Tag: Godzilla

Godzilla vs. Kong: It’s Good When It’s What’s On the Tin – HBO Max Review

The monsters are great, but the humans need work.

SUMMARY

Godzilla has been the unquestioned Alpha of the Titans (Kaiju) since his defeat of King Ghidorah, but now he’s starting to become wild and aggressive. Meanwhile, Kong has been in a protective covering on Skull Island to keep him away from Godzilla, as Kong would naturally have to challenge him as an Alpha. Kong is monitored by Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her deaf adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle). Meanwhile, Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), is a Titan conspiracy podcaster who is investigating the APEX corporation and its CEO Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir). Simmons hires geologist Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) to convince the team monitoring Kong to take him to the Hollow Earth and, in the process, to allow Simmons’ daughter Maya (Eiza Gonzalez) to harvest a power source for APEX. Bernie is joined by Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown), who is the daughter of two Titan scientists (one of whom tried to destroy the world in the last movie), and her friend Josh Valentine (Julian Dennison). The three discover that APEX is behind something that poses a bigger threat than either Kong or Godzilla.

There is no way that aircraft carrier could hold them. Its full load is about 100,000 tons and each one of them weights 90,000.

END SUMMARY

It hurts a little bit to try and determine whether or not this was a good movie because in some ways I worry that my enjoyment of the film was due to extremely low expectations. Not that I’m going to put it up for an Oscar or anything, and I’m pretty sure that the writing for the human characters (aside from Brian Tyree Henry who might have just been improvising) was literally pulled from a screenwriting manual, but I have to say this was pretty much the best kaiju fighting I’ve seen in a long time. If I were to describe what I wanted to see in this film, it would have been “I want to see Godzilla judo-throw a drop-kicking King Kong” and, well, that’s the kind of thing that this movie does right. The problem is there’s no way to do 90 minutes of that. 

There is a singing contest, of course.

The best Godzilla movies usually try to treat Godzilla as a force of nature or a metaphor. The original Godzilla was used as a metaphor for the Atomic Bomb and the most recent Toho film, Shin Godzilla, treated the character mostly as a threat for the purpose of establishing how Japan is treated by the Western world. When you treat Godzilla as something beyond humanity or as a consequence of humanity’s hubris, then it gives him an appropriate relationship to the characters as something almost inevitable or that can only be dealt with by sacrifice. While some of the Godzilla movies give him more character and emotion, but in those films he’s usually more isolated from the “real” world, so you don’t have to worry as much about how the humans are reacting to the kaiju. The American movies, so far, haven’t really gotten this right, including this movie, because Godzilla is still treated more like a monster or a wild animal than a force of nature (although they start to give him some emotion when dealing with Kong). However, since Kong usually IS treated like an emotional creature, at least the scenes with the giant ape actually come off pretty well. 

It is a little telling how unbalanced the fight is when you have to give Kong an anti-Godzilla weapon to make it fair.

The biggest problem with the movie is that the human characters, with the exception of Bernie and the absolutely adorable Jia, are mostly forgettable. There are too many of them and they’re often in completely separate plots throughout the film. Moreover, the plots range from “needless” to “insanely stupid.” At one point, in order to be present for the finale, three characters accidentally travel from Pensacola, Florida, to Hong Kong (it makes sense in context… no, it’s still insane). That said, once the film actually gets to having Godzilla and Kong going at it, it’s a hell of a fight and even has a few moments that were genuinely visually impressive. This film really put a lot of extra effort into lighting and framing shots as well as creative creature design and settings, so when it gets the plot and people out of the way, this is very enjoyable. 

The hollow Earth looks cool.

Overall, while this movie wasn’t what it could have been, it had enough fun visuals and a solid fight sequence to merit the viewing. 

****SPOILERS****

Also, it’s great that they had Godzilla win the fight. Like, there’s no question that Godzilla can kick Kong’s ape ass up and down Skull Island. I was worried they’d just avoid having a real winner by having them fight MechaGodzilla together, but they managed to do both. 

Netflix Review – The Godzilla Trilogy (Planet of the Monsters, City on the Edge of Battle, The Planet Eater)

The largest Godzilla on film appears in these three movies that take place on a kaiju-ravaged Earth.

SUMMARY

It’s the future and giant monsters (Kaiju) have begun appearing all over Earth. Humanity tries to deal with them, but then a new threat arises, a giant monster capable of destroying human and beast alike: Godzilla. Earth is visited by two different species of aliens who promise to help them with the threat in exchange for some boon from humanity. The Exif, the first of the aliens, seek to take humanity to the stars and convert them to their religion. The second, the Bilusaludo, planned on moving to Earth and defeating Godzilla and the Kaiju with their mighty war-machine MechaGodzilla. Unfortunately, an attack prevents them from activating MechaGodzilla and humanity flees with the aliens to the stars, seeking a new home.

godzilla - 1humans
The art style is very distinct, but it works for the monsters.

20 years later, Captain Haruo Sakaki (Mamoru Miyano/Chris Niosi) together with an Exif priest named Metphies (Takahiro Sakurai/Lucien Dodge) figures out a way to kill Godzilla, which convinces the crew of the starship, who have failed to find a habitable planet, to return to Earth. What they find is that, due to time dilation from sub-lightspeed travel, 20,000 years have passed on the planet. In that time, Earth has become home to monsters. The crew must deal with this threat, the much bigger and badder Godzilla, the now-sentient remains of MechaGodzilla, and finally the planet-eater Ghidorah.

Godzilla - 2Godzilla.jpg
He’s like a giant mountain of lizard flesh and rage.

END SUMMARY

While there have been at least two different Godzilla animated series, I believe these are the first animated films in the franchise. They take advantage of this by filling the films with monsters ranging from the classics like Rodan and Mothra to the more mundane like the Servums, essentially flying creatures infected by Godzilla’s biology. Additionally, the Godzilla featured in this movie is the biggest by far on film. It starts off the film at approximately 50 meters tall, roughly the same height as the original 1954 Godzilla, but when it reappears it is a towering 300 meters, almost three times the 2014 Godzilla’s height, and that was, at the time, the largest on film. For perspective, it’s basically the height of the Chrysler building.

Godzilla - 3Sizes.jpg
The original Godzilla is basically a snack to this one.

Despite this, most of the focus of the film is on Haruo and his immense hatred towards Godzilla, the creature that killed his mother when he was a child. While we’ve often seen protagonists in Godzilla movies who are concerned about the threat that the monster presents to their country or their loved ones, I don’t think we’ve ever had this kind of relationship with the monster. In most of the movies it wouldn’t even be possible, because the kaiju typically are only out for a few days, whereas this film posits what would happen if they were out for millennia. Using relativity to give Godzilla time to evolve while also keeping someone around who remembers the original destruction was a great plot device.

Godzilla - 4Haruo.png
Watching him swear to kill a creature that views him as an ant is fun.

I’m trying to avoid spoiling the second and third movies more than you might get from just seeing the Netflix summary, so I’ll just say that the way that they handle MechaGodzilla and Ghidorah are both great. They don’t feel like they’re just rehashing stuff that the old franchise did, particularly with MechaGodzilla, but they also still seem like they’re justified as being added to the canon.

Godzilla - 5Ghidorah.png
Three heads of doooooooooooooooom.

The entire series has a weird number of themes, ranging from science versus faith to humanity versus nature, and while they aren’t fully fleshed out as much as I like, it’s still more than they had to do.

Overall, it’s a little rough to watch all three of them if you’re not a Godzilla fan, but maybe someone will recut them into a single, shorter movie online. If you’re a Godzilla fan, though, you should really try it.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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