Godzilla: KING OF MONSTERS
- Thread starter LittleSin
- Start date
Your brain's not going fuzzy, though your count is a little off. In Godzilla vs Gigan and Godzilla vs Megalon, he spent most of each movie swimming from Monster Island (good idea, Japan, provide him a distant home AFTER he joins your side). Terror of Mechagodzilla too, I believe. Which is why I said, if this had been titled Godzilla vs MUTO, I would've been more in the right mindset. Godzilla isn't really established in this movie--they hand wave his existence as a given and then move on.
Honestly, the problem would've been less noticeable if in this movie he hadn't been there, large as life, about to fight a monster ... and then we cut to a different scene. They do this twice. It's really asinine and instead of building suspense, it feels like bullshit. It'd be one thing if circumstances made it so that the fight didn't happen, but we know each of these fights happen--we see a glimpse and we see the aftermath--we just don't get to see the fights. When Ken Watanabe late in the movie says "Let them fight", my thought was "They've been fighting. You mean, let them fight in front of the camera."
It's a small thing, but it feels like the movie is taunting us as opposed to getting us geared for the big final battle. Even viewing it as I should, as one of the older Toho movies, they always let you see the mid-movie fight. It just felt like ass to have Godzilla make this dramatic entry, stand opposite of MUTO, and then ... cut to a kid watching them on TV. He sees more of it than we do.
tldr; the movie is fine, it's just improperly advertised and I would like to see it again in the right mindset. This stuff is me griping about the one thing I really didn't care for (besides the music).
Every moment where Godzilla is present is memorable. He really makes an impact, so I don't begrudge the film-makers using him sparingly. But don't jerk us around. The climax and ending are really something, but again, I don't want to type about them until more people have had a chance to see the movie.[DOUBLEPOST=1400271848,1400271462][/DOUBLEPOST]I keep forgetting to mention: there is a Kenny.
Nope. Nor do they play the Blue Oyster Cult song.
But really, it's hard to top Akira Ifikube's work.
EDIT: Listening to Cinema Snob's Midnight Screening; they spend a bit of the review beginning tearing apart Godzilla's Revenge. Even as a kid, I hated that movie. It's the only one I refuse to watch anymore.
"Godzilla doesn't just walk past a building and go BAM, knock it down for no reason."
"No, that's Superman's job."
"No, that's Superman's job."
Real conversation I had with a friend coming out the movie. Slightly paraphrased of course. I didn't record it after all.
That's the point where I quit the argument.
Also
Watching Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver make out so much made me think I was watching Jeph Loeb Ultimates.
Friend: I just think it's really unrealistic how tough the other things were. They were so spindly.
Me: It's a Godzilla movie. They care nothing for mankind's puny weapons. Hell, they show them trying to nuke Godzilla directly in the 50's.
Friend: I get that Godzilla's tough, he's thick and his skin could be super tough. But those other things' legs were so skinny, you could just run at them with an ax and chop them down.
Me: And then what, it swipes you into paste?
Friend: I mean, if a tail swipe from Godzilla could pretty much take one out, a shotgun blast could do the same thing.
Me: It's a Godzilla movie. They care nothing for mankind's puny weapons. Hell, they show them trying to nuke Godzilla directly in the 50's.
Friend: I get that Godzilla's tough, he's thick and his skin could be super tough. But those other things' legs were so skinny, you could just run at them with an ax and chop them down.
Me: And then what, it swipes you into paste?
Friend: I mean, if a tail swipe from Godzilla could pretty much take one out, a shotgun blast could do the same thing.
That's the point where I quit the argument.
Also
Watching Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver make out so much made me think I was watching Jeph Loeb Ultimates.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen (who play the main couple in Godzilla) will be Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
I didn't recognize them from the Captain America 2 preview clip. That's ... yeah.
Sounds like they're practicing for their marvel roles.
@Zero Esc
Most of my issues with it mirror yours, particularly regarding getting taunted with potential fights. I don't want to see an intact city, cut away then back and have everything wrecked. I want to see that happening! By the time the climax fight occur I wasn't pumped to FINALLY be seeing it. I was pissed at having been ripped off so many times prior.
That said when it does get to it, it was an absolute marvel. Each scene before with Godzilla or the Muto sings but they feel too few and far between before the final half hour.
I understand the decision to keep things focused on the human cast, including the actual framing of shots, to give a sense of size and grandeur and to make it relatable to the audience, but I hated it here just as much as when it was done in transformers. I don't want to watch a movie about them. Stop showing them and the monsters feet.
This was my most anticipated summer film, aside from maybe Guardians of the Galaxy, so I don't think it could have ever lived up to what I was hoping for it to be and I wouldn't say I even disliked it but I was looking for more of a 50/50 of humans and monsters rather than what felt like a 75/25. The scenes with Godzilla and the Muto are stunning and powerful. I just wanted more of that.
Most of my issues with it mirror yours, particularly regarding getting taunted with potential fights. I don't want to see an intact city, cut away then back and have everything wrecked. I want to see that happening! By the time the climax fight occur I wasn't pumped to FINALLY be seeing it. I was pissed at having been ripped off so many times prior.
That said when it does get to it, it was an absolute marvel. Each scene before with Godzilla or the Muto sings but they feel too few and far between before the final half hour.
I understand the decision to keep things focused on the human cast, including the actual framing of shots, to give a sense of size and grandeur and to make it relatable to the audience, but I hated it here just as much as when it was done in transformers. I don't want to watch a movie about them. Stop showing them and the monsters feet.
This was my most anticipated summer film, aside from maybe Guardians of the Galaxy, so I don't think it could have ever lived up to what I was hoping for it to be and I wouldn't say I even disliked it but I was looking for more of a 50/50 of humans and monsters rather than what felt like a 75/25. The scenes with Godzilla and the Muto are stunning and powerful. I just wanted more of that.
I forgot about that. Yeah, that was annoying. You could see the fight happening over their shoulders sometimes. And for the human plot ...
I was shaking my head when they dragged out Ford searching for his wife in the refugee area. Why give this screentime and try to garner suspense? No one cares. Not a single person watching this movie gave a shit as to whether he was reunited with his wife.
If you're not going to have a unique human character to take the lead, then you need that character played by someone with presence, which is why I think it would've made more sense for Bryan Cranston to actually play the lead, instead of the trailers just pretending he does.
If you're not going to have a unique human character to take the lead, then you need that character played by someone with presence, which is why I think it would've made more sense for Bryan Cranston to actually play the lead, instead of the trailers just pretending he does.
The only time I really cared about Ford was when he and Godzilla went down at the same time and their eyes met. And I only cared because Godzilla was looking at him like "I know that feel, bro." I cared because Godzilla seemed to care, just a tiny bit.
The Heisei Gamera trilogy really set the bar for kaiju-to-human interaction. In the first movie, he has a psychic connection to the main girl that fuels his power. In the second movie, he and the military actually work together, since the military couldn't fight the big monster and Gamera couldn't fight the small ones. Then in the third movie, the villain monster is actually drawing its power off of a disturbed adolescent girl with a hate-on for Gamera. And Gamera still gets to be a main character. We can relate to non-verbal, non-human characters. It feels like film-makers completely forgot about the first third of Wall-E.[DOUBLEPOST=1400327580,1400327449][/DOUBLEPOST]
This is kind of where I am. I had set my hopes so high that they became ridiculous. I may bitch about the human ratio, but honestly I didn't expect any differently. It's a Godzilla movie, after all. It's not going to perfect the genre.
This was my first Godzilla movie, and I was sufficiently horrified and awed. The lead actor wasn't very good, however. And the plot machinations to get him to have to disarm a bomb at the very end, only to spin around and throw everything up in the air, was just kind of silly.
I disagree with the arguments that there "wasn't enough monster fighting" and any complaints with the teases / cutaways from some of the extraneous monster action until that huge climax. It was done and set up perfectly.
I disagree with the arguments that there "wasn't enough monster fighting" and any complaints with the teases / cutaways from some of the extraneous monster action until that huge climax. It was done and set up perfectly.
Yeah, whatever happened to
"We have no extraction plan."
Guess it doesn't count if you're a main character.
I really want to watch a Godzilla movie today. From what Netflix has, I should go for Monster Zero since I haven't seen it in forever and it's delightfully goofy, but I have a feeling I'll just dip back into Godzilla vs Mothra since it's one of my favorites.
There is no nonsense that can top the idea of building a robot around old Godzilla bones.
Tokyo SOS is the only Godzilla movie I haven't seen. It baffles me that they sell it as a 2-pack with Final Wars when it's a direct sequel to Godzilla X Mechagodzilla.
EDIT: And just found out that Gojira is on Amazon Prime--must watch it this weekend.
For all the military posturing this movie did, they sure made the military look dumb. Especially the big plan that took up half the movie.
"That won't work."
"We know it won't work, but we're going to try it anyway and watch it not work."
Given how the weekend's going, we may well be on-track for a sequel.
Same here. Some of the flaws are just part and parcel for the kaiju genre.
If they're gonna stick with Godzilla as the hero, I want an alien invasion for the next movie. We had Godzilla vs Cloverfield, so let's do ... I don't know, Godzilla vs Independence Day or whatever. Modern take on aliens, with their own giant monster of course, fighting Godzilla.
So a sort of reverse Pacific Rim?
I could go for that.
Get a VCR.
I thought Toho was going to release a collection of all their Godzilla movies a couple years back. Maybe they did and it never made it out of Japan. In any case, Godzilla 1985 is available on VHS, so you're kind of out of luck for legal means, and vs Biollante is on a $6.99 DVD which has been out of stock on Amazon for a while, but I'm sure one of the secondhand sellers or someone on eBay would have it just as cheap.
As for me ...
WatchedGojira today. I knew most of the differences to the American version, AKA Perry Mason edit. For the most part, the original is better in every way, from conveying the situation to character activity, to making sense. Some problems though:
- The American edit did build more toward the final attack. I think that's just a difference in how Japanese and American filmmaking goes.
- "Two million years ago, brontosaurs and other dinosaurs lived in the Jurassic period, and later in the Cretacious period began living on land" OW, MY SCIENCE.
- The end zinger: "If we keep dropping nuclear bombs, there will be more monsters". Yeah, every monster movie from the 50s was doing this moral of the story at the end, but the movie had held itself to a higher caliber for the minutes prior. Honestly, a lot of the Professor Yamane stuff could've been tossed.
But the characterization really shines. Not just of the human characters, but of the sense of Japan. Some of the little touches are things you wouldn't see in an American monster movie at the time, such as a mention on the train about "going back in the shelters", or the geiger counter crackling over the children while the doctor has a look on his face, knowing these kids aren't going to make it. Everything with Dr. Serizawa in the conclusion was great. I don't think the shots of him with the knife were in the American edit.[DOUBLEPOST=1400442453,1400442373][/DOUBLEPOST]
I only see it for $40 on Amazon. Where are you looking?
You're right; Target has it for $7.79 right now.
Fuck yeah.
Also, that tally blows my mind. $93 million for U.S., then $10 million for the rest of the world. Are our theater prices that jacked or did we just see the movie more than any other country?
Speaking from personal experience, our theater prices definitely aren't jacked compared to a lot of other countries like Switzerland and Japan, so I'm guessing fewer international screens so far.
Why not tell us tickets sold? That would be a better indicator IMO. One screen with one seat at $200 million could be the #1 movie in the world if someone was willing to pay that price.