Sometimes a film comes along and I have a hard time deciding how to grade it. Throughout watching this I went from complaining to myself that it was made to look old, which of course it does. It's supposed to take place prior to the original film from 1955 so it needs to look older. Which I have to recognize that it's hard to make something look old in 2023, so one of the things I am complaining about is also something I will compliment it on. See, that's my issue in a nutshell. Seeing it in RPX on the big screen was a nice added touch as well, I add points for that.
Probably surprising to some is that I went to the theater to see a movie that is subtitled. For someone who has Parasite, The Wailing, I Saw the Devil, and a couple other films with subtitles waiting in a pile of blue rays to watch because, let's face, if I wanted to read, I'd pick up a book so seeing this says something in it's favor. Some things, like Godzilla the King of the Kaiju, is well worth my time. It still doesn't stop me from hating myself for it though. The good part is, it's a Godzilla movie, how much dialog can it have? And for that matter, just how do you subtitle "GRRRRREEEEEYYYOOOOONNNKKK!"? Well, I gotta admit, it had more dialogue than I expected so again, I don't know how that effects my grade and the fact that I dislike subtitles doesn't necessarily mean I hate subtitled movies.
Moving on, the actors all do a masterful job, even down to the young girl playing little Akiko so there's no complaints there. The story is just as good and while I can still say a Godzilla film has never made me cry, this one came pretty close to it, so it gets some points for that as well. The final thing I wanted to mention is the digital effects on Godzilla himself. Herself? Did we ever know? Maybe we'll just go Godzilla themself. Itself sounds insulting, I think and now I'm sure I'm overthinking this. But anyway, the digital effect made Godzilla look so much meaner and more aggressive than ever before. Also worth mentioning is the effect used when Godzilla prepared to unleash the heat ray. The scales standing up on Godzilla's back in ascending order as the attack loaded was a sight to behold. Plus there was the original 50's music announcing the presence for every scene Godzilla is in, won't really add anything for that but not having it would for sure cost it a couple points.
Leaving the theater I wasn't sure if this was going to get three or three and a half stars. The more I thought about it, the more I went to three and a half. Now, after writing this I'm stuck between three and a half and four stars. See, writing these reviews are just as cathartic for me as they are informative for you reading this. So I ended us somewhere in the middle and that's what I'll give it here on Blogger even if I did give it four stars on Lettrboxd (because you can't do a quarter star rating there), three and three quarter tugboats out of five. Good job Toho.
