How many times is Godzilla going to be rebooted? 2014 edition

i mostly enjoyed this movie for what it was, if anything i think it could’ve been a bit more brazenly dumb instead of apathetically dumb

there was that part where kong takes that one wing lizard by the tail and uses it like a baseball bat to smack another winged lizard out of the air, then does a little bat flip with the first monster’s tail. more of that, please

I didn't understand why the girl, fluent in sign language, still felt the need to sign to Kong in caveman talk. "Kong go home. Kong find family." Kong probably thought she was a moron.

maybe she saw a youtube documentary about koko the gorilla

That's probably what Kong was thinking. "Wait, does this girl think I'm Koko? Um, OK, I guess I'll play along. "Kong happy." (giggles) "Kong want hug."

I'm honestly surprised they did not make him literally talk, like the Gorilla in "Congo."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxhXJGA32YI

I was really not into how humanlike Kong was in this tbh, I thought Skull Island gave him enough character without going too far in that direction

i'm still reeling from the part in the zoller seitz review where he raves about the "no muss no fuss story"... like did he just watch an effects demo reel or what

gotta admit i'm a little at sea trying to make sense of the "its dumb but GLORIOUSLY dumb, they really lean into the CRAZY" reactions bc idk the monster fighting was good but didnt seem exceptionally nuts to me, like kong isnt firing a tommy gun or breakdancing or anything. some of these raves sell it like its Kaiju Kung Fu Hustle or something, which id love to see but this wasnt that

Anyway, where's Brad to declare "this the best movie I've ever seen!"?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, April 6, 2021 6:06 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

little to no interest in the current iteration of the monsterverse, tho i do wanna see kong: skull island

Brad, I think you'd like this! See Skull Island first, though.

I haven't read any reviews but I assumed they meant that the people stuff was gloriously dumb, because giant ape vs Godzilla is innately dumb (and awesome). I could see how the people stuff and plot (as such) could be read as gloriously dumb, because it was definitely more than just merely dumb, imo.

how humanlike Kong was in this

I dunno, maybe it explains why, for all the "Kong bows to no one" nonsense, Kong was constantly getting his ass kicked.

a good 75% of the human interactions (including that line) were just fodder so they’d have something to put in the trailer

*rebecca hall looks directly into the camera*

“kong bows to no one!”

Lol ok wiki:

Skarsgård called Nathan an homage to 1980s films like Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. Skarsgård prepped for the film by researching the Hollow Earth.

little to no interest in the current iteration of the monsterverse, tho i do wanna see kong: skull island

you will not regret watching kong: skull island imo

skarsgard had to teach himself how to play a character that wasn't an enormous creep

The Godzilla one with Cranston has some good moments, Skull Island is probably my favorite of all of these and actually fun in a way the recent Godzilla movies never are, because they’re positioned as being more about loss and human drama.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters has a handful of fun moments, mostly contained in the monster battles, and a very thin selection of interesting human moments. Ken Watanabe and Vera Farmiga get some good bits, and don’t appear in GvK for (no spoilers) plot reasons from that movie. I have no idea why they shoehorned in MBB and Kyle Chandler into this new one, because the former has motivations that could have been any stock character and Chandler’s given absolutely zero to work with and his scenes just exist to suck the air out of the room. Brian Tyree Henry’s character seems like they wanted to cast Craig Robison and have him ad lib half the lines. All the material he has to work with his kind of boilerplate

For some reason, the bit that bugged me the most was the big evil corporation having all this highly advanced technology when this seems to take place in the present or at most the near future. The other ones didn’t really do that, and. now we’ve got these electromagnetic antigravity ships?

What do they have against gravity, anyway?

why do I suddenly feel like I’m drinking coffee in a car

the (hopefully) best thing about watching GZvK is that it has motivated me to have a go at Shin Godzilla now

Shin Godzilla is great, but also a completely different type of movie than this run of new big budget Godzilla films. It's basically a drama about government bureaucracy with incidental Godzilla mayhem.

Where did Tyree, MBB and Julian sneak onto the maglev subway? Florida? I could handle the giant monsters fine, but given that Seattle took 6 years to bore out the two mile Highway 99 tunnel, my brain tangented to "when/how did they build a FL to Hong Kong subway?" If there are secret societies amongst us, they are excellent at construction projects.

one of the constant brain breakers about this film for me was the juxtaposition of an international super-science team that has the wherewithal to figure out how to basically lift the Ever Given with a big net and a fleet of jumbo helicopters in the space of a few hours but can't keep a seven year old from wandering on to the deck of an airplane carrieer
or the amoral capitalist tesla (basically just tesla) company that creates an underground maglev supertrain from Florida to Hong Kong but doesn't take the time to check the cargo in its monster egg transports
etc ad infinitum

basically everyone sees the tech for the first time when they start using it, no one has a user's manual but everyone knows where the seatbelts are

evil capitalist guy and his evil capitalist daughter are incredibly unnecessarily stupid in the approach and execution of their goals and both die for laughs in the same stupid kind of "UH OH" sequences

i dunno, i think i'll remember this film much more than mank (and it's not much worse!) but i wish i hadn't bothered

I literally have no memory of an evil capitalist guy death scene. The daughter (who we kept calling Khloe Kardashian), what a stupid pointless drama free death that was, even for a stupid pointless character.

that guy’s death scene was one of the few times I laughed, not because of the highly choreographed death, but because of another character saying “I really wanted to hear the rest of his speech!”

the role of The Other Kid played by Julian Dennison was really the most memorable character outside of the monsters

the cute deaf girl might lead him a little in plot relevance and screen time, though

biggest wtf plot thing for me was the business with ghidorah's skull having psychic powers? why not have it be his brain? was very confused by all that until i realized they were just positing that the skull also works like a brain (i guess?)

by far the best "i wanted to hear the rest of his speech" death scene in movie history is this one, everything else is just copying the master
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS8I9H07wKw

Elon Musk dude must have died when I was in the bathroom during that same minute that Mechagodzilla went rogue.

Question: if Musk could have made a giant robot, why did he decide on the form of a robot Godzilla? Lack of creativity, imo.

Meanwhile, how are they going to fill and plug the giant Kong-sized (plot) hole that runs from the center of the earth to Hong Kong?

thoughts thoughts thoughts
• forks otm, no question that is the GOAT of unfinished speeches
• much like recent star wars, the first thing I thought on seeing the cybernetics office park with its own nuclear reactor was "okay where are they getting the money? let's talk cash flows..."
• this had the unexpected effect of inoculating me from disbelief by the time we got to the Florida to HK tunnel bc sure lol why not nothing matters
• feel like no one here is giving sufficient weight to the sheer edgar rice burroughs-ass majesty of the GODDAMN THRONE

the throne (and the throneroom) in particular is one of the places where i felt like the design was tastefully lazy. they basically went for brown fortress of solitude.

Who built those stairs?

serf kong

watching this at the request of kids, I have no interest at all in action movies / sequences, but have do say that the dialogue is fucking appalling here. maybe all of these films are like this though, idk

Man, tough crowd. What did you even expect a giant monkey or fire-breathing lizard to say, anyway?

something about supply-side economics

someone was spouting stuff about mind control via fluoride in the water, don't think it was one of the monsters

GODZILLA IS HURTING PEOPLE AND WE DON'T KNOW WHY

Monkeys have tails, apes don't. Kong is an ape fwiw.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

If Kong can be a one-off ape the size of a skyscraper then he can also be a one-off giant monkey without a tail. That's just science.

king of the monsters is genuinely one of the most stupidly plotted efforts I've ever seen

Hold up, in addition to that incredible looking Japanese "Godzilla Minus One" movie, there is an Apple TV Godzilla mini-series *also* coming out in November?

Seeing "Minus One" today, psyched.

Pretty much ruled. Basically a post war melodrama with a particularly angry Godzilla. Yes, you hear the original theme. Yes, Godzilla stills hates trains. But there's something particularly tragic about the beaten down population of Japan still reeling from WWII and forced to contend with a giant lizard on top of it all. As soon as a character mentions how quickly Ginza is rebuilding, you want to tell the poor person: don't bother.

Loved this

caught this going in totally cold and found it to be a pretty mixed bag. found the dramatic parts to be pretty corny and time-consuming, esp anything that had to do with the empty lead character and his “war.” sakura ando was _way_ underused! and the actor playing the lead really wasn’t up to the task of finding something interesting in there either. and went back to the well of updating beats from the OG film a few too many times too.

i did enjoy the smashin and bashin and how godzilla was actually scary again. but i dunno, shin godzilla is a masterpiece imo and this was pretty safe and dour in comparison. a little surprised by the hype.

I thought the corniness was part of its charm, though I agree, there's a little too much boring drama, balanced out by some of the best Godzilla destruction in recent memory.

yea i can see that. i think if we had a director with more of a sense of humor and some more fun performances, i could have gotten more on board in a campy way. i haven't actually watched any of yamazaki’s live action and cg cartoon anime adaptations but he seems like a pretty bland director judging by this and a back catalog bursting with junk.

Saw this last night, thought it was great.