Here’s my quick (spoiler free) review of the new Godzilla movie (2014).   I’ll do a full review, later this week when I’ve got more time, where I’ll pick apart some of the plot, characterization, and such.

First off, I enjoyed it. The overall design of the movie was well done. The story was revealed in such a way to build anticipation and the action scenes were over the top and involved lots of smashing. It was a Big Dumb Monster movie, which didn’t require a lot of thinking. There were a couple scenes which brought some good quality emotional highs and lows into the movie. So I recommend it from the perspective that it does get you emotionally engaged, especially with the titular monster.

On the other hand, the characterization throughout was very weak. Particularly on the ‘main’ character, who seems more like just an observer rather than a real part of the story for most of the movie. It’s a Kaiju movie, which means the science/physics isn’t going to be stellar… but there were a couple moments where I had some serious issues, mostly where the ‘rules’ they established changed, sometimes from one scene to the next. My last irritation was that the plans to stop the rampage basically had about the same level of thought put into it as a scene on Looney Toons with Wile E. Coyote.

Overall, I thought it was a fun, fast movie, and I’d recommend seeing it in 3D (unlike most action films) where you can see every moment of glorious destruction.