Godzilla: 13 Moments That Prove It's The Stupidest Great Film Of 2014

12. Wait, Did You Seriously Just Kill Cranston?!

It is a brave move on Edwards' part to ostensibly change the lead of his film after the first act and before the monsters ever really appear properly: it ensures that the traditional voice of reason and the emotional epicentre of the are removed, and thus so are the audience's expectations of what might happen next, but it leaves a vacuum that removing any great actor would. Up to the point of his death - which ranks similarly to Captain Kirk's in Star Trek: Generations for the lack of pomp and circumstance - Cranston is the most diverting thing about the movie: his personal tale of woe, balancing his nailed-on conspiracy theory with personal guilty wounds is a joy to watch because of the performance, and he deserves to be mentioned alongside his Jaws' namesake in that regard. But then, when he is unceremoniously dumped off a bridge by the first marauding MUTO, the film shifts focus to his son, played without as much as a tenth of Cranston's power by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Taylor-Johnson is more of a passenger, the more modern lead in an action/monster movie who side-cars along with the lead (by now revealed to be Godzilla) and he's just not a satisfying counter-point to either his absent father or the monster.