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Vince MechMahon
Jan 1, 2008



They show Kong chowing down on a big pile of fish, on the ship.

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BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Vince MechMahon posted:

They show Kong chowing down on a big pile of fish, on the ship.

There you go. I missed that.

Vince MechMahon
Jan 1, 2008



BiggerBoat posted:

There you go. I missed that.

It stood out to me cause you could see the blood on his uh... Beard? Whatever you call an apes facial hair. Like a weirdly gory detail they didn't need to add.

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM

BiggerBoat posted:

You didn't even need the Dad and the whole time I wondered wtf he was doing there other than "remember this dude from last time?" You don't need any of that poo poo except for the security guy with the USB drive who uncovers everything.

Kyle Chandler and Lance Reddick had a number of scenes together that were cut from the movie but present in the novelization. Chandler also at one point had a scene where he denies MBB coming with him to a Monarch facility, which pisses her off and sets her on her own sidequest. The novelization has a lot of honestly surprising background information about Bernie and a cut scene where MBB's character and her two companions talk and speculate for a bit. Bernie insists that Apex answers to Monarch, but she angrily denies the possibility before Bernie decides to drop the subject.

BiggerBoat posted:

Quick question: how did Godzilla know about what APEX was doing?

An ORCA device (the thing from King of the Monsters). Apex's CEO specifically wanted to make Godzilla appear and attack to frame him as a menace that needs to be dealt with. In the novelization, Kyle Chandler's character, Mark, has a scene where he discovers that the Apex facility in Pensacola was broadcasting a signal like the one the ORCA device emitted, but modified to resemble a distorted version of King Ghidorah's own signal (I don't recall if it's mentioned that he reported that to Lance Reddick's character, Director Guillerman; it seems strange that he wouldn't, but I get the feeling Guillerman knew exactly what Apex was up to the entire time, anyway). When Godzilla approaches Hong Kong, Mark speculates that Apex is intentionally luring Godzilla there the same way they lured him to Pensacola.

From what I understand at one point a new ORCA-Z was going to be a significant aspect of the movie's subplot, but it was cut from the movie and mostly cut from the novelization (supposedly it was also going to be the reason Godzilla attacked the fleet and Kong, with the villain's daughter having brought an ORCA device that is powered-off when the order is given to shut down power to the whole fleet).

Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Apr 10, 2021

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Hexmage-SA posted:

Kyle Chandler and Lance Reddick had a number of scenes together that were cut from the movie but present in the novelization. Chandler also at one point had a scene where he denies MBB coming with him to a Monarch facility, which pisses her off and sets her on her own sidequest. The novelization has a lot of honestly surprising background information about Bernie and a cut scene where MBB's character and her two companions talk and speculate for a bit. Bernie insists that Apex answers to Monarch, but she angrily denies the possibility before Bernie decides to drop the subject.


An ORCA device (the thing from King of the Monsters). Apex's CEO specifically wanted to make Godzilla appear and attack to frame him as a menace that needs to be dealt with. In the novelization, Kyle Chandler's character, Mark, has a scene where he discovers that the Apex facility in Pensacola was broadcasting a signal like the one the ORCA device emitted, but modified to resemble a distorted version of King Ghidorah's own signal (I don't recall if it's mentioned that he reported that to Lance Reddick's character, Director Guillerman; it seems strange that he wouldn't, but I get the feeling Guillerman knew exactly what Apex was up to the entire time, anyway). When Godzilla approaches Hong Kong, Mark speculates that Apex is intentionally luring Godzilla there the same way they lured him to Pensacola.

From what I understand at one point a new ORCA-Z was going to be a significant aspect of the movie's subplot, but it was cut from the movie and mostly cut from the novelization (supposedly it was also going to be the reason Godzilla attacked the fleet and Kong, with the villain's daughter having brought an ORCA device that is powered-off when the order is given to shut down power to the whole fleet).


Oh. So it's even dumber than I thought.

It's pretty much a who gives a gently caress for me but I've read that the MBB subplot was supposed to explain it and thought I'd missed something. Tell you truth, I think my explanation(s) make more loving sense.

This movie was so much fun. I need to watch Skull Island again to figure out which one I liked more but this thing blows KoTM the gently caress away. I even liked the human parts of this one better than KoTM which were just boring. In KvG, they're just more goofy so easier for me to take.

It's amazing how much difference some lighting, no rain and a lot less shaky cam can make -- not only for clarity but even for the sense of scale. Turns out being able to actually SEE poo poo works to a film's advantage; at least one like this. Hiding the monster works for films like Alien or JAWS but I think for kaiju movies it's different. The best obscured shots are the ground level ones where buildings get in the way and poo poo and that works too because that's all you'd be able to see from the street and adds to the sense of scale. But I don't need to see (or not see) 10 minutes of giant monster fights hidden in darkness, marred by quick cuts and masked by rain.

Nor entire battles from the perspective of pedestrians.

Asterite34
May 19, 2009



Hexmage-SA posted:

Godzilla and the Mysterious Energy
Whereas how Jia knows about Godzilla is never explained in the movie, one scene in the novelization features Jia recognizing images of Godzilla as a “Zo-zla-halawa”, a species worshipped by enemies of her ancestors and the Kongs. The Zo-zla-halawa were said to have “eaten stars” and gained their power from them.

Wait a sec... is Godzilla's name in their language just an onomatopoeia of the noise he makes charging up his breath attack? That's amazing :allears:

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM

BiggerBoat posted:

It's amazing how much difference some lighting, no rain and a lot less shaky cam can make -- not only for clarity but even for the sense of scale. Turns out being able to actually SEE poo poo works to a film's advantage; at least one like this. Hiding the monster works for films like Alien or JAWS but I think for kaiju movies it's different. The best obscured shots are the ground level ones where buildings get in the way and poo poo and that works too because that's all you'd be able to see from the street and adds to the sense of scale. But I don't need to see (or not see) 10 minutes of giant monster fights hidden in darkness, marred by quick cuts and masked by rain.

Given that Ghidorah in KotM was more credibly established as an apocalyptic threat than he ever has been in the rest of the Godzilla franchise, I personally would think it would feel strange to see him battling Godzilla on a bright, sunny day (especially since his signature ability looks like lightning). They could have dialed back a bit on the atmospheric effects, though.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the novelization for GvK takes note of the neon lighting at several points, with the villain's control center described as looking like mission control as designed by a night club architect.

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM

Asterite34 posted:

Wait a sec... is Godzilla's name in their language just an onomatopoeia of the noise he makes charging up his breath attack? That's amazing :allears:

That could be the real world inspiration for it. In the book the first two syllables are unrecognized by Ilene, but "Halawa" means "great eternal enemy". The Skullcrawlers, in contrast, are the Halakrah, which means "persistent enemy".

anatomi
Jan 31, 2015

Bernie jokes about that in the movie too.

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM

anatomi posted:

Bernie jokes about that in the movie too.

I still can't believe how quickly I've gone from writing him off as a largely-forgettable comic relief character to wondering if a lot of the stuff he says is just an act to get people to underestimate him and think he's just some crazy guy; now I have no idea if Bernie approaching Mark to ask about a Monarch facility at Roswell is something he actually cares about or if he's planning to use his association with Madison to ingratiate himself with Mark and get an in to Monarch. I kept hoping for another sequence told from Bernie's point of view in the novelization that revealed more of his true thoughts and feelings, but nope.

Of Bernie's dialogue present in the book but cut in the movie, one is him revealing that his wife had been an Apex employee, and another is him arguing with Madison that Monarch probably knows everything Apex is doing. This could just be an element of the plot cut for time, but in particular the removal of the line mentioning his wife worked for Apex when the dialogue around it is intact makes me curious.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Hexmage-SA posted:

Given that Ghidorah in KotM was more credibly established as an apocalyptic threat than he ever has been in the rest of the Godzilla franchise, I personally would think it would feel strange to see him battling Godzilla on a bright, sunny day (especially since his signature ability looks like lightning). They could have dialed back a bit on the atmospheric effects, though.


I agree with that.

You still don't have to shake the camera constantly and cut so quick. KoTM had its moments and some really striking set pieces that saved it from being a total bummer but for a lot of it I couldn't see wtf was going on and it bothered me. Rodan was one of my favorite scenes and I think part of it was being able to really see him.

Speaking of the fights in this movie, I think they did a great job distinguishing between Kong's style compared to Godzilla's. Kong really fights like a monkey would and it works great.

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

BiggerBoat posted:

You still don't have to shake the camera constantly and cut so quick. KoTM had its moments and some really striking set pieces that saved it from being a total bummer but for a lot of it I couldn't see wtf was going on and it bothered me. Rodan was one of my favorite scenes and I think part of it was being able to really see him.

I re-watched King of the Monsters last night because I couldn't get to sleep, and I think I finally figured out what my problem with it is (going beyond the "Jesus Christ I can't see what's going on" thing you mentioned): It tries to cram way too much into an already-long two-hour movie, and it just winds up feeling bloated. I mean, it's not enough that there's Godzilla and another monster, we've got motherfuckin' Mothra! And motherfuckin' Mothra has a connection to a kid who is ... mildly telepathic or some poo poo! And, oh, hey, we got us some Rodan being a sassy little bitch! Dr. Serizawa is all up in this motherfucker! We've got a mega-tech plane that is a Super X in everything but name! We have technology that allows to not control, but maybe "guide" these Titans! OH poo poo, THE OXYGEN DESTROYER! Something something alphas! We've killed Godzilla but if we nuke him he comes back bigger, faster, stronger! Aw, poo poo, Godzilla himself is gonna have a nuclear meltdown!

And in the middle of all that, we have space alien Satan wrecking poo poo left and right, wanting nothing more than to end you and all you love, just because he can, because he's that much of an rear end in a top hat.

So it's a movie that in order to really do service to everything it introduces, it would need to be like five hours long. But no one, not even me, would sit through that pure Hell, so instead we have a two-hour movie that, in addition to all of its crazy poo poo, crams in about eighty to ninety minutes of completely mind-numbing human bullshit and world-building that would make Marvel Studios take a step back and say, "drat, son."

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy King of the Monsters and I'm so glad I saw it in a theater back in 2019, but the wrinkles on it show more every time I go back to it. Maybe it doing that complete and utter face-plant at the box office means Dougherty will finally get around to making the Trick R Treat sequel he's been talking about for a decade (seriously, Blumhouse, just give Dougherty $15 million and let him go nuts).

Timby fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Apr 10, 2021

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Timby posted:

I re-watched King of the Monsters last night because I couldn't get to sleep, and I think I finally figured out what my problem with it is (going beyond the "Jesus Christ I can't see what's going on" thing you mentioned): It tries to cram way too much into an already-long two-hour movie, and it just winds up feeling bloated. I mean, it's not enough that there's Godzilla and another monster, we've got motherfuckin' Mothra! And motherfuckin' Mothra has a connection to a kid who is ... mildly telepathic or some poo poo! And, oh, hey, we got us some Rodan being a sassy little bitch! Dr. Serizawa is all up in this motherfucker! We've got a mega-tech plane that is a Super X in everything but name! We have technology that allows to not control, but maybe "guide" these Titans! OH poo poo, THE OXYGEN DESTROYER! Something something alphas! We've killed Godzilla but if we nuke him he comes back bigger, faster, stronger! Aw, poo poo, Godzilla himself is gonna have a nuclear meltdown!

And all of that is delivered through exposition via the shittiest written, most boring, non charismatic and terribly acted human characters that we can't wait to get off the loving screen. For all the talk about how KvG has terrible and silly human stuff, I thought KotM was WAY worse about it and had far too much of it.

Mokelumne Trekka
Nov 22, 2015

Soon.

man that aircraft carrier sequence in GvsK (beginning with the deaf girl realizing Godzilla is going to attack and ending with her saying 'thank you' to a half-drowned Kong) is very well put together. just a good action scene from a filmmaking standpoint. a kaiju genre highlight imo

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

BiggerBoat posted:

And all of that is delivered through exposition via the shittiest written, most boring, non charismatic and terribly acted human characters that we can't wait to get off the loving screen. For all the talk about how KvG has terrible and silly human stuff, I thought KotM was WAY worse about it and had far too much of it.

I've always been pretty cool on Kyle Chandler, even going back to Friday Night Lights I've thought he's pretty bland and has a weird way of over-emoting and really only alternates between "mumbling / whistling," "speaking normally" and "YELLING BECAUSE OH poo poo THE WORLD IS GOING TO END LET'S MAKE SOME poo poo HAPPEN" (he's kind of like ... I don't know, a poor man's Bruce Boxleitner, which is funny in and of itself because Boxleitner himself is a poor man's Michael Douglas), but everyone else was strangely soporific, too (it didn't help that Bradley Whitford's character was utterly inanely written, but that's another story). Charles Dance, Vera Farmiga, Sally Hawkins, the solidly reliable Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, even David Strathairn--who is a guy so stupidly charismatic that I will watch him read the obituaries from a local newspaper--are all acting like they got IV doses of Xanax or clonidine about ten minutes before Dougherty called "action," and I just really cannot make heads or tails of their performances.

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM

Timby posted:

So it's a movie that in order to really do service to everything it introduces, it would need to be like five hours long. But no one, not even me, would sit through that pure Hell, so instead we have a two-hour movie that, in addition to all of its crazy poo poo, crams in about eighty to ninety minutes of completely mind-numbing human bullshit and world-building that would make Marvel Studios take a step back and say, "drat, son."

I'd sit through it, to be honest, but I'm a huge Godzilla nerd who entered my first viewing of King of the Monsters with trepidation due to poor reviews and left the most amped-up I've left a movie in a long time. The sequence from the time Burning Godzilla walks on screen to the fake-out of Ghidorah rising from the ground only for it to just be his severed, still-living head getting vaporized had me enthralled. I very much enjoyed that they decided to up the ante from Godzilla shooting his ray down a monster's throat to UP a monster's throat. I'll admit I'm willing to forgive a lot of things KotM did wrong thanks to the wall-to-wall references and fan service and introducing the idea that Godzilla hangs out in an underwater temple built by the ancients in his honor when he's not kicking rear end.

They released the four hour long Snyder Cut recently, so there are people willing to watch a dramatically-altered re-release of a movie that's twice as long as the original (though relatively not that many) and dammit, now I'm wanting KotM to get this treatment.

Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Apr 11, 2021

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

Hexmage-SA posted:

I'd sit through it, to be honest, but I'm a gigantic Godzilla nerd. Also they released the four hour long Snyder Cut recently, so there are people willing to watch a dramatically-altered re-release of a movie that's twice as long as the original.

...Dammit, now I want this for real.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I am the world's biggest fanboy of King Ghidorah, and so if you gave me a DVD that had a supercut of just four hours of him being the galaxy's biggest and most gleeful jackwagon, I'd probably cry tears of joy before passing out from shock, but I think structurally King of the Monsters is just fundamentally broken in terms of its storytelling.

It's the old analogy of trying to fit fifty pounds of poo poo into a ten-pound bag; ultimately you have to start cutting and amending things before you roll camera because otherwise you're going to have a huge problem telling a coherent and compelling story after editing begins.

Hell, this is one of the (many) things that doomed Age of Ultron, because Whedon wrote a script that was like four and a half hours long and he shot the whole loving thing, then threw a fit after Disney said, "Uh, no, you need to edit this down to two and a half hours."

Mission: Impossible 2 is another movie in this vein, as a script by Ron Moore and Brannon Braga was crudely cobbled onto a script by Robert Towne, the whole thing was like four hours long as written, and John Woo's first cut was about three and a half hours long and according to Paramount executives made no loving sense whatsoever, which is why Stuart Baird was brought in to do a ground-up re-edit of the movie; considering how utterly nonsensical and borderline incomprehensible Mission: Impossible 2 is in its released version, I would love to see that Woo cut that everyone said was just bugnuts insane and made about as much sense as the idea of, I don't know, Godzilla being in a barbershop quartet or whatever.

Anyway, as it is, I think Chandler and Charles Dance both said they had absolutely no loving clue what was going on in the movie or what their characters were supposed to be doing, and even Vera Farmiga was very non-committal about her role, talking more about gender agency than anything else (and, to be fair, Emma Russell absolutely does march to the beat of her own drum in the movie).

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM
I'll just say that out of the three MonsterVerse Godzilla movies so far, King of the Monsters is the one that feels the most like a movie I, as someone who was a regular at the Rodan's Roost message board, still checks Toho Kingdom, and has read The Official Godzilla Compendium, Godzilla On My Mind, and many issues of G-Fan magazine, would make (if I knew anything at all about making a movie): a glorified fanfic with a huge budget where I don't have time to fit in everything I want to, but I know this is probably the only opportunity I'll ever get, so by God I'm cramming in as much as I can.

I'll also say that I think a number of unique factors hurt KotM's chances: critics probably being disappointed it wasn't more like Godzilla 2014, stiff competition at the movies that summer from Disney properties, overestimated how much of a draw classic Toho kaiju Rodan, Mothra, and Ghidorah would be in the marketing, and possibly some people who didn't like Godzilla 2014 assuming KotM would be like it (on Rotten Tomatoes, G14's audience score is 66%, compared to 83% for KotM and 92% for GvK). In contrast, Godzilla vs Kong had no practically no competition, a very recognizable antagonist for Godzilla in Kong (just like in the extremely well-performing King Kong vs Godzilla), it was more likely to be compared to its predecessor than the radically different Godzilla 2014.

Honestly, I'm a bit mystified that Godzilla 2014 and Godzilla vs Kong have nearly identical critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes, especially considering that KotM got in the 40's. I had expected KotM to review at least a bit better and GvK at least a little worse than they did.

Comparing the film and novelization, following KotM it appears the creators of Godzilla vs Kong decided to excise as much as they could of the human plot and the actual explanations for what's happening from the movie and leave them for the book. If we get another one of these movies I hope it finds a happy medium between KotM and GvK's approaches, but GvK did far, far better so I figure a possible follow-up will continue in its footsteps.

Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Apr 11, 2021

Violator
May 15, 2003


Timby posted:

Anyway, as it is, I think Chandler and Charles Dance both said they had absolutely no loving clue what was going on in the movie or what their characters were supposed to be doing, and even Vera Farmiga was very non-committal about her role, talking more about gender agency than anything else (and, to be fair, Emma Russell absolutely does march to the beat of her own drum in the movie).

I’m surprised by this because nothing in the movie was confusing and all of the characters and their motivations are super straightforward. If anything they were too generic so I’m not sure what they were confused about. For me, the story and characters were generally fine and it was the visuals (shaky cam, close-ups during action, etc) that I didn’t like.

I’ve actually grown to like KOTM the more I watch it.

Shiroc
May 16, 2009

Sorry I'm late
The best thing about Godzilla vs Kong to me is that it is the likely reason why the Kinokuniya in Seattle had a ton of new stuff from the Godzilla Stores in them and I now have a ton of neat art cards, two new vinyl Godzillas and a Ghidorah.

DeimosRising
Oct 17, 2005

¡Hola SEA!


Hexmage-SA posted:

I'll just say that out of the three MonsterVerse Godzilla movies so far, King of the Monsters is the one that feels the most like a movie I, as someone who was a regular at the Rodan's Roost message board, still checks Toho Kingdom, and has read The Official Godzilla Compendium, Godzilla On My Mind, and many issues of G-Fan magazine, would make (if I knew anything at all about making a movie): a glorified fanfic with a huge budget where I don't have time to fit in everything I want to, but I know this is probably the only opportunity I'll ever get, so by God I'm cramming in as much as I can.

Yeah I agree. It sucks

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

Hmm.

No.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
I saw KotM on a real IMAX screen on release night with a bunch of Godzilla heads and I fail to see what the problem is. I could see everything (on account of it being 10 stories tall) and everyone was hooting and hollering at every single frame of kaiju. Someone also yelled "shut the gently caress up!" at Kyle Chandler's character at one point, which got some scattered tittering. All in all, good flick.

McSpanky
Jan 16, 2005






Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

I saw KotM on a real IMAX screen on release night with a bunch of Godzilla heads and I fail to see what the problem is. I could see everything (on account of it being 10 stories tall) and everyone was hooting and hollering at every single frame of kaiju. Someone also yelled "shut the gently caress up!" at Kyle Chandler's character at one point, which got some scattered tittering. All in all, good flick.

I didn't see it in IMAX but I don't remember the action being hard to follow either, and I hate Cloverfield exaggerated shaky-cam bullshit. I really don't get where these complaints are coming from.

porfiria
Dec 10, 2008

by Modern Video Games
I'm only about 30 minutes in KvG but...this sets a new bar for horrendous screenplay right?

Like they straight up don't care about dialogue because the international market is 80% of revenue?

This movie really reminds me of Meg, lol. But I think Meg was better.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
Between King Of The Monsters and Versus Kong, there's maybe enough material for a single decent movie.

Jeremiah Flintwick
Jan 14, 2010

King of Kings Ozysandwich am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.



DeimosRising posted:

Yeah I agree. It sucks

2014 is still the only monsterverse to really feel like a proper Godzilla film. Like if you resurrected Ishiro Honda and gave him a modern Hollywood budget he might make something similar.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Between King Of The Monsters and Versus Kong, there's maybe enough material for a single decent movie.

New standalone Rodan please, just 90 minutes of clowning on the USAF.

GATOS Y VATOS
Aug 22, 2002


Zartosht posted:

2014 is still the only monsterverse to really feel like a proper Godzilla film. Like if you resurrected Ishiro Honda and gave him a modern Hollywood budget he might make something similar.


New standalone Rodan please, just 90 minutes of clowning on the USAF.

:hmmyes:

porfiria
Dec 10, 2008

by Modern Video Games
Okay it was bad.

1) The badguy is a sendup of the Most Interesting Man in the World right?
2) It's weird he doesn't find out his daughter (the worst actress in the world) died.
3) I did like that he calls Godzilla "Gojira".
4) MBB is pointless and why is her friend from New Zealand? Not all Kiwis are funny, Hollywood.
5) The movie was way better when no one was talking. But still not good.
6) The first 50 minutes are genuinely some of the worst filmic storytelling I'ver ever seen. Kong is in the Truman Show! Now he's on a boat! Now he's fighting Godzilla and destroying the 5th Fleet! Now he's in the North Pole! Now he's in the Land Before Time! Meanwhile, MBB is addicted to Above Top Secret. Horrendous. Legitimate garbage.

7) Time to watch Shin Godzilla again.

porfiria fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Apr 11, 2021

KaptainKrunk
Feb 6, 2006


the only good scene to come out of the Monsterverse movies is the helicopter attack sequence in Skull Island (which is also not good but feels more like a proper film).

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

drat I don't know if I can back that level of not liking things

Jeremiah Flintwick
Jan 14, 2010

King of Kings Ozysandwich am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.



The really should have gone for the classic "MechaGodzilla disguised as Godzilla doing evil stuff to make him look bad" plot.

Snowglobe of Doom
Mar 30, 2012

sucks to be right

BiggerBoat posted:

It's amazing how much difference some lighting, no rain and a lot less shaky cam can make -- not only for clarity but even for the sense of scale. Turns out being able to actually SEE poo poo works to a film's advantage; at least one like this. Hiding the monster works for films like Alien or JAWS but I think for kaiju movies it's different. The best obscured shots are the ground level ones where buildings get in the way and poo poo and that works too because that's all you'd be able to see from the street and adds to the sense of scale. But I don't need to see (or not see) 10 minutes of giant monster fights hidden in darkness, marred by quick cuts and masked by rain.

I always appreciated those old 70s tokusatsu shows that put in the extra effort and included all those little details to enhance the sense of scale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG5g5_McLxw

Karloff
Mar 21, 2013

Hexmage-SA posted:

I'll just say that out of the three MonsterVerse Godzilla movies so far, King of the Monsters is the one that feels the most like a movie I, as someone who was a regular at the Rodan's Roost message board, still checks Toho Kingdom, and has read The Official Godzilla Compendium, Godzilla On My Mind, and many issues of G-Fan magazine, would make (if I knew anything at all about making a movie): a glorified fanfic with a huge budget where I don't have time to fit in everything I want to, but I know this is probably the only opportunity I'll ever get, so by God I'm cramming in as much as I can.

I think this is it. Dougherty is clearly a big Godzilla guy and his enthusiasm is on full display and infectious. In comparison to the grounded approach of 14 - which, don't get me wrong, was also marked with enthusiasm just with a different focus - KOTM fully embraces the broad fantasy elements of the series without any hesitation, it dives in and luxuriates in super planes, spiritual mega moths, anthropomorphism of the monsters and phantasmagoric imagery. I love the visuals in the film including all the storms and rain. I don't feel it obscures the monsters too much and I think stuff I've read online that "it's to obscure the bad CGI" isn't accurate and is a touch cynical. Ghidorah brings storms along with it to make the point that it's a hostile force which nothing can survive being near, that fundamentally it's going to turn the earth into a lifeless husk. We see Godzilla's house and that at one point he rested in an area where humans were present, and that Mothra actually clears storms with her presence. The creatures' attitudes reflect their environment in an almost expressionistic fashion and I adore it. I do agree that if an idea has a point then it doesn't necessarily mean it works or is executed well but I don't really understand the chagrin the storms get.

I also don't agree with the hatred that the human characters in KOTM receive. To me, they are crafted with so much more care than in GvK. I do think they fall short of the dimension they needed to justify some of the weighty decisions they make in the course of the story. Emma does some crazy poo poo and I think they should have fleshed out her traumas, as well as Mark's, to give them more emotional power. We are told they had a loss, we are told why that loss propels Emma to commit truly heinous acts, but we don't really feel it because the film has to rush through to the next plot point or spend time with some other characters that hold nowhere near as much importance. But the leads do have a sense of interiority and philosophy and shades of minor complexity. I love the moment early on where Emma suggests to her lab assistant to go home and get some sleep knowing that Jonah is gonna come in and blow everyone away, and when he refuses due to his excitement over Mothra, you see the despair on her face. It's a small moment but it adds something. GvK seems to be getting more credit as it doesn't try at all, but I think I prefer something that is going for something real and falls short rather than something that just doesn't seem to give a poo poo at all.

There is some clumsy loving writing to be sure, the oxygen destroyer being the nadir. It just comes out of nowhere, it's usage entirely unearned. Strathairn just comes on the view-screen and is like "sup, watch out guys". It's weird because there's multiple moments where it could have been introduced and became an active element in the story. A senate hearing near the start regarding whether the titans should be destroyed is the perfect place to introduce a weapon to the audience that can kill titans, it could then have been made an active source of tension throughout the first half of the film, with Monarch knowing that if they can't get the situation under control than the Army may use this mega weapon but instead it feels like something inorganically thrust into the narrative without any real context aside from clumsy exposition. It feels especially galling as the original Oxygen Destroyer is so imbued with impact and meaning in the 54 film.

Cercueil
Sep 21, 2006


Zartosht posted:

New standalone Rodan please, just 90 minutes of clowning on the USAF.
I'd be down for him getting a solo movie where he fights Megaguirus and has high speed aerial battles.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Zartosht posted:

2014 is still the only monsterverse to really feel like a proper Godzilla film. Like if you resurrected Ishiro Honda and gave him a modern Hollywood budget he might make something similar.

New standalone Rodan please, just 90 minutes of clowning on the USAF.

A proper Rodan remake would be nice, but what I mean is that all of the characterization for Versus Kong occurs in the previous (extremely bloated) film.

Like, the basic reason that Millie B is extremely obsessed with helping Godzilla is missing from this film. The antagonists’ reason for wanting to kill Godzilla and blow up the Earth is likewise missing, and so-on.

If you grafted both films together, you’d have about four hours of half-junk footage that you could whittle down to a proper narrative, with Millie B’s mom and Serizawa Sr. dying to stop Ghidorah in the first act. It’s a pretty simple fix, but suddenly you’d have Millie and Serizawa Jr. being reflections of eachother in their differing approaches to ‘turning Godzilla into a weapon to protect humanity’.

It would also allow you to put the storm that destroys Kong’s island in the first act.

Hexmage-SA
Jun 28, 2012
DM

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

A proper Rodan remake would be nice, but what I mean is that all of the characterization for Versus Kong occurs in the previous (extremely bloated) film.

Like, the basic reason that Millie B is extremely obsessed with helping Godzilla is missing from this film. The antagonists’ reason for wanting to kill Godzilla and blow up the Earth is likewise missing, and so-on.

If you grafted both films together, you’d have about four hours of half-junk footage that you could whittle down to a proper narrative, with Millie B’s mom and Serizawa Sr. dying to stop Ghidorah in the first act. It’s a pretty simple fix, but suddenly you’d have Millie and Serizawa Jr. being reflections of eachother in their differing approaches to ‘turning Godzilla into a weapon to protect humanity’.

It would also allow you to put the storm that destroys Kong’s island in the first act.

Apparently they took the message from KotM's poor performance that audiences and critics don't care if what's going on is explained (and in fact may actively dislike having to sit through exposition) so they left all the actual explanations for what's going on in the novelization and cut as much of the human scenes as they could from the film. Given how much more positive the critical response has been to GvK (42% versus 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Godzilla 2014 itself having 76%), I guess they were right.

I also understand that Zhang Ziyi was supposed to have Rebecca Hall's place in the movie until...something...made it where Ziyi was no longer available (which is why both actresses play a character named Ilene). The situation with Ziyi feels very odd, as promotional materials for Godzilla vs Kong credited her, and nothing was ever said about her not being in the movie up until after release. There's also the fact that Dougherty shared storyboards of an unfilmed after credits sequence for King of the Monsters featuring both her characters preparing to do some kind of ritual while standing next to Mothra's egg, and I've also found a CinemaBlend article describing a visit to a Godzilla vs Kong set in 2019 in which the movie's costume designer, Ann Foley, stated that she had designed costumes for the Shobijin. Further, writer Max Borenstein is quoted as saying that the unfilmed after credits sequence I mentioned earlier was considered as a possible after credits sequence for Godzilla vs Kong, too.

Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Apr 11, 2021

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
I don't mind the humans being used for exposition, as vehicles for advancing the plot or for showing us thing like scale and the science behind things in movies like this. In fact, I rather like it when it's done well. The human angles in Shin Godzilla were fine. I liked Raymond Burr in the original.

KvG just decided that rather than doing it well, they'll just have less of it and it's a good trade off I think if we're just not going to bother. KotM is about 1/3 of a pretty awesome movie and got a lot right. I can watch a mash up of it and be entertained but anytime humans are doing almost loving anything in it, the film grinds to a halt and nobody watching gives a poo poo. To make it worse, they wasted a lot of genuinely good actors with so much horrible and convoluted writing.

Beamed
Nov 26, 2010

Then you have a responsibility that no man has ever faced. You have your fear which could become reality, and you have Godzilla, which is reality.


I'll just repeat that I feel like Godzilla vs. Kong was a modern Showa-era Godzilla movie, down to the insane sci-fi elements (instead of aliens from Planet X with a cure for all disease, it's Hollow Earth with magic power crystals!), great monster characters, and light hearted human plot. It was very good.

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RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

I'm almost halfway through this movie and so far it's human vs exposition

Just gently caress Florida up more or something God drat

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