Another good looking but unambitious sci-fi thriller. This one is basically Escape from New York mixed with Die Hard but without the originality of the former or the intensity of the the latter.
The exposition scenes get a bit agonizing and the acting, despite a talented cast is stilted and dull, but the monsters were pretty cool and the use of wide shots to show scale and chaos are excellent. The build up to Godzilla's complete reveal is also very effective. Nice use of the score as well; it was much more subtle than you usually get in summer blockbusters.
It's cool to see the concept art and see how all that work seeded dozens of other sci-fi films over the next decade or so, but I'm kinda glad it never got made. It would have been a mess. I also find it kinda miserable that so few of this creative team had actually read the book. Still, interesting movie about how passion and abstraction don't really jibe with the commerce of the Hollywood machine.
