10 Movies With Great Second Halves (But Awful Firsts)

Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla movie was a paradoxically frustrating disappointment and fist-pumping entertainment - a sure mood for each half of its runtime.

For starters, the two most talented actors in the movie - Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston - are killed off in the first act, after which the perspective shifts to the son of Cranston's character, Ford Brody, played with an uncommonly wooden affect by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Ford just isn't an interesting character in any way, and his bland family life further squanders the talents of a grossly over-qualified Elizabeth Olsen as his put-upon wife Elle.

But the biggest issue with that first hour is how frequently Edwards wilfully holds the audience at arm's length from Godzilla: we glimpse the monster only in passing, forcing way too much of the movie to focus on a frankly mediocre cast of human characters.

Though Godzilla's appearances remain fleeting for the rest of the movie, the second hour is nevertheless full of large-scale action sequences as the MUTOs descend upon San Francisco, with the final half-hour basically one lengthy, elegantly shot spectacle of carnage.