Godzilla

Saw Godzilla. Very opinionated about this. First, the story was very good. I liked the plot. It was very suspenseful. It kept my attention – I offer my missing nails as proof. But I don't think the casting was great. I have a small complaint with the ending, something having to do with a b.o.m.b. But my biggest complaint – the thing that really hurt the film from being an unquestioned success – was that they messed up Godzilla's look. I mean, it was much better than the Matthew Broderick film, which tried to make the monster a T-Rex. At least this film had Godzilla rightly conceptualized from the neck down – or at least, part of the neck down. The difficulty was the overall size of the neck and, much more importantly, the very strange face. What the creature really became was an extremely large lizard-bear. I don't know why the hell they did that. The thing that makes Godzilla special is not how he would look if science were to actually make a large animal that could be called “Godzilla,” which is the mistake that all of these recent movies make. Rather, it is that he became his own sort of persona – the way Alf did on his show, or the way Peter Parker is for Spiderman. That's what they don't understand: you aren't really getting a “Godzilla” flick if you take the personal look out of the star creature in the name of something more scientific. Godzilla simply cannot be a lizard-bear.

And all I am saying is that the face of the creature needed a little more resemblance to the goofy costume guy (and maybe a neck job). I also cannot understand why they tortured his growl, when his opponents had an absolutely perfect bark in the old tradition of Toho monster flicks. I also don't think the design of the opponent monsters was well conceived. They looked, well, just weird. (Mosquito weird). Also, I was going to criticize the film mercilessly for Godzilla not having his radioactive breath (or whatever that is), until, at last, it came toward the end. And I have to say, when I saw it, I was so moved – it was very well done! Completely knocked away the festering indictment I was going to levy for felony offense. And so, the only thing that kept this otherwise very promising Godzilla flick from being an unquestionable success was, ultimately, the face of the hero. As I have said, Godzilla was never a lizard-bear. Grade: B+/A-