Sadly Over-hyped

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is one of the few Godzilla movies where I actually care for the plot. We get to have humans doing all this Kung fu stuff and we get to see Godzilla kick ass in hardcore fashion! I do have to admit the final battle with Monster X dragged on but this movie was still epic and hardcore!

This time around there is lots of action.Sadly, that action is all humans and not monsters.When the monsters do show up, nothing makes sense.Once again, aliens have come to Earth and have taken the form of humans.A plot that has been done to death in these movies.Of course when they die they revert to their true form, ugh.For some reason the Mothra twins are in this and they are still the same age they were 60 years ago, ugh.I will never understand why Mothra exists or how people can accept it as a monster.So anyway, the action is all Jackie Chan meets The Matrix and it's somehow boring and confusing at the same time.As usual this movie raises more questions than it answers.A guy calls Godzilla "she" and that answers the question I have had for so long.Does that mean it is actually Son Of Godzilla's mom?Who knows?So a planet is going to crash into Earth and here comes the lameness.Godzilla sees it coming and uses her "fire" breath to blow it up.Which brings up so many questions.How did she know it was a threat when it was so far away?How could she blow it up but she can't harm a moth?Why would she even want to save Earth?She has spent more than half a century trying to destroy earth and now she wants to save it?And once again they have one character who speaks English.What's the deal with that?And this guy dresses like he's in the Russian army but he runs a group of mutants.Mutants who have NO powers.What is the point of them being mutants if all they can do is rip-off The Matrix?While this is definitely the best Godzilla movie I have seen, it's still a bad movie.If you must watch Godzilla, this may be the movie to see.

Even hardcore Godzilla fans will have a hard time swallowing "Godzilla: Final Wars". Sure there are plenty of monsters in the film, but none of them have any presence and aside from a few monsters, they have very little screen time overall. Some monsters appear for less than five minutes, only to display how "Awesome" Godzilla is when he effortlessly blows them away. Really, what's the point? This isn't going to win the big guy any new fans, and old fans won't be seeing anything new, since this is a retread of "Destroy all Monsters". The dialog is very bad, the characters are cliché and the story is lazy. Despite the good special effects and large roster of monsters, this is one of the worst entries in the series because while it really just feels like a 13 year old played one of the "Godzilla" fighting games, drew his own "most awesome Godzilla story ever" and turned it into a film (Dvd, March 2012)

I've been a Godzilla fan for decades and have always been forgiving of the shortcomings of some of the films. On this occasion, the shortcomings are too intrusive to and in-your-face to look past. Unfortunately, the problems are there from the start and they don't ever go away long enough to forget. A prime example is Keith Emmerson's musical contributions. The tinny, cheezie keyboard music belongs in a cheap early 80s video game. Unfortunately, it is dumped on you at the start and at the end. As a result, it is part of what you take away from the film. I am not sure what is more unbelievable, Emerson having the nerve to actually submit such garbage or the fact that it was accepted. The non Emerson music is not much better. This is really long way from the original foreboding Godzilla score. Matching with the music is the use of low quality computer graphics which again could easily have come out of an early 80s video game. Surely, Godzilla's send off deserves better. It really is cheap and third rate as are almost all of the characters, acting and the human action scenes. Since plenty of time is spent on those instead of Gojira and the other Kaiju, that low grade stuff is most of what you see. Some have said that the movie does not take itself seriously and that should be taken into consideration. That can perhaps forgive some of the dialogue but we are talking about some really atrocious production here that would likely be rejected for a Saturday morning cartoon. The good moments are provided by what you actually came to see, i.e. Godzilla in full rage and a full slate of other monsters who, whatever their role here, seem like old friends and rivals. The screen time for most of them is limited in this format. All but one is a welcome guest and one wonders why the human action filler was not cut back in favour of the monsters. The production for the monster scenes is at a much higher level except again in some of the CG based flying scenes and for one of the monsters that was presented in a very bad way, worse in fact than in that particular creature's original appearance long ago. That part was was difficult to comprehend. Two possible explanations are 1) no budget or time left for that section, 2) taking the audience for granted. This movie could have been a lot better and it deserved to be.