The Ethics in the Godzilla Review

               The ethics of Roger Ebert’s review of “Godzilla” were questionable as he blatantly bashes the film’s special effects, plot, and character roles. The title of the article shows his hatred through the very descriptive words “I hate, hate, hate that movie.” His critique of the movie was very rough for the filmmakers using phrases such as “Godzilla hops out of sight like a camera-shy kangaroo” and “a cast of stereotyped stock characters” to humiliate the producers to the audience. I think the author loses some of his ethos when he harasses the moviemakers using stinging sarcasm to take cheat shots at them. Statements such as the ones said above are the epitome of the author’s position and phrasing on the movie. Ebert’s ethos is questionable through his immature way of harassing the movie but he gains it through his exceptional analysis of the film. He goes into great depth about the character choice, plot, and special effects. For example, he brings up the logic of how the filmmakers do not decide just how big Godzilla is. At some points they have him fit in a subway, but then at other times Godzilla is larger than the skyscrapers of the city. This relates to the authors ethos through his intuition to pick out these logical reasons and base his argument off of them. The concreteness of logic keeps the author’s authority in his review and allows him the tolerance to use a snide, degrading tone with his argument. The audience he is addressing is the general educated public who might be interested in seeing this movie, but I think he focuses it more towards the relatively small group of viewers who are really interested in Japanese filmmaking. I gathered this from his connections to other Godzilla films and the quality that they presented. His relation between the other films and this one gives the small group of viewers the insight into what he is really trying to convey with his connections.