This review is coming from an "old school" viewer of Godzilla and Toho in general. I've seen just about every Godzilla movie there is, from the classic Showa era to the Heisei series to the Millennium films. Plus the Emmerich disaster of 1998 and the 2014 American film. And now this post-Millennium flick.
The film is amazingly loquacious. The characters will talk your ear off. When Godzilla isn't on the screen, they can't seem to go five seconds without more dialogue, almost always exposition. Sometimes, it seems like nobody else would be able to get a word in edgewise, it's so packed. And it's all linear, like some high school debate. I can't recall any time when more than one person was speaking at once. Everybody spoke their lines in turn. While Japanese society may admire hard-edged straight talk, other cultures like America appreciate some coyness, subtlety or just a little deception. Even in the heat of full-fledged battle against the monster, I don't think they go 15 seconds without somebody speaking up. The Japanese writer just didn't know when to shut up and let the visuals do the work, forcing the American writer to match the verbosity in the dub. This is unquestionably a Japanese movie, which explains why it doesn't translate well to other countries.
There's nothing resembling character development. The characters are the same at the end as they were in the beginning of the movie, as two-dimensional as they come. Nobody has learned any life lessons, nobody has changed or grown. By the end, you barely know anything more about any of them, other than one wants to be prime minister of Japan and another wants to be president of the United States, but they had those goals before the movie began. The actors are quite wooden, more than the casts of any previous Godzilla movie. No real emotion seems to emanate from any of them. No terror when Godzilla is close, no heartbreak when victims are killed, no compassion. They're all basically stonefaced throughout the movie, just mouthpieces for stiff, stilted dialogue. Sure, the older movies right up to and including Final Wars had more than a little overacting, but this is going completely in the other direction. Any conflict between characters is nothing more than arguments about whose theory is right, with no real interaction.
Godzilla is purely a CGI construct in this movie, marking a clean break from 62 years of men in a rubber monster suits. They still used an actor for motion capture, although I really don't understand why. It wasn't necessary as Godzilla moves nothing like a human. Good CGI artists, as opposed to technicians, can make completely fabricated creatures move with a grace and fluidity that seems completely realistic. Godzilla himself is completely devoid of any personality or intelligence. He's a mindless force of nature, as he was in the very first film in 1954. Even the Godzilla of Final Wars had more depth than this. For some inexplicable reason, this creature has cartoonish, motionless button eyes with lots of white rather than the slitted, dark lizard eyes of previous movies. But this Godzilla is given a welter of amazing powers to far outclass any of his predecessors. I can't see where the franchise can go from here. If this Godzilla were to fight another monster like Mothra, either it would be a lopsided fight lasting a few seconds, or two equally matched, incredibly powerful beasts would level all of Japan in short order. I'll admit that the effects look good, although not really top quality for 2016 like you would find in Marvel superhero movies, but I've never liked any movie for no reason other than it had good effects, and that includes the vastly overrated Avatar.
All in all, the movie is a great technical achievement in the annals of Toho, but the problem is that it's all technique, with no heart and soul, no humanity. It's completely humorless. Even a disaster epic like Independence Day was enlivened by occasional quips from Will Smith. Likewise, even in a heavy film like The Dark Knight Rises, there were moments of levity. Just a little comic relief would go a long way. This film is relentlessly grim and it's ultimately a downer. Maybe that might play well in pessimistic Japan, but give me the good, old days of Godzilla movies that had some fun in them, although some of those did cross the line into just plain goofy. I don't expect to ever watch this again.
The film is amazingly loquacious. The characters will talk your ear off. When Godzilla isn't on the screen, they can't seem to go five seconds without more dialogue, almost always exposition. Sometimes, it seems like nobody else would be able to get a word in edgewise, it's so packed. And it's all linear, like some high school debate. I can't recall any time when more than one person was speaking at once. Everybody spoke their lines in turn. While Japanese society may admire hard-edged straight talk, other cultures like America appreciate some coyness, subtlety or just a little deception. Even in the heat of full-fledged battle against the monster, I don't think they go 15 seconds without somebody speaking up. The Japanese writer just didn't know when to shut up and let the visuals do the work, forcing the American writer to match the verbosity in the dub. This is unquestionably a Japanese movie, which explains why it doesn't translate well to other countries.
There's nothing resembling character development. The characters are the same at the end as they were in the beginning of the movie, as two-dimensional as they come. Nobody has learned any life lessons, nobody has changed or grown. By the end, you barely know anything more about any of them, other than one wants to be prime minister of Japan and another wants to be president of the United States, but they had those goals before the movie began. The actors are quite wooden, more than the casts of any previous Godzilla movie. No real emotion seems to emanate from any of them. No terror when Godzilla is close, no heartbreak when victims are killed, no compassion. They're all basically stonefaced throughout the movie, just mouthpieces for stiff, stilted dialogue. Sure, the older movies right up to and including Final Wars had more than a little overacting, but this is going completely in the other direction. Any conflict between characters is nothing more than arguments about whose theory is right, with no real interaction.
Godzilla is purely a CGI construct in this movie, marking a clean break from 62 years of men in a rubber monster suits. They still used an actor for motion capture, although I really don't understand why. It wasn't necessary as Godzilla moves nothing like a human. Good CGI artists, as opposed to technicians, can make completely fabricated creatures move with a grace and fluidity that seems completely realistic. Godzilla himself is completely devoid of any personality or intelligence. He's a mindless force of nature, as he was in the very first film in 1954. Even the Godzilla of Final Wars had more depth than this. For some inexplicable reason, this creature has cartoonish, motionless button eyes with lots of white rather than the slitted, dark lizard eyes of previous movies. But this Godzilla is given a welter of amazing powers to far outclass any of his predecessors. I can't see where the franchise can go from here. If this Godzilla were to fight another monster like Mothra, either it would be a lopsided fight lasting a few seconds, or two equally matched, incredibly powerful beasts would level all of Japan in short order. I'll admit that the effects look good, although not really top quality for 2016 like you would find in Marvel superhero movies, but I've never liked any movie for no reason other than it had good effects, and that includes the vastly overrated Avatar.
All in all, the movie is a great technical achievement in the annals of Toho, but the problem is that it's all technique, with no heart and soul, no humanity. It's completely humorless. Even a disaster epic like Independence Day was enlivened by occasional quips from Will Smith. Likewise, even in a heavy film like The Dark Knight Rises, there were moments of levity. Just a little comic relief would go a long way. This film is relentlessly grim and it's ultimately a downer. Maybe that might play well in pessimistic Japan, but give me the good, old days of Godzilla movies that had some fun in them, although some of those did cross the line into just plain goofy. I don't expect to ever watch this again.