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

7. The Skirt Lifting

One of the things that has been most criticised in Edwards' approach is that the star of the show doesn't turn up for a long, long time, and then when he does, the reveal is over-extended and the actual screen time we get for Godzilla amounts to a frighteningly low amount. That criticism is misplaced, but not entirely, because there is something infuriating in the way Edwards reveals his piece de resistance, dragging out a reveal to a frustrating degree apparently because the trick worked well the first time. When Godzilla first comes across the MUTOs, we expect a monumental face-off at the Hawaii airport, and the build up is crowned by the irresistible shot of Godzilla trampling through a line of planes dominoing and exploding around his feet. And just as big green is about to get ahold of his quarry, the camera slam cuts away to Ford's family, who watch the fight unfold on TV. Ignoring for a minute the lack of finesse in the edit, it's a clever move as it is just the right amount of orgasm-teasing, but then, but the second and third time the same thing happens, it feels like sadism. There is too much foreplay to the main event, which is confirmed when the final set-pieces are so great, and it feels like Edwards hyper-extended his trick in the hope of getting numerous ripples - and not entirely successfully.