Review The Return of Godzilla film review by Durp004
Written By Durp004 on 2014-08-18 16:09:01
While being called Return of Godzilla this one is pretty much a more modern version of the original. It's one of the only two that has Godzilla as a solo act and I think it works well. I've seen the american version and that japanese, and I think both have their merits. I wish there could be a 3rd version that encorporates both. Storywise Godzilla's back, he's come to feed on radiation and this movie does a good job of making it seem like the whole world is invested in this problem rather than just Japan having to deal with it while everyone else looks away. I really like that aspect. Seeing the other countries dealing with or offering to help Japan from the threat of Godzilla. The Godzilla suit has a good update from the old showa looks to better incorporate him returning to the role of a destroyer rather than a hero. The american one throws in cold war tensions that are clearly present in the japanese movie, but the American version does all it can to make Russian look like the bad guys like making russia fire the missile on purpose rather than try to prevent it. I found the scene much better seeing him struggle to stop the launch, but at the same time there were reasons why I could see him wanting to use the missile, so I'm not too bothered by the re edit.
The characters are really the weakest part of this movie. One character Goro uses the fact that he knew a brother and sister would be reunited to get a story for his newspaper and while the sister was obviously bothered by this it never really comes up again and they get along just fine. The use of bird calls to lure godzilla is kind of odd for me but I didn't necessarily hate it.
Basicallly this is a movie for someone who enjoyed the original movie but wanted to to be flashier. It's a good start to the heisei, and good godzilla movie overall if it had better characters it may have been one of the strongest entries, but with the ones we got it stays about mid level.
