looking a little ‘out of shape’ after being off our screens for so long).  And occasionally we hear him roar.  However, every time he’s about to open up a can of whoop-ass on some bad monster, it reminds me of that scene in Reservoir Dogs where Mr Blond tortures a police officer and the camera pans away.  This happens every time in Godzilla.  As soon as the action starts, the camera cuts to something on the other side of the planet (kind of literally – if the monsters start a fight in Tokyo, the action switches to San Francisco).

Yes, the end of the film (and by that I mean the last quarter of an hour of a two hour epic) you get to see the monsters finally get stuck into each other.  But, between Bryan Cranston leaving the film and the ‘HALO jump’ right before the final stand-off, there really isn’t much to keep your attention.  I sort of get what they were trying to do.  I’m sure the producers would call it ‘building up tension,’ but they take it a little too far.  Imagine a Terminator movie where they only had the titular cyborg in it for give minutes.  How well would that work?  Oh, wait, they did – Terminator: Salvation.  And how well did that go down?!

I hear they’re already thinking of making a sequel to Godzilla.  I just hope the titular character gets his representatives to actually negotiate more screen time for the poor guy.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back