What the Fuck Is Going on in 'Godzilla'?

Great films leave you with something to ponder – the nature of existence, the relationship between humanity and nature, the root causes of political unrest… and a bunch of meaningless nitpicks that you won't shut up about during the car ride home. Following that logic, the latest Godzilla film is most definitely great, since it left us asking a lot of questions; some have answers and probably shouldn't even be asked in the first place.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS [SPOILERS]

- Why is this movie marketed around Bryan Cranston?

 - Could they not have built a more secure enclosure around the giant monster that eats radiation? Like a 100-foot thick concrete shell or something? They had 15 years.

 - Why is that Japanese quarantine zone city so fucked up after 15 years if there was no actual radiation? Wouldn't leaving a city untouched for that long not really do anything?

- Why is it so easy to get into the quarantined area?

- Why not just kick Cranston and Generic Action Hero Guy out instead of driving them to go see the secret radioactive monster bunker?

- How did the "Happy Birthday Dad" sign survive whatever destroyed the house?

- Also why is the "Happy Birthday Dad" sign hanging on the wall? They left the house before they could hang it up. Did he hang it up after coming home from watching his wife die horribly as some kind of sick joke on himself? Weird, dude. Really weird.

- Why did Godzilla only cause a tsunami that one time? Did he get better at swimming? Did he see the tsunami news footage and think, 'My bad'?

- This movie has a scene with Bryan Cranston on a bridge in a nuclear facility, a scene on a train bridge, a scene on the Golden Gate Bridge and a scene on a sky-train (which is essentially a bridge). Why did so much movie take place on bridges? Is this a metaphor I'm not getting?

- If the warheads can be transported by helicopter, why not just do that in the first place? Fixing them both to something as linear as a train track seems kinda dumb.

- Why is Juliette Binoche in this movie?

- Why is Elizabeth Olsen in this movie?

- Why is Sally Hawkins in this movie? Did she even have any lines?

- Does that nuclear waste storage place inside the mountain not have any kind of monitoring systems to let them know that a massive chunk of the building has been ripped open? That seems like an oversight.

- Also, how did they not see/hear/feel the 300-foot tall monster while they were driving across the desert?

- Why didn't the Golden Gate Bridge collapse after Godzilla severed the cables? What are those cables for if not support?

- After establishing that the MUTOs can disable electrical devices, why do they continue to devise plans to stop them that use electricity? If fighter jets didn't work on them in Hawaii, they're not going to work on them in San Francisco, either.

- Like, why did they use a boat that's powered by electricity for their big final plan even after the countless moments where the MUTOs use their fancy EMP powers to disable human defences? Aren't there tons of boats that aren't reliant on electricity?

- Why didn't the kids get off the school bus and run instead of sitting there waiting for Godzilla to destroy the bridge they were sitting on?

- Why was it safer for the school bus full of kids to even be on the bridge in the first place? Weren't the underground subway stations easily the best place to hide from a bunch of giant monsters?

- Why did everyone buy that the first big MUTO attack was some kind of natural disaster? Does social media not exist in the film's universe?

- Isn't Ken Watanabe a scientist? Why is he so quick to shrug off any course of action with a "Don't worry about it, nature will sort itself out." What is he basing that on? When has nature ever "sorted itself out"? Why is he being kept around? Can't someone more helpful be brought in to consult?

- Why is there a skyscraper full of office workers watching out of their windows mid-way through the giant monster battle? Wouldn't you GTFO as soon as you saw the first building get destroyed? Were they on a deadline?

- There are five minutes left on the bomb's timer when they put it on that boat, and the bomb on it has a blast radius of 20 miles. Did that boat travel at a rate of 240 MPH?

- Am I bad at maths?

- Why does everyone like Godzilla so much? He presumably just killed tens of thousands of people, but the citizens of San Francisco act like he brought them all cake and there was enough for everyone to have two slices.

- If the MUTOs can be impaled like that, why were they not injured more severely while being thrown through skyscrapers over and over again?

- If the Generic Action Hero Guy's only discernible skill is defusing bombs, why is he completely incapable of defusing a bomb when it counts the most? That's his ONLY job.

- Why was the Transamerica Pyramid the only landmark they DIDN'T destroy in San Francisco? Are ancient monsters sentimental?

- What does Godzilla do underwater? Presumably his only interest is fighting other monsters? Must get lonely/boring down there, right?

@JLCT / @dave_schilling