[Matrixbeast]

Godzilla Final Wars is by no means a good movie or even a good Godzilla/Kaiju movie. But it is enjoyable, which is something that I never quite understood until my cousin who doesn't like Kaiju watched and loved it. It took me a while until I saw why he liked it. Some love Kaiju for the cheesy effects and watching 2 men mud wrestle in monster suits. Others just love a good monster movie. But he loved it because it gave him what he was wanting. Action. Every mildly slow dialogue moment is wedged between a monster just wrecking havoc or having the X-Men take down monsters or whatever. I can finally see why people like it. It's not trying to deliver a heavy handed moral on pollution or a radiation message, it's not aiming for the absolute lowest denominator, it's just action on action on action. While Godzilla doesn't show up for a good while, the aliens (Xilians? Can't remember) and mutants do cover until he shows up.

As for my personal opinion, Final Wars is something different, and attempts to put a little of everything in the mix, making an end result that has no idea what it wants to do. I think it's bad for pretty much the reason why everyone thinks it's bad. It wants to be the Matrix, then it wants to be 20,000 Leagues, but then it wants to be Godzilla. The human/mutant subplot is boring and serves little purpose, the alien invasion doesn't amount to much, Gigan being an ancient alien or something was practically dropped as soon as it was mentioned, and there just was too much for there to be any real focus on Godzilla.

It did have it's upsides, that being some of the fights were really cool to watch. I'm not a fan of the mutants, but watching them take down Ebirah was neat, the fight against King Caesar, Anguirus, and Rodan was goofy, but I had a giddy smile on my face the entire time (And it was nice that they were spared. Nice little shout out to Godzilla's past team ups with them), and the climax with Mothra, Ghidorah, and Gigan was honestly really cool to watch (It might just be me fangirling over Mothra, though. Damn, I love her). Commander Gordon, while barely important to the plot, was just a blast to watch, and the Zilla fight was pretty funny (Not important or impressive, but still funny).
In addition, just seeing some of the characters again was nice. While Mothra has had a constant presence throughout the franchise, others like Caesar or Kamacuras, have not. While they weren't the most impressive characters visually (I'll agree that Caesar's new costume could have used a little more work), it was just nice to see characters I love be relevant again.

However, the negatives far outweigh the positives. Most of the fights featuring the aliens or the mutants were just Matrix rip-offs and uninteresting to watch, the human invasion/body snatcher/replacement subplot served little point, a lot of the monster cameos (As much as I loved them) could be cut and the movie wouldn't suffer at all for it, and not even Gordon's mustache could save him from the fact that, ultimately, he really wasn't that important.

Final Wars ultimately suffered because the director didn't know how he wanted to take the movie. It had moments where it seemed like it wanted to be martial arts, then it shifted to a darker toned kaiju movie with the mass destruction, then it shifted to a light hearted kaiju movie with Anguirus being a soccer ball, then it went more akin to Heisei style Godzilla for the climax, with snippets of Independence Day all cut in between.

So, in short, it's not good in the slightest, but it is still an enjoyable popcorn film.