Spoilers Godzilla vs. Kong release thread

[FPAlpha]

Even with the huge caveat of it being a simple Monster Smash movie i was still a bit disappointed.

Yes, the humans are not the main characters but even then i feel at least 50% of their scenes could be cut without the movie running into any trouble.

I was also disappointed that there were basically on 2 fights between Kong and Godzilla, the first fight in the ships was basically spoilred completely with the millions of pre-release clips and trailers, the second one was longer - one thing that surprised me a bit though that they actually "declared a winner with Godzilla vs. Kong before Mechagodzilla arrived.

One thing i still don't understand was the "need" to have some kind of outside control via Ghidora's skull or something ( was not very clear who or what controlled Mechagodzilla, was it a resurrected Ghidora??). Mechagodzilla was built to kill the Titans including Godzilla so why the need to wrench control away from humans? Would have been far more interesting to have a human at the helm fighting Godzilla.

Anyway, even for such a basic premise as giant monsters bashing each other while humans can only run for their lives it was a bit mediocre.

The first Godzilla movie had had a unique atmosphere ( especially the Parajump onto Godzilla, fantastic scene) and the second went all in and had tons of monster fights, this one fell a bit flat for me.

 

[Romulan_spy]

I feel the podcast conspiracy guy and the 2 kids could have been completely cut from the movie. All their scenes were pretty pointless IMO. The hollow earth scenes were gorgeous. And the monster fights were epic. That's what we come to watch and it was good stuff.

 

[Starbreaker]

The first Godzilla movie had had a unique atmosphere ( especially the Parajump onto Godzilla, fantastic scene) and the second went all in and had tons of monster fights, this one fell a bit flat for me.

That scene was the best part of the movie and was completely spoiled by the trailer. I'm surprised they kept the atomic breath a secret. There really should have been more moments like that in this movie. It was just one set piece to another with no time to think.

 

[Reverend]

Well that was...a movie. I guess.

Even though I've watched all the movies in this little franchise so far, I'm probably not the best person to critique it. I've still never gotten around to watching either of the original King Kong or Godzilla movies, and Kaiju movies in general are not something I have a particular fondness for (didn't see any growing up until the Matthew Broderick Godzilla, which I gather is considered heretical by fans?) Personally, I still think 'Pacific Rim' is by far the best this genre has to offer. Nothing even comes close to it for me and this movie is no exception.

All that said, I found this one to be about average for the series. As always the human part was the least interesting despite hiring very talented actors, as always. Indeed the whole setup felt WAY more involved than it needed to be. It was basically just bringing time for the first third of the movie because they didn't want to blow the monster fighting wad 10 mins in. There's all kinds of weird contrivances, plot holes, physical impossibilities and just baffling choices...but it's a movie where a giant gorilla fights a giant lizard with a radioactive bone axe, so I'm not inclined to be too fussy about it.

 

[FPAlpha]

Well that was...a movie. I guess.

Even though I've watched all the movies in this little franchise so far, I'm probably not the best person to critique it. I've still never gotten around to watching either of the original King Kong or Godzilla movies, and Kaiju movies in general are not something I have a particular fondness for (didn't see any growing up until the Matthew Broderick Godzilla, which I gather is considered heretical by fans?) Personally, I still think 'Pacific Rim' is by far the best this genre has to offer. Nothing even comes close to it for me and this movie is no exception.

All that said, I found this one to be about average for the series. As always the human part was the least interesting despite hiring very talented actors, as always. Indeed the whole setup felt WAY more involved than it needed to be. It was basically just bringing time for the first third of the movie because they didn't want to blow the monster fighting wad 10 mins in. There's all kinds of weird contrivances, plot holes, physical impossibilities and just baffling choices...but it's a movie where a giant gorilla fights a giant lizard with a radioactive bone axe, so I'm not inclined to be too fussy about it.

I'm looking forward to people and actual scientists analyzing specific scenes for their realism, i.e. could a 100+m tall radioactive lizard and a 100+m tall Gorilla fight on the deck of an aircraft carrier without immediately breaking it in half? Sometimes i really love nerds

 

[Reverend]

Yeah I can ignore the silly impossibilities like that, no problem. It's a silly movie based on a silly concept/ This is not where you come for grounded science based storytelling.

I think what bothered me though was the weird inconsistencies with the Hollow Earth stuff. I mean leaving aside the obvious nonsense that is Hollow Earth, the way it's portrayed is both weird and internally inconsistent. In all the graphics it's depicted as literally the inner surface of a spherical void, literally in the centre of the planet. But when they went down there they seemed to go through some kind of portal or wormhole, so is it really in the planet, or some pocet universe thing? Then when they get there, it's not a hollow sphere but two opposing, seemingly infinite planes that (almost) meet in the middle...with a sunlight coming in from an impossible horizon!? OK...
Oh and when they go back, there's none of that wormhole nonsense and Godzilla was able to atomic breath a hole clear though the planet...Fine. Whatever.

Another thing that baffled me was the ridiculously advanced anti-gravity craft. I mean did they really need to go to all that trouble to survive a gravity inversion? I mean parachutes and rockets are a thing, yes? But then of course I got to the third act where they used one as a defibrillator and the real purpose of those things becomes clear.

 

[wayoung]

It's a franchise about impossible beings to begin with, this is one of the few film series where you have to ignore everything that's impossible, otherwise you have to bow out at the title.

The Hollow Earth theory has various explanations for the light in it, including miniature stars. It's just part of its absurdity.

 

[kirk55555]

This is definitely the best of the Legendary "Monsterverse" movies, and is decent overall, but it still has problems and wouldn't be a Top 10 Godzilla film for me. Probably the biggest problem is how much of the human stuff could be cut. Its better then in the horrendous King of Monsters, where the stuff was irritating, but at least the terrible Final Fantasy plot in that movie, as nonsensical as it was, had a point to the plot.

Stranger Things Girl and her friends were 100% pointless. You could have cut them out and basically nothing would change. Even the stupid "super advanced computer gets wrecked by liquid" thing could have been kept in by having the bad guy barely survive and do it himself as he was dying or something. Hell, that could have even just be cut out, and just have Godzilla and Kong overpower MechaGodzilla with no help. The only thing the Stranger Things Girl/her crew could do are tell others where Mecha Godzilla came from, but they don't do that in the movie anyway, and the film could have had the main Man/woman find out about Mecha Godzilla while traveling with the asshole woman from the same company before she dies. If Stranger Things wasn't a popular show this character would not have been brought back, thats how absolutely pointless (and annoying, but thats more subjective) her scenes were.

But, that aside, there was definitely stuff to like. The fight scenes were 1000x better, because you could see them (even the ones in the dark, and I liked the neon look of those). No storms or volcanos to hide cheap CG, which is what ruined the few monster fights that the last film even had. The Japanese films still have more memorable side monsters, and I'll always prefer people in suits to CG in tokusatsu films, but the people making this movie have definitely learned lessons as they've went along.

Also, the film being under 2 hours was amazing. Not every film deserves a 2 1/2 - 3 hour run time, and Godzilla vs Kong generally used its time well (outside of the 10-15 minutes of scenes with the ST Girl which could easily have been cut). Even if I was a bit annoyed at those certain scenes, in general I wasn't bored and the movie moved at a nice, quick pace. Plus, Godzilla being the obviously winner in the Kong/Godzilla fight was great, I expected them to go for Kong since they seemed to be making him the "hero", but I prefer Godzilla to be king.

Overall I liked this movie. It still has some flaws that really only happen because of stubbornness of the producers (they should let the Stranger Things Girl go on to other projects, she's completely unneeded and honestly just annoying in how obviously forced into the film she is at this point), and it doesn't quite match up to the top tier Japanese Godzilla films, but I would say that this is the first decent "American" Godzilla film.

 

[JD]

I hadn't really noticed it watching the movie, but thinking back over the movie, you guys are right about Madison, Hayes, and Josh having no real impact on the plot. They did provide the set up for Mechagodzilla, but all they did was see a bunch of crap, and didn't actually impact anything.

 

[Reverend]

It's a franchise about impossible beings to begin with, this is one of the few film series where you have to ignore everything that's impossible, otherwise you have to bow out at the title.

The Hollow Earth theory has various explanations for the light in it, including miniature stars. It's just part of its absurdity.

Like I said, the dumb impossibilities I can cope with. It's the lack of any consistency with it's own internal logic that has me scratching my head. Hollow sphere with a sun in the middle? fine! Pocket dimension with two inverted parallel planes and...something out there generating light? Also fine. But please pick one and stick with it!
Also, wasn't there a whole thing in the last movie about being able to not control, but kinda shepherd Godzilla with some signal or some such? What happened to that?

I hadn't really noticed it watching the movie, but thinking back over the movie, you guys are right about Madison, Hayes, and Josh having no real impact on the plot. They did provide the set up for Mechagodzilla, but all they did was see a bunch of crap, and didn't actually impact anything.

I don't disagree about their lack of agency, but on the other hand they're the only actual characters in the movie that kept my attention for more than two minutes at a stretch.

 

[thribs]

There was one funny scene I noticed. When Kong came out of that hole and attacked Godzilla; causing him to collapse into a building, you see people within that building get up from their chairs and run away. My issue is that this building was right by the hole and Godzilla was waiting by it for quite some time. Those people in that building should be long gone. Not still eating their food.

 

[JD]

I don't disagree about their lack of agency, but on the other hand they're the only actual characters in the movie that kept my attention for more than two minutes at a stretch.

I actually did enjoy their storyline, which is probably the main reason I didn't notice how little they impacted the overall storyline, until this thread made me think back over it some more.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I cut out mid-way through the film. I was bored by it - it felt like molasses in winter - and was easily distracted by what was happening in our home.

 

[captainkirk]

There was one funny scene I noticed. When Kong came out of that hole and attacked Godzilla; causing him to collapse into a building, you see people within that building get up from their chairs and run away. My issue is that this building was right by the hole and Godzilla was waiting by it for quite some time. Those people in that building should be long gone. Not still eating their food.

Are you saying that if Godzilla showed you up outside your window you wouldn’t want to stay and watch?

 

[Skipper]

I wondered why they didn't show more efforts to evacuate Hong Kong. I mean, they showed clearly where Godzilla was headed. It's not clear the timeline, but surely hours passed between when they evaluated where it was going and its actual arrival.

 

[Christopher]

I wondered why they didn't show more efforts to evacuate Hong Kong. I mean, they showed clearly where Godzilla was headed. It's not clear the timeline, but surely hours passed between when they evaluated where it was going and its actual arrival.

It would take a lot more than a few hours to evacuate a city as densely populated as Hong Kong.

 

[Skipper]

It would take a lot more than a few hours to evacuate a city as densely populated as Hong Kong.

Of course, but they also showed people eating at the restaurant caught off guard by a giant Kaiju. It's a little too much. The only explanation I can think of is they deliberately c chose not to warn the population, fearing that a disorderly evacuation would result in more deaths and more caos than Godzilla itself.

 

[Christopher]

Of course, but they also showed people eating at the restaurant caught off guard by a giant Kaiju. It's a little too much. The only explanation I can think of is they deliberately c chose not to warn the population, fearing that a disorderly evacuation would result in more deaths and more caos than Godzilla itself.

Or else people just ignored the evacuation warnings, just like they ignore instructions to quarantine and wear masks. "How dare you tell me to interrupt my dinner to avoid getting stepped on by a giant monster? That's fascism!"

 

[Skipper]

 

[wayoung]

They also genocided an entire people offscreen with a casual line about a storm. This movie was not concerned about regular people dying.