Spoilers Godzilla vs. Kong release thread

Probably the death toll was at MOS level.

 

They weren’t even watching. They were sitting down eating food

 

Do you know how far in advance they had to book for that restaurant?!?

 

Reminding me of the aphorism I sometimes trot out: The difference between a Godzilla movie and a Superman movie is that in the former case, if a whole city is destroyed, it means the main character is succeeding at his job, while in the latter case, it means the main character is failing at his job.

 

All this bullshit about people moaning about the destruction in MoS. People obviously haven’t read many comics with him in it.

 

Well, on screen with actual people screaming in fear and pain is a little different, you know?

 

So he tried to make it more realistic and people complain. He moves the other fights into deserted areas and people still complain. You can’t win.

 

Well, in the first Avengers there was a lot of destruction in an urbane setting and people didn't really complain. Evidently there they found the right balance.

 

Because it actually acknowledged the people endangered by the destruction and had the heroes focus on rescuing them. Moving the fights into deserted areas is the opposite of the way to do it right. Rescuing people is the whole point of superheroism, not just a distraction from the CGI. Superheroes don't fight for the sake of fighting, they fight to protect. The best superhero movies are the ones that remember the people the heroes are fighting for. This is one thing the Metropolis battle in Superman II got very right, despite its comedy excesses. Even in the slapstick bits, the focus was on how the fight between godlike beings affected ordinary people, and on how Superman strove to protect them -- and earned their willingness to protect him as well. (See also the various Spider-Man movies where the people of New York band together to save or assist Spidey in appreciation for his commitment to saving them.)

The best monster movies remember the human impact as well. The original Godzilla is incredibly powerful because it emphasizes the human cost of Godzilla's rampage, from the perspective of a people just 9 years out from living through the devastation of their country in WWII (from extensive conventional bombing campaigns for months as well as the nuclear bombs at the end). Even a lot of the sequels that were more conventional monster movies still keep the human scale in mind -- for instance, the first sequel, Godzilla Raids Again, is less about how the military fights Godzilla than about how ordinary people try to carry on with their lives in a world where they could come under kaiju attack at any time.

You often see American reviews about these movies saying "People don't come to these movies for the human stories, they come for the monsters trashing things!" I don't think they appreciate how much Japanese kaiju are allegories for human fears, or human aspirations when they're heroic.

 

I’m sure a lot of people died there as well.
What was Superman supposed to do? If he went to save some humans, Zod would just start killing people. He had lost it at that point.

 

I see even in this thread there's no escaping from old arguments about Man of Steel.

I feel like the most unrealistic thing in this movie isn't the giant monsters, but the fact that the guy who runs a kaiju conspiracy podcast isn't trying to convince the world that monsters are a government hoax.

 

Another weird thing was that the fight was during the night and when they fought Mechagodzilla is was day/Dawn. That would be fine but the city’s atmosphere looked like it was late night; with people having dinner etc.

 

It's Japan - Godzilla attacking is like Tuesday over there. Company policy is probably only to evacuate once you can actually smell Godzilla.

 

I thought it was in Hong Kong.

 

So did Godzilla attack the city after Sam and Bucky visited?

 

Some of the CGI in the Kong vs Godzilla fight in the ocean looked off. The CGI monsters look better at night than they do during daylight.

 

Nothing stood out in a negative way to me. But in fairness to the CG team, doing a fight with two huge creatures (one of which is covered in hair) in the day and with massive water sims is probably amongst the hardest things to do in CG.

 

No, they have not. Comic-Superman has torn apart cities and natural land for decades. Then again, you're dealing with people who suffer from selective memory, and live off of the fumes of the Super Friends and the bottom-scraping George Reeves TV series. They conveniently forget that in the Salkind's Superman II, Metropolis was torn apart by Superman in his fight with Zod and Company. Oh, and that Reeve Superman invalidated his screaming "the people!" when he actively participated in the mass destruction.

Godzilla vs Kong: One thing I did not like or buy was Kong's growth, and the axe? So, he's Thor.....

 

I’ve almost accidentally seen all of the previous films in this series now - saw Godzilla on tv, saw Skull Island on a flight, my daughters are huge Millie Bobbie Brown fans and so we watched Godzilla: KOTM as a movie night a few weeks ago. Seeing how hard it is to find a film we can all agree on these days, I was happy enough to spend £15.99 on this (if it had been in the cinema, a family ticket would’ve been at least £25, then you’d have parking, sweets etc but, somehow, spending £15.99 to watch a film in your own house seems extravagant!).

Anyway, I have a low enough bar for a movie like this. It’s massive monster v massive monster, I just expect it to do what it says on the tin. I agree with whoever said that Pacific Rim is the best film of this genre. The plot here made absolutely no sense and you could easily have dispensed with half of the characters but I liked how Kong and Godzilla were realised and the fight sequences were well done. Having grown up with those Doug McClure movies like At the Earth’s Core, etc, I liked that whole sequence. Mechagodzilla was a good way for the heroes to bond without having to pull “save Mothra” out of the bag (didn’t the writers also write Superman Returns?).