10 Great Blockbusters Held Back By A Terrible Lead Performance

Gareth Edwards' Godzilla was a generally well-received reboot for the iconic kaiju, although a lot of people both praised and criticized the movie for the very same reason. The slow-burning approach to revealing the title character in all his fire-breathing glory built up a sense of anticipation that gradually rose as the story built to a crescendo, but holding off on the big guy didn't go down well with some audiences that have been conditioned to expect big-budget pyrotechnics from almost the very first frame.

These sorts of blockbuster monster movies are often let down by their thinly-drawn human characters, and despite boasting an ensemble cast of talented actors, leading man Aaron Taylor-Johnson turned out to be the wrong choice to hinge the entire narrative on.

Taylor-Johnson has proven to be a phenomenal actor with a huge amount of range, but for some reason he decided to channel the color beige when it came to portraying Ford Brody, a leading man as laughably generic as his randomly-generated action hero name. From almost the second Bryan Cranston gets bumped off and his onscreen son is forced to do the dramatic heavy lifting, the human aspect of Godzilla failed to generate even a shred of interest.