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Big Mean Jerk
Jan 27, 2009

Well, of course I know him.
He's me.
I have zero expectations for GvK, I just hope the titular fight is dope and they toss a few curveballs in. KOTM was kinda bland and it doesn’t look like they’ll ever match or exceed G14 or Skull Island, so just mash the toys together, go nuts with it, and don’t worry about giving us humans to care about.

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brocked
Oct 25, 2005

All shall love me and despair!
To quote G14, LET THEM FIGHT!

Shneak
Mar 6, 2015

A sad Professor Plum
sitting on a toilet.
Is there an NFL game they can drop a trailer during? drat.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Well, there's the Super Bowl.

RBX
Jan 2, 2011

I haven't seen it yet but what made GKOTM bad? Human stuff again?

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

RBX posted:

I haven't seen it yet but what made GKOTM bad? Human stuff again?

Different kind of human stuff.

It's not bad but it is flawed.

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

To people yeah. I don’t know. All the OG godzilla movies I’ve seen is mostly bad/weird human poo poo with like 15 mins of awesome monster fights so none of that bothers me in the slightest.

Every monster gets its moment and they all have a dope personality because Dougherty gets how monsters work better than most.

I stan for the king

PlushCow
Oct 19, 2005

The cow eats the grass

Burkion posted:

Different kind of human stuff.

It's not bad but it is flawed.

I watched KOTM for the first time early last year after a rewatch of Godzilla '14 and it felt like the human drama was covering the same themes, broken family cause of monsters etc as G14, in a different skin.

It wasn't bad, but I probably would've liked it more if I had seen G14 first, felt too familiar.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Burkion posted:

Different kind of human stuff.

It's not bad but it is flawed.

It had a lot of individual elements I liked, but it didn't quite come together. It was reminded me of Jurassic World.

CelticPredator posted:

I stan for the king

King Ghidorah was by far the most compelling part of the film. Hell, I was rooting for him over big G.

Mr. Funny Pants
Apr 9, 2001

Burkion posted:

It's not bad but it is flawed.

It's awful. I won't rehash my rants from earlier in the thread but the worst overall aspect of it is that it doesn't feel like it takes place in the same universe as 2014. 2014 was not a perfect movie, but it went with the overall idea of, "What would it be like if this actually happened?" It took an insane concept and treated it seriously. KoM is closer to a Roland Emmerich movie in tone. Lots of out of place and unfunny "humor" and contrivances to cover lazy writing

Happy Noodle Boy
Jul 3, 2002


The amount of resources and bullshit technology Monarch has in KOTM, while "cool", goes completely against what G'16 was going for.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

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Considering the scale of devastation in KotM, it really sucks that the characters spend the entire movie literally above it all in the helicarier. The only time any of them are actually in danger from a monster, it's because a monster is specifically after a character individually.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

RBX posted:

I haven't seen it yet but what made GKOTM bad? Human stuff again?

Everything. It’s legit ugly.

Pacific Rim 2 rear end movie.

Some people might tell you the action is good enough to make up for the many shortcomings. It’s not. There are maybe a handful of good FX shots, that you can see in the trailer, and that’s about it.

Happy Noodle Boy
Jul 3, 2002


Pacific Rim 2, while hurtful, is an good comparison. Just does a lot of undeserving poo poo while moving away from everything that made the first film great.

That said, Pacific Rim 2 is way loving worse.

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

There’s a scuttle bug I heard that WB got on Mike’s rear end about poo poo and made the production kind of a nightmare so I’d imagine a lot of re-writes and adjustments happened to make it more like a marvel flick. The stuff that feels like Dougherty is any time a monster is in frame. Everything else is kind of there but it doesn’t have the same snap.

Vinylshadow
Mar 20, 2017

I distinctly remember falling asleep during KotM

What's hilarious is that it happened both times I watched the movie

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

Pacific Rim 2, while hurtful, is an good comparison. Just does a lot of undeserving poo poo while moving away from everything that made the first film great.

That said, Pacific Rim 2 is way loving worse.

Well yeah; Independence Day 2 is better than both - but the fact that that’s the comparison is disgraceful.

The real spiritual sequel to G14 and Skull Island is Rampage. The monsters are even direct nods to Varan and Anguirus.

Imagine if Godzilla 2 had the balls to use unique takes on Varan and Anguirus instead of botching the three most famous rivals in one go.

Happy Noodle Boy
Jul 3, 2002


SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Well yeah; Independence Day 2 is better than both

This is a path I can't follow you on

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

The other thing Rampage had going for it was The Rock. Imagine instead of 20 human characters it was just The Rock in a fast car.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

This is a path I can't follow you on

I mean, it's all the same crap - just slightly less egregious in that case. At least it doesn't have the monochromatic haze thing.

Vintersorg
Mar 3, 2004

President of
the Brendan Fraser
Fan Club



ID2 was absolute dreck. I was ashamed that I watched it.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

KotM was the first film to ever give me a headache while watching in a theater. It was like, a legit headache too. That's never happened to me before, so the movie has that at least lmao.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
I have no real investment in the Legendary Godzilla as a series. I like Godzilla as an entire franchise well enough but in this case I'm mostly here for Adam Wingard. :shobon:

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

teagone posted:

KotM was the first film to ever give me a headache while watching in a theater. It was like, a legit headache too. That's never happened to me before, so the movie has that at least lmao.

This was me during Man of Steel

A Worrying Warlock
Sep 21, 2009
KOTM is a better Heisei film than the majority of Heisei films.

It's silly, yes, but together with G54 and Shin it is also the thematically strongest entry and it is an absolutely gorgeous film. I also don't understand the criticism that it has a dull protagonist, since the protagonist is very clearly Godzilla himself. The humans are just there to represent the rest of their species.

Phone posting now, but can write more when I have access to a keyboard.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

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Sobatchja Morda posted:

KOTM is a better Heisei film than the majority of Heisei films.

It's silly, yes, but together with G54 and Shin it is also the thematically strongest entry and it is an absolutely gorgeous film. I also don't understand the criticism that it has a dull protagonist, since the protagonist is very clearly Godzilla himself. The humans are just there to represent the rest of their species.

Phone posting now, but can write more when I have access to a keyboard.

That doesn't actually respond to the criticism. If Early Edition isn't the protagonist then sure, KotM doesn't have a dull protagonist. Instead it has a dull "guy who gets most of the screen time". Either way, the character you see the most and does the most talking is terrible and not enjoyable to watch.

Tezcatlipoca
Sep 18, 2009

Sobatchja Morda posted:

KOTM is a better Heisei film than the majority of Heisei films.

It's silly, yes, but together with G54 and Shin it is also the thematically strongest entry and it is an absolutely gorgeous film. I also don't understand the criticism that it has a dull protagonist, since the protagonist is very clearly Godzilla himself. The humans are just there to represent the rest of their species.

Phone posting now, but can write more when I have access to a keyboard.

This is really dumb and doesn't address what people are saying.

Biff Rockgroin
Jun 17, 2005

Go to commercial!


I have a hard time watching KotM because that one unfunny guy with grey hair is ALWAYS loving joking and his jokes are just insanely embarrassing. Like, they felt like unused jokes from Godzilla 98.

GATOS Y VATOS
Aug 22, 2002


Schwarzwald posted:

It had a lot of individual elements I liked, but it didn't quite come together. It was reminded me of Jurassic World.


King Ghidorah was by far the most compelling part of the film. Hell, I was rooting for him over big G.

KoTM had the best Rodan committed to film ever.

Jimbot
Jul 22, 2008

They turned Rodan into Starscream and it's pretty good.

GATOS Y VATOS
Aug 22, 2002


Also fwiw most of my friends in Japan who are huge Godzilla fans really, really liked KoTM.

I enjoyed a lot of it's action scenes, but thought the people were horrible.

Shin Godzilla is a better movie imo.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

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Shin Godzilla is one of the best movies ever made

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN


I swear something went wrong with the effects in Godzilla 2, because here's a shot of Vera Farmiga followed by the POV shot of what she's looking at. Can you spot a few differences? This contrast between generically-shot live action and insanely washed-out smog pervades the entire film.

Claude Monet would be squinting at the lower screen like "what the gently caress is going on".

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Well Monet had pretty bad cataracts affecting his eyesight but you're not wrong.

Violator
May 15, 2003


SuperMechagodzilla posted:

I swear something went wrong with the effects in Godzilla 2, because here's a shot of Vera Farmiga followed by the POV shot of what she's looking at. Can you spot a few differences? This contrast between generically-shot live action and insanely washed-out smog pervades the entire film.

I think this is one of the major retoolings they did on GvK. I think they went in and redid the monster scenes to make things easier to see.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Violator posted:

I think this is one of the major retoolings they did on GvK. I think they went in and redid the monster scenes to make things easier to see.

The question's more why the did it in the first place; King Of The Monsters has quite a few FX shots that are still noticeably cheap-looking despite being so heavily obscured. There are also a ton of shots, like that one, where you can only see the monster's head at all, which I don't think is entirely an artistic choice.

The things that are most visible are invariably the movie's assload of beam effects, which is probably the main factor that creates false impression that something interesting is going on.



This comparison shows that they had the capacity to actually create compositions with, like, defined shapes. The second shot actually looks good, but the bulk of the action looks like the one above it. It seems like they spent all their efforts on a handful of 'money shots'.

Violator
May 15, 2003


SuperMechagodzilla posted:

This comparison shows that they had the capacity to actually create compositions with, like, defined shapes. The second shot actually looks good, but the bulk of the action looks like the one above it. It seems like they spent all their efforts on a handful of 'money shots'.

I agree with everything you said.

One thing people might be interested in reading is the CineFex issue covering it.

https://cinefex.com/backissues/issue165.htm

It's a quarterly magazine where they break down the FX in movies. These aren't cheap magazines, but really dense and thick pages. I don't have it, but issue 165 covers KOTM. They won't talk about any potential hiccups during production, but they might talk about their frame of mind for why they did what they did.

You can also get the CineFex app and get the issue cheaper digitally. The articles aren't quite as interesting nowadays since it's all talking about computer effects, but the magazine started in 1980 so you can see super in-depth articles about all of the 80's and 90's blockbusters where they built everything by hand. All of the issues are availability digitally on iPad.

Dangerous Person
Apr 4, 2011

Not dead yet

Biff Rockgroin posted:

I have a hard time watching KotM because that one unfunny guy with grey hair is ALWAYS loving joking and his jokes are just insanely embarrassing. Like, they felt like unused jokes from Godzilla 98.


This dude was my most hated character in a movie full of dumb people

GATOS Y VATOS
Aug 22, 2002


Gripweed posted:

Shin Godzilla is one of the best movies ever made

:hmmyes:

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A Worrying Warlock
Sep 21, 2009

Tezcatlipoca posted:

This is really dumb and doesn't address what people are saying.

I stand behind it being thematically strong and gorgeous, but will admit that my argument about the protagonist came across badly. I do, however, think that the film was way more invested in humanity's future as a species than the fate of any individual character. I had zero love for wolfdad and found him annoying, but also found it refreshing to not have to care about him. I felt for Serizawa and the daughter, but mainly I connected to the idea that the only way for humanity to survive is for it to take a bow and step down from its perceived place as most important species. For a film about climate change, I loved that it didn't believe in a magical solution through human intervention without the pessimism that only doom awaits us. To me, it seems as if the film says that humanity and its planet have a future as long as we discard the illusion that we were ever meant to be in charge and can sacrifice this position. That process may be dangerous and filled with disaster, but in the end we can get there.
As someone who is incredibly gloomy about the future, that message hit hard. And the fact that it said that through giant monsters and fantastically kitch sci-fi tech just makes me love it even more.

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