[One-Liner]
- A monster lies deep beneath the sea, but is he out to harm humans or ultimately help them?
[Plot]
- Film starts with a nuclear "test" in the '50s - Cut to the late '90s when a team of scientists led by Ishiro Serizawa are called in to investigate a large skeleton and two parasitic egg pods found in a quarry in the Philippines
- One of which has hatched, left the quarry and attacks a nuclear powerplant in Japan (to feed on radiation)
- Plant supervisor Joe Brody who has predicted problems aims to shut down the plant and escape with his wife - Brody goes into full tinfoil mode convinced that the Government knows more about what is going on but is covering it up
- Cut to present day where Brody has been arrested, and his son Ford (who has a seemingly innocent military job that definitely won't become critically important later on) flies over to help him
- Ford doesn't empathise much with his Father, and accuses him of not moving on after the accident... Joe counters that Ford needs to stop hiding in the past...
- And they both go off into the now quarantined zone surrounding the power plant to search for clues
- And get arrested... and taken to the super secret plant

- Anyway, it is then revealed that yes, Joe was was right... and the seemingly dormant chrysalis at the plant hatches into a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) and levels the plant again - Ford seems... kind of upset at all of this? But really wants to get back to his family as it looks like this is starting to spiral out of control
- But will he get back to his wife and kid in time?
- And what about that other pod?
- And that Godzilla fella? What's he going to do about all of this?
[Pros]
- Can imagine some OCD geek going through and pausing their version to read all the bits that were being edited out in the opening credits, was a nice idea
- Bryan Cranston really sells his character, was fun watching him work
- Ken Watanabe does a pretty decent job of playing what is ostensibly a stoner-scientist ("double rainbow man let nature fight it out")
- SFX in general were quite good - Glad they got the Atomic Breath in there, and watching the scales light up just before the attack was pretty impressive [Cons]
- Suffers a little from traileritus in that a lot of the key scenes / dialogue / reveals had already been in there a few times
- Fights were a little underwhelming... with only what... a few minutes or so of actual fighting? And having various doors closing / cutting to other scenes just as the action got interesting?
- Bryan Cranston could have been in the movie a bit longer imo as he was really the only interesting human character
- - Given the military knew about the MUTO weapons (which was a bit kitsch imo) why still have planes and helicopters flying around the place so close?
- Were we meant to care about the dog that was tied to a tree? Then bolted it and got lost in the crowd? Seemed rather pointless.
- In fact just read this: http://www.100thingsilearned.com/view.php?id=1715 as it has a few gripes that I noticed too
[Rating]
3 KFC buckets out of 5, good fun overall
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