The Godzilla Thread - Plus other giant monsters, no matter how popular or obscure

[KillThemCrackasBabies]

I like how everyone is going apeshit against people for giving it poor reviews because "OH I'M SORRY THE DINOSAUR VS MONKE MOVIE WASN'T HIGH ART FOR YOU!" when the vast majority of the negative feedback seems to be that they deviated too much attention from the monster fights in favor of the "human drama" they've never gotten right.

On that note it's a shame they've seemingly fallen into that same boring trap 3 times in a row now. I'm going to see it but it's a shame they couldn't deviate from the same formula.

 

[DapperShark]

I thought it was pretty meh to be honest, completely lacking in moments that make you go ''holy shit!'' like other people have mentioned. Neither Kong nor MechaG are all that impressive after seeing Godzilla fight Ghidorah in KOTM and I much preferred the more grounded tone of the previous movies, this one really went all in on the ridiculousness.

I will say that having grown up with the Heisei films I loved that Godzilla was wrecking everyone's shit indiscriminately, not really a fan of him being friendly to humans.

 

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I'm a huge Godzilla fan, so it's weird that the Monsterverse movie I like the best is the one Godzilla isn't even in.

Kong: Skull Island all the way.

 

[draggs]

Pros

Spoiler

Godzilla whips Kong. EAT SHIT MONKE. DICKS OUT FOR GOJIRA THAT WAS VERY CASH MONEY OF YOU MOVIE

The monster fights are all pretty damn gud
Eiza Gonzalez is top quality eye candy

Cons

Spoiler

everything else, especially we beat mechagodzilla by pouring booze on the mechagodzilla control computer that mechagodzilla had already disconnected itself from because it was taken over by ghidorah's ghost or some shit? and the hollow earth made no sense and was dumb, that is a movie all on its own.

and i said the monster fights are pretty damn gud but this is the problem with kotm and godzilla vs kong, the monsters move too damn fast. there's no real sense of weight to their movements. these are 300-500 foot tall monstrosities weighing ~100,000 tons and they're moving so damn fast and with such damn agility. which is fine for kong or mothra or rodan, but not for godzilla or mechagodzilla or king ghidorah. godzilla 2014 handled the monsters' movement well, then skull island comes out with these fast-moving monsters which is fine because kong... but then they decided wow people liked that let's make all the monsters fast and flexible as fuck whyyyyyyyyyyyyy

* * *

dont get me wrong i liked it better than kotm or godzilla 2014 but not as much as skull island. it's a decent godzilla movie, not great, but we havent had a great godzilla movie in ~20-25 years. not even shin which was better than decent but not great

 

[Gaear Grimsrud]

A scene I found particularly stupid is when the deaf girl tells Kong that Godzilla isn't the enemy and he has to help him defeat Mechagodzilla.

It's dumb because the kid has no idea what the fuck is even going on, or what Mechagodzilla is. She just laid eyes on him a second ago.

 

[Uranus Pink]

It's dumb because the kid has no idea what the fuck is even going on, or what Mechagodzilla is. She just laid eyes on him a second ago.

Just had a déjà vu moment with your post which shows how tediously common that movie trope is.

 

[Muttnik]

I was hyped this morning when I saw it. And now that I've had hours to dwell on it, I'm starting to feel less positive about it.

I... really miss rubber suits. That sounds stupid and it was awesome in the theater and all but I can't even remember specific shots. I still remember all the best shots and fights from the Heisei films. None on this.

The more and more I think about it, the more I sort of appreciate the slow and steady pace of the 2014 movie and Shin. I like when they try grounded shit. Same thing for Kong. I love goofy kaiju shit but now I'm starting to feel that this was all TOO goofy.

I still think the fights were fun. But boy was this movie stupid.

 

[KillEmAll1989]

I’m convinced the only reason this has such a high score on RT is because they’ve been starved of movies due to COVID.

 

[feral cat #6385]

This felt more like a Kong movie than a Godzilla movie. Kong had the most to do and got the final kill. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If I watched this as a Godzilla movie I would have been disappointed. After KOTM the scope of this movie felt small.

Overall I liked it.

Kiryu is still best Mechagodzilla.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

Some opinions on G v K.

* This is one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen. No, I wasn't expecting high art, but really?

* I was hoping the insufferable, "little white girls who are the keys to everything" would get some serious collateral damage. Stranger Things girl and deaf girl were really, really fucking annoying.

* Hollow Earth? Well, okay, some of it looked cool, but it was just so ludicrous that I could not stop thinking that they actually set it there. Yea I know it's fantasy and all, but you've got to do a little more to sell me on it.

* They don't quite have the guts to cast a trans actor, so I suppose they settled for Julian Dennison.

* Eliza Gonzalez - more tits next time. K Plz Thx. That Joss Whedon, strong-woman-smarminess shit is getting fucking old.

* Alexander Skaarsgaard was the only somewhat compelling character.

* Just about every guy was subordinate to a woman, either a "coward", "evil" or a buffoon. I half expected the deaf girl to order the brother commander of the 7th fleet.

* Bisexual lighting in the brief, nightime city battle?

* Watching these cities being destroyed is getting so old. Also so sick of the monster looking into camera, dead silence, then RRRROAAAAARRRRR! Ponderous man, ponderous. Does Hollywood have a creative bone left?

* Having said that, yes, I liked it when the monsters were punching each other.

* So glad I downloaded this instead of paying. Fuck Warner Brothers. Fucking retards. I honestly would prefer the old Toho movies to this, rubber suits and all.

 

[ProfDongs]

Watched it and enjoyed it, this was definitely more of a Kong movie than a Godzilla movie though. The humans on the Godzilla side of things were completely insufferable and the girls dad may have done some of the worst acting I have seen, although there are a lot of scenes between people talking where they may as well be yelling "ACTING ACTING ACTING" back and forth at each other. Fortunately on Kong's side Skarsgard was there and he carried the entire human story on his back, even if he wasn't perfect he at least wasn't complete dogshit, the scenes of him getting shit on for being a man were dumb. MechaG was cool in the fight I liked the Jet boosters to help speed up its attacks and movements, could have played up and shown more of the advantage of a machine body though, something like joints that can rotate or bend fully back to give it a less natural look. The design of it also isn't great, its got a very generic hollywood look and kind of looked more like a big metal guy with scoliosis and a vaguely lizard like head. Wasn't expecting much from the story but Apex downloading power from some glowing rock was peak dumb. There were a lot of visuals I really liked, the way the camera would track action or move through a scene really stood out sometimes.

Out of the Legendary films I would probably go KotM>GvK>2014.

 

[Shokaract]

Second episode of Godzilla Singular Point is out. Sadly my years of autistically watching anime hasnt made me proficient at understanding Japanese, and I cant read moonrunes, but I gotta say im enjoying this. I got my hopes up that overall this will be a better experience than the three animated Godzilla movies. Its a colorful anime, but for the monster and Godzilla lore, there seems to be a touch of feel of the creepy and unnerving, like with Shin Godzilla. Which I love since Shin is my favorite of the modern day Godzilla material.

 

[XYZpdq]

Second episode of Godzilla Singular Point is out. Sadly my years of autistically watching anime hasnt made me proficient at understanding Japanese, and I cant read moonrunes, but I gotta say im enjoying this. I got my hopes up that overall this will be a better experience than the three animated Godzilla movies. Its a colorful anime, but for the monster and Godzilla lore, there seems to be a touch of feel of the creepy and unnerving, like with Shin Godzilla. Which I love since Shin is my favorite of the modern day Godzilla material.

srt format for ep 1

 

[StarkRavingMad]

I have no self-control, so I watched it on HBO Max, and I'll be going to the theater to see it this weekend.

Anyway, I enjoyed the heck out of this movie. King of the Monsters is still very much my favorite MonsterVerse movie, but I would put this roughly on par with Skull Island, which isn't a bad thing at all, as I greatly enjoyed Skull Island.

Spoiler: Actual fucking spoilers; do NOT read if you haven't seen the movie!

The movie didn't pussy out and call it a draw! Godzilla won the fight! Had the humans not resuscitated Kong, he absolutely would have died-- Godzilla basically killed him. Long Live the King, bitches!

If Kong had won the fight, though, I would have been OK with it. This movie was extremely successful at making Kong likable and sympathetic, as any good Kong story should. His connection with the little girl was very sweet, too. That little girl might be my favorite human character of the entire MonsterVerse, honestly. Thought she was great.

The inevitable team-up against Mechagodzilla was a ton of fun. Cheesy? Yes. Satisfying? Oh hell yes. The moment where Kong swoops in to save Godzilla got a big cheer from me, as did the fatal blow to Mechagodzilla.

I'm kinda disappointed.

I'm stumped as to why critics are liking this so much more than KOTM. What's the huge improvement supposed to be?

It's even more flawed than KOTM in many ways.

Easy: The critics have a bias for Kong -- they always have. And Kong was basically the main character of the movie.

 

[Shokaract]

Man I know a lot of people don't like the Jet Jaguar design from Singular Point, but I like it, this image of JT with a what looks like a gun from the opening just looks badass.

 

[cactus]

I saw it in the theater, had a big ass Mexican family come in before it started and I thought they were gonna be a problem, but they weren't. I didn't have that little high you sometimes get after seeing a movie, but I'm happy I got monster fights. I empathized with Kong a lot, but I love animals and gorillas are one of my favorites, so it would be hard for me not to (I held back tears when I saw the 2000s King Kong remake when Kong died). Wish there was more Godzilla and it sucks he had trouble holding his own against MechaGodzilla but Kong did, even though G pretty much killed him.

I was like yay, bad guys died and we didn't have good guy die. It appeased the monkey part of my brain.

I just remembered, the opening credits were pretty good, loved how they used footage from previous films, not just from the Monsterverse. And the soundtrack was pretty good too, though my favorite parts of it were the Godzilla theme when he showed up.

 

[EmpireOfTheClouds]

Watched it tonight, had to pirate it sadly but the quality was still damn good, so.

Anyways. It was fucking awesome. The thing that stuck out to me was how unabashedly joyful it was. Maybe it's how grim things are in the world right now but considering the only movies this year have been rather dour and downbeat, and the closest thing to a big ticket blockbuster was a four hour complete dirge, this movie just piled on the joy.

I'll always be Team Godzilla, but I have to admit, monkey boy was pretty badass, too.

 

[StarkRavingMad]

I saw it in the theater, had a big ass Mexican family come in before it started and I thought they were gonna be a problem, but they weren't. I didn't have that little high you sometimes get after seeing a movie, but I'm happy I got monster fights. I empathized with Kong a lot, but I love animals and gorillas are one of my favorites, so it would be hard for me not to (I held back tears when I saw the 2000s King Kong remake when Kong died). Wish there was more Godzilla and it sucks he had trouble holding his own against MechaGodzilla but Kong did, even though G pretty much killed him.

I was like yay, bad guys died and we didn't have good guy die. It appeased the monkey part of my brain.

I just remembered, the opening credits were pretty good, loved how they used footage from previous films, not just from the Monsterverse. And the soundtrack was pretty good too, though my favorite parts of it were the Godzilla theme when he showed up.

Spoiler: More spoilers. Don't read if you haven't seen the movie!

To be fair, Godzilla wasn't fighting at full strength against Mechagodzilla. The fight started literally moments after Godzilla basically killed Kong, and Kong gave Godzilla a good fight. Mechagodzilla had the upper hand the entire time until the Kong + Godzilla double team started. And Godzilla contributed to the final blow as well; Kong wouldn't have defeated Mechagodzilla without Godzilla's help and vice-versa. I felt that the movie earned that, too.

Honestly, I'm ridiculously happy that Mechagodzilla didn't interrupt the actual Godzilla vs Kong fight. I really thought that was going to happen, and that the fight would end up being a draw. I'm so happy that there was a decisive winner (and even more happy that Godzilla was that winner)!

As a side note, I thought it was fucking awesome that Mechagodzilla was about to kill Godzilla exactly like how Godzilla killed the MUTO from the 2014 movie. Brutal! Gloriously brutal!

 

[The Token Ethnic]

Shun Oguri was underused in his role and the mecha/pilot angle was weak. The KOTM Ghidorah connection was barely added in and there was no mention of the eco-terrorist group, unless they're saving that for a future film. Bryan Tyree Henry was annoying. He was more Don Knotts than Djimon Hounsou. Skarsgård was fine, he spend a lot of the film looking shocked and surprised. It's a shame the characters from KOTM were cut from the film. The movie just ends with a weird use of The Hollies. Kong Skull Island at least used better songs and had better animu references.

 

[Muttnik]

I don't like how these films build themselves. Say what you want about Godzilla 2014 but the buildup and resolutions were competent. These other movies, even KoTM just...end. No pomp. No emotion. It's just over. And that kind of destroys any real impact.

Part of the reason I love Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah is that it's completely ridiculous but also really sincere at the same time. You get emotional when the big guy dies because the movie dwells on it. You're pissy that Godzilla Jr. Gets murdered and it's silly as fuck but it plays it straight. Everything lingers.

These seem more ready to just have the fighting but without the lingering. I don't mean just boring meandering but atmosphere, pacing, etc. None of that. I think 2014 at least got that right, sluggish and dark as it was.