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.

  • StillPaisleyCatM
    2·
    28 days ago

    So, I’m watching Kong: Skull Island in my Monsterverse catch up and. . .

    There is Eugene Cordero — better known to Star Trek fans as Rutherford in Lower Decks — as one of the army unit pulled into the disastrous mission.

    Now, of course, I keep hoping that he will be one of the minor characters who doesn’t die horribly as he follows along in the train of Samuel L. Jackson’s obsessed Colonel.

    Cordero seems to pop up everywhere I’m watching streaming television these days from a tech storage guy in Loki to a son-in-law in A Man on the Inside.

    It just makes me think all the more that with the strength of the rest of the Lower Decks cast, a live action streaming movie is very deserved.

      • StillPaisleyCatM
        2·
        28 days ago

        I find that I am so used to constraining myself to the absolute essentials, that I miss out the cool bits when I try to write a review. But it’s those cool personal observations that make things interesting.

        I realized that I’d missed out some of the things that most impressed me about the Combat Monsters (such as the art) that I decided to add a couple of belated sentences to my book review for exactly that reason.

        We may not want super long posts but we don’t have to be as short and sweet here as on Mastodon or other platforms that favour brevity.

        • ValueSubtractedOPMAEnglish
          2·
          28 days ago

          Yeah, my motivation for calling it “assorted thoughts” was releasing myself from any pressure to remember anything, and just do a stream of consciousness!