I get it, this is not a great movie, but it's very entertaining and has great visual effects. Personally one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Definitely doesn't deserve 5.3, that's for movies like Batman and Robin...I can name at least 20 movies that has a higher rating than Godzilla which I definitely hate. Deserves at least a 6.5 in my opinion..
sharePerhaps because Pacific Rim was original and paid homage to classic kaiju films and this film was nothing short of stupid and a slap in the face to Japan.
sharePerhaps because Pacific Rim was original...
Simply put, Pacific Rim is a better made movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXo8uIYWdNk
"I get it, this is not a great movie, but it's very entertaining and has great visual effects."
"Entertaining" isn't the same as being "good". In terms of the difference in rating between "Pacific Rim" and "GINO", one is a love letter to kaiju movies of yesteryear that also had a compellingly textured world, with some good actors. The other was a bastardization of the original movie and the character itself, a movie that borrowed wholesale from other much better movies such as "Jurassic Park", "Aliens" and "Star Wars", having more to do with those than the series it's based upon, all done with a very cynical attitude.
"Definitely doesn't deserve 5.3, that's for movies like Batman and Robin..."
DEFINITELY not. "Batman and Robin" was just awful, like one out of five awful.
I'm with you. Pacific Rim wasn't very enjoyable at all. It felt stilted, and like they wasted its potential. Godzilla is actually a really great film other than it being called Godzilla. It's not what anyone wants to see from a Godzilla movie. Had it been called anything else I think it would earn a lot more praise. C'est la vie.
shareI tried rewatching this film a few months ago, just to see how I'd feel about it in retrospect. I thought it started well but as the film wore on I just lost interest. Some of the effects are interesting--though some don't hold up well at all--but the plot fails to continue developing in interesting ways.
Pacific Rim is a lot of fun, though. I made a point to pick it up on Blu-Ray.
Godzilla is a disaster movie. That kind of movies don't have one specific plotline that develops, but an ensemble of small storylines that interact with the main event in the movie (earthquake, airplane crash, volcanic eruption, tsunami, alien invasion, big mutant lizard or any other). The main lead is more a glue that link those storylines.
In general, a good disaster movie will have charismatic characters, good rhythm when it comes to drama/comedy moments, and clear, understandable and well shot set pieces.
Godzilla has charismatic characters (Jean Reno's one is pure gold), well balanced drama and comedy, and very clear action (something that has become a rara avis). It's not a masterpiece, but it's a good example of a disaster movie well done. From Emmerich, I'd say that only The Day After Tomorrow is a better one.
It could happen that most people today prefer a single storyline about one hero fighting the big threat than the traditional disaster ensemble cast movie, but this is more about genre preference than about movie preference.
I don't really think of Godzilla as a disaster movie, but if Godzilla is a disaster movie then so is Emmerich's own Independence Day. And I think Indenpendence Day is by FAR a superior film. Godzilla's not terrible, but it's not really good either. ID4 on the other hand IS actually a good film. And at this point it's an underrated film as well.
In the disaster arena, I'd also put Twister well ahead of something like Godzilla. If you want to talk about charismatic characters, that film has them in spades!
We don't often agree here, but I'm more or less with you on this one. Godzilla is a disaster film masquerading as a kaiju film. I think that was the reason for the negativity upon its release. Audiences, myself included, wanted to see Godzilla stomping cities, breathing fire, and hopefully fighting another big monster. It was something of a shock to see something so different from the expected Godzilla film, and it took a while to process it for what it is.
I knew I enjoyed the film, but at the same time was let down by it, and only after thinking about it in the context of Emmerich and Devlin's previous films did I start to realize it was a disaster film with a giant lizard as its disaster, and in no way a Godzilla or kaiju film.
Where I disagree is I think this is the last of Emmerich's great disaster films. Stargate is my favorite of his, Independence Day is nearly as good, while Godzilla represents a small step down in quality. The Thirteenth Floor is quite good, though more of a straight up sci-fi film, but I wasn't a big fan of The Day After Tomorrow, and after that his movies fail to hold my interest.