Thoughts On Godzilla After Watching For 20 Minutes

I was recently given the privilege of seeing 20 minutes worth of footage for this years Godzilla movie as sort of an extended preview of the film courtesy of Roadshow Films. I don’t really want to spoil certain plot points so I will avoid discussing them in this post, I will mark the plot paragraph with a spoiler warning below, and even that will be brief.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjfwP5xfr0k[/youtube]

The Godzilla movie stars Bryan Cranston in the lead role who I know from Malcolm in the Middle but most will know him from Breaking Bad. The film is directed by Gareth Edwards which I have not seen any of his work other than what I have seen of Godzilla. Much of the footage I saw involved Bryan Cranston scenes and some military scenes with random soldiers. I would say though that Godzilla is definitely a film that is going for the tense atmosphere. It’s not like a marvel movie where there is action and humor at the same time. Everything in Godzilla seems very serious and Godzilla is definitely presented as a big danger to the people in the cities he visits. The visual effects are pretty good and the sound and the stomping noises are very well done as well. Being in a big screen cinema or the IMAX is something I think that will really suit movie goers of this movie.

Plot Spoilers Below

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I don’t want to spoil too much from what I saw and I only really want to talk about the start. What is basically happening is that there is a big nuclear disaster at this nuclear facility which seems to have been doing some type of experiments. Bryan Cranston’s character Joe Brody goes down there to investigate because he’s sort of a scientific expert on the matter. Unfortunately not all goes well at the plant and all types of radiation that looks like red smoke comes out. Radiation of course attracts Godzilla to the area, and then the film goes forward in time just over a decade and we continue from there, everything is destroyed by Godzilla.

Plot Spoilers End Here

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I thought that the acting was pretty good from Bryan Cranston who is mainly all I saw. It’s a very serious and dramatic movie that spends a long time building up to the reveal of Godzilla. Godzilla though, he’s giant!! Much bigger than the Godzilla in the 1998 Matthew Broderick movie. This is good as it makes Godzilla much more dangerous. One does not simply just take down Godzilla, I have no idea how they will do it.

It seems like more of a monster movie than a science fiction movie which does make it very different. I do think the tone that they chose being a serious one does make Godzilla as a monster appear very threatening on screen and the mix with the dramatic music does well for the movie atmosphere. It’s a suspenseful movie and after seeing the start I definitely want to to see it continue for the full run time.

Overall though from what I saw of the first 20 minutes of the Godzilla movie, I was somewhat impressed. It does seem like it might take a bit to get started though and for the audience to get to see Godzilla. But when Godzilla finally does appear he certainly doesn’t disappoint. I’m looking forward to see the rest of the movie and a bit more of the other characters.

Any questions? Let me know below. Happy to answer them 🙂

I was also given the opportunity to watch Edge Of Tomorrow as well, you can read my thoughts on that movie right here.