Godzilla Rises

Decided to have a giant monster double feature with Rangerkris' Godzilla and Pacific Rim.

My feelings about this edit fairly similar to the previous reviews.... a very good looking edit loaded with great monster action.

But I felt the removal of the Power Plant weakened Cranston's role and the cutting back on his son throughout the film made an already uninteresting character even more forgettable. I wonder if Cranston's scenes could have been augmented with at the very least, very brief intense flashbacks to greater sell his trauma and engage the audience more? Or flashbacks of the son with his father, to strengthen their relationship and give his quest more weight?

Also, I wish the watch/Hiroshima moment had been kept. To me, this is a core element of the Godzilla mythos and should never be forgotten or dismissed no matter how obvious it may feel to modern audiences.

It would have been nice if the final night battle had been brightened a little bit, as I found it still a bit too dark to clearly make out entirely what was happening on the screen.

And while I did not mind the darker ending, it might have played stronger if Kris had replaced the final music of Godzilla awakening and returning to the ocean with something more ominous and less heroic.

But at the end of the day, this is still a fun, fast paced monster rumble movie. I enjoyed it as an alternate cut, and I think Kris did well with the limits of the original source material.

Thumbs up.

The problem is, I didn't care about anyone. Not even Godzilla. That's OK really - it's a monster flick. I've been entertained by many a monster movie just for the action, and certainly the technology these days makes for effects only dreamed of in bygone Godzillas. But writing this a couple weeks post-watch, I can't remember one detail of the battles. Another case where I don't think any edits would work toward your goal, for me anyway. I blame the purist in me partially, because I can't help thinking some franchises should be left alone - Godzilla should be a dude in a suit wandering through a model city! Nice effort though, and it deserves a thumbs up - I'm sure many others will have more positive experience.

I'll start off by saying that much like the theatrical version, this edit has some good and some not so good. The audio and visual quality were top notch and there was just one instance where the visual editing felt abrupt but not enough to deduct any points (the scene where Serizawa is asked what other team members he needs). The opening credits were very cool and well executed.

The narrative is where I have the most issue with this edit. I understand why the scene at the nuclear plant was cut, but the acting by Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston in that scene is very good and it also is an important factor to Bryan Cranston's character development. Cranston doesn't get enough screen time as it is, along with the titular character Godzilla. By cutting out that scene it introduces Ford as the main antagonist but because his scenes in the theatrical cut are lackluster, most of them have been cut in this edit, which causes some structural issues.

Cutting Ford out of the monorail in Hawaii and cutting him from the train tracks in somewhere USA was a great decision but this causes some confusion about how the character is getting around and makes Ford even more generic and uninteresting when compared to the original version. His family suffers similarly. Cutting the scene where Ford's wife pawns off their son to a friend has wisely been removed as well as some other "character developing" scenes, this causes a disconnect between the audience and the character, which again exists in the original version but are exacerbated in this edit.

That being said, this is a short edit and once the action starts it doesn't really stop until the end and it does feel like a more Godzilla centric movie overall in this case. I would tell most people who haven't seen Godzilla to watch the theatrical cut, but the people who were disappointed in the original versions and just want to see Godzilla kick some ass, I would have them watch this edit.

I was a bit underwhelmed by this edit. I actually enjoyed nu Godzilla, despite agreeing with a good amount of the criticism against it. It wasn't the strongest film it could have been, but it was still pretty kickass. This edit keeps the action intact and dispenses with as much of the human story as possible. I felt this was a big error on Ranger's part, specifically deleting the power plant opening act and lessening Cranston & Son's screentime. I feel that the audience needs to see those events leading up to the main story. Sure, the way the characters were written was sloppy and disrespectful, but now there's barely anything of substance in this flick.

The editing itself was perfectly fine, in that nothing felt jarring. But the editor went too far and chopped it down too much. Sorry Ranger, I didn't think this one worked for me.