Godzilla
Okay, I watched this several days ago, and honestly didn’t have much to say about it. I enjoyed it, but I found it pretty perfunctory. The most interesting aspect to me was the backstory of the 1950s nuclear tests secretly being attempts to kill Godzilla - fun worldbuilding!
The characters are pretty generic, buoyed by good performances from Elizabeth Olsen and Bryan Cranston, in particular. Ken Watanabe gets the instant classic “let them fight.” Unfortunately, I didn’t care much for Ford, or Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s portrayal of him.
It was fine! I enjoyed it! But not a lot to chew on long-term.
Kong: Skull Island
This one, on the other hand, was a hoot. The movie has personality to spare, taking full advantage of its Vietnam-era setting, from the character archetypes in play to the musical choices. That setting also gives it a little more thematic weight, as the Americans showing up and bombing the crap out of Skull Island sets the film’s events into motion.
Kudos to the filmmakers for daring to set a number of the action pieces in daylight - a confident move.
Both movies have a good thoroughline of the MUTOs being fairly amoral, not necessarily “good” or “evil.” Between the two Hero Monsters, Kong comes off as smarter and more empathetic, while Godzilla is more of a force of nature.
My biggest complaint? It took me about 20 minutes to figure out why the movie looked so weird before I concluded that it must have been filmed with 3D in mind. I really hate that.
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The movie has personality to spare, taking full advantage of its Vietnam-era setting, from the character archetypes in play to the musical choices.
Skull Island is a masterpiece in subverting soldier tropes. I giant middle finger to the generic GI Joe character we got in Godzilla.
Every heroic last stand is easily swatted by the monsters and we get Sam Jackson as Ahab leading them all to their deaths. I don’t think they ever glorify the soldiers in the entire movie, which was fucking refreshing.
And of course, the Vietnam War is the perfect setting when you’re not looking to make jingoistic propaganda.
After I made this post, I read that Apocalypse Now was a direct influence of this, and…well yeah, that tracks.
Here’s a meta take on that.
Many of the Showa era films that made it into English audiences were produced during the Vietnam War — and it’s been relatively recently revealed that a number of the male voice actors who did the English language dubs in Hong Kong were moonlighting broadcasters and reporters, and even a military attaché at Government House.
Stuart Varney, then working for the public broadcaster Radio Hong Kong but more recently well known on Fox News, was one of them.
A good number of those voices — mainly British and Canadians putting on a ‘mid Atlantic accent’ - were otherwise in Vietnam and Cambodia covering the wars. Some of them worked for the major US networks and were producing the film that brought the horrors of the war into America’s living rooms.
https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Category:Films_dubbed_in_Hong_Kong
Skull Island is one of my favourite movies and I’m utterly baffled by how little esteem it gets. A great concept that it just nails with incredibly tight visual and thematic design, great characters and writing and just cool af stylistic vision. And the special effects are the best in any modern monster movie, Kong is such an evocative presence and conveys so much personality with just body language, and the big fight set pieces with him against other monsters have incredible weight and raw animalistic power to them that most monster movies fail to get right.
just cool af stylistic vision.
Yeah, this can’t be emphasized enough. It’s just fun.
Interesting.
Skull Island has had a lot of negativity from longtime fans. However, the creators of the continuity of the Legendary Pictures / Monsterverse era clearly had some distinct ideas about the island, its importance and about Kong.
We’re seeing that picked up on in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It doesn’t seem they’re done building that out yet. The presence of an longstanding Apex research station raises sooooo many questions.
Skull Island has had a lot of negativity from longtime fans.
I can see that - I’m a big fan of the 1933 film, and enjoyed the 1976 and 2005 versions well enough. But I didn’t have any expectations that this movie would bear any resemblance to those. Taken as its own thing, I thought it was fun. And if you have to build a Cinematic Universe, you’re going to need some kind of point of origin for all of these monsters.
