Godzilla (2014 official movie trailer) review…

Godzilla (2014 official movie trailer) review… after the break…

Godzilla (2014 official movie trailer) review…

I haven’t been inside of an actual movie theater in years. It’ll be in a decade far sooner then later.

I’ll admit that I’m much more hermit then I was a couple of years ago but I’m a recluse from a movie theater for a reason – Watching a first-run movie is repulsively expensive. It’s time consuming. I have to drive to a movie theater. Stand in line. Buy a ticket. March into a theater. Sit in a crappy seat. Have someone tall sit in front of me. Have arctic air blasted onto me from all directions. Be subjected to advertisements until the movie trailers start. Endure ear-shattering audio turned up to “Are you f**king deaf yet?” volume. Deal with people who have forgotten the concept that watching a movie is not a “two-screen,” “three-screen,” “sing-along,” “talk-along” (or whatever Hollywood buzzword is floating around at the moment) “experience.”

And, on top of all of that, worry for 90+ minutes whether your car is being broken into.

Did I mention the overpriced popcorn and refreshments?

This isn’t the 1980s anymore. We have options now. Movies come out on DVD within weeks of their release in theaters. They come out on In-Demand and pay movie channels months afterwards. Heck… Just borrow the DVD from your local library if it comes down to it or *gasp* watch it on YouTube at some point.

All from the comfort and convenience of your home. No ticket. No smelly seat. No annoying patrons. And the refreshments are cheap and plentiful. Have I mentioned the ability to pause the movie and rewind back to the amazing parts as often as you’d like yet?

Part of the “misery,” admittedly, of not having to be inside of a movie theater is that you do miss out on all of the movie trailers. Movie trailers, quite honestly, are a guilty pleasure. Often times, the trailer is better then the actual film that it advertises.

If you have no clue what I am referring to when I write the word, “Godzilla,” then you, sir, are just barely old enough to comprehend thought or your grasp on pop culture is virtually nil. For those few individuals who have no clue what “Godzilla” is, here it is in a nutshell: A large man dressed in a large rubber lizard suit stomping around a cardboard model city. The original “Godzilla” was meant to be a dead serious horror film while the rest of the series steadily trailed off into absurdity, with Godzilla eventually becoming some sort of good guy battling other absurd creatures.

The series has tried to rebound back into more serious territory, from what I understand, in recent decades, but I don’t make an effort to catch every single movie from a franchise that challenges the James Bond franchise for the number of movies that it has cranked out since it’s inception. Like soccer (yes, it’s called football everywhere else, stop browbeating us over that already), it keeps trying to penetrate the American market but with little to no avail.

In 1998, there was an effort to revive Godzilla for the American market. I remember all of the hype in trying to hide what the updated Godzilla monster looked like but some toy company accidentally revealed the model a few months in advance. Since no one is talking about Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno raking in millions per Godzilla movie, it’s safe to say that the goals of the 1998 movie failed. Personally, I won’t detail all of the reasons why although, to be honest, the anti-Siskel and Ebert parodies were more then a little hamfisted even for back then and are now painfully out of date today.

16 years later, someone is trying again to put the Fear of Godzilla back into American hearts. I’m not waiting for baited breath for this movie but I saw the official trailer online and decide to watch it.

Based on the trailer, the movie looks like the umpteenth reboot of the franchise and is hitting all of the predictable beats of the mythos: Godzilla was born because America conducted one too many above-ground atomic bomb tests back in the 1950s. Mayhem ensues. Instead of Tokyo getting a large rubber foot stomped on it, it looks like it’s New York City.

I have to admit that the trailer left me… Not interested. Yes, there are pretty graphics. Yes, there are (glimpses) of pretty action. Yet the trailer has some very unappetizing aspects to it.

• The “BWAH!” Factor: I get it… You’re a serious movie. You want me to realize that what I’m seeing is a serious moment. Here’s the problem: Bwah. You use the deep, booming “bwah!” sound (credited with the Inception movie trailer) over and over again. Stop that. We’re immune to that now. “Bwah” is now a punchline. “Bwah” is quickly becoming the new “Guile’s Theme” (look it up yourself). You’re better then the “Bwah!” sound. However, the problems are compounded by…

• The “2001” Factor: The cruel irony of life is that some free things are not free. Some artistic endeavors “own” things that are available for all of the public to use. That’s just how life is. A group takes a picture or a symbol and they make it “their” picture or “their” symbol. Technically, anyone can have that picture or symbol but they can’t use it anymore because that group is associated with it now… Forever. For instance, who would be so silly as to use the William Tell overture for anything over then the “Lone Ranger” theme song? Yes, anyone can use the William Tell overture… It’s in the public domain. Except that it realistically “isn’t” – The Long Ranger owns it and whenever anyone hears it, that is what they think about. In the case of the Godzilla trailer, a classical piece of music from that movie is used in the trailer. I was half-expecting primitive homo sapiens to appear out of nowhere, attempting to touch a black monolith that was jutting unnaturally up from out of the ground. Yes, you want us to get a sense of unsettled horror but the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” already beat you to that music. That music is now associated with a bunch of apes touching a space monolith. It has been for a few decades now.

• Hysterical Crybaby: Look, I get it – Men can be just as sensitive as women. Yet I tend to want my leading actors to be a bit more level-headed then some hysterical crybaby who’s a few tears away from a sobbing meltdown worthy of a Hallmark Channel Original Movie. I’m sure that leading actor Bryan Cranston (side note: Seriously… You guys go from Matthew Broderick to Bryan Cranston… I mean, I know that Godzilla is the real star of the movie but… Well, anyway…) means well and the rantings may be taken out of context (To be fair, I think that Sylvester Stallone’s “I am the Law!” catchphrase from the Judge Dredd movie works better in the actual film then when it was portrayed in that movie’s trailer) but, in this trailer, Cranston comes off as more then a bit unhinged. I was half expecting Sean Connery to come out of retirement and suddenly slap Cranston across the face during mid-rant.

I have little doubt that there were a lot of people on this movie’s production who worked really hard and worked a lot of thankless hours. I don’t want to disparage them. Good job, guys. Keep up the good work. Yet between the “bwahs!” and the monolith-music poaching and Cranston breathlessly raving hysterically that “You have no idea what you’re doing?!!!” or some incomprehensible tripe, my interest in this movie is… “Wow, I can’t wait to see this non-playable video game in about twelve to eighteen months when it hits the pay cable channels. If I can remember it by then. Or maybe I’ll just watch the isolated action scenes on Youtube after the DVD has been out for a few days.”