GODZILLA

[Himu]

http://m.


Was it good?

[Joe Molotov]

[demi]

File me under "Wack as FUCK give me my 2 hours back"

[Eric P]

i found it very satisfying but i can see how it would annoy people.

it's a beautiful film (seriously beautiful cinematography)  which managed to move forward while also calling back and aligning to tropes inherent in the genre (and in the American dubs of the genre)

i was on board to hate this film from the first trailer (the first trailer appeared to completely miss the point of the first Godzilla film, which kind of annoyed me) and honestly had no plans to see it at all but i'm glad i did.

i am willing to admit that there are things that could have been done better (or differently) but overall, I am very satisfied with the movie and my experience with it.

my tastes are not everyone's tastes.

[Himu]

Does it have any cheese?

[demi]

Not particularly, unless Ken Watanabe's wooden performance counts.

"We called him... Godzirra"

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

pros and cons

+ great monster action
+ nails the spirit of Godzilla
+ is surprisingly faithful to the series legacy
+ Cranston is great
+ Godzilla gives the best performance (he's very expressive, and his expression is almost always "I am so fucking angry")
+ almost a Lovecraftian movie

- wastes its female cast members
- seriously, you got Elizabeth Olsen as the female lead and had her do nothing but look scared/loving? C'mon.
- most of the rest of the cast is a bit bland (in a monster movie, oh no, who ever heard of such a thing?)
- holds out on its very best action until the climax (not really a flaw, but this seems to bother a lot of people)
- monsters lack overtly metaphorical reason for their existence (its there, but rather buried).

I really liked it, but I'm a Kaiju genre nerd.  I had no reason to expect that a big studio mega-budget blockbuster would end up being a faithful entry in the Godzilla cannon, but I was pretty damn glad that it was.  Many people don't seem to like the slow build that happens until you get a really good

spoiler (click to show/hide)

monster vs. monster fight

[close]

but there's a lot of good suspense/disaster movie set pieces that happen along the way.  Anybody who says this film lacks the requisite mayhem quotient to be exciting, well that just baffles me.

so you should really already know if you'll like it before you go in.  If you have any affection towards that big, scaly dude with the bad breath, you'll probably like this in kind.  If you want The Raid, but with a giant, world destroying lizard, you'll be dissapointed.

[Himu]

I am going to like this.

[Shaka Khan]

+ almost a Lovecraftian movie

Well I'm sold.

[demi]

I feel that you either have to really enjoy Godzilla - of which I've never really participated in, so I went in empty

Or, I just really, really missed something with the movie to not see.

[Rahxephon91]

It was just very boring. It wasted my time until the final fight.

There was nothing to latch on in the hour or so before the big final fight. No interesting plot. No characters. Nothing. Then it had the audacity to put something cool in front of me and then cut away. Just really boring.

Ken Watanabe was terrible and also pretty pointless in the film. Always having a dumb expression on his face while saying terrible written "profound" stuff really slowly. The Olsen girl did nothing but worry and nothing else. She was in the film because they needed a girl to cry a lot.  Kick Ass dude's presence was like looking into a void of nothing.  Bryan Cranston well....

There was just nothing going on in the film. Maybe I don't like Godzilla. I remember enjoying a few of the older films as a kid, but yeah maybe now I just don't like Godzilla.  I rather watch Pacific Rim. Much better film.

[Trent Dole]

It's a good Summer film. I saw it on a giant screen in 3D which feels like the right way to experience something like this. Not mind blowing but not shit either. Really well shot with human protags you won't care about.

[demi]

There was just so much needless scenes.

Two that stand out are the Hawaii babysitting stuff - oh noes, your kid is lost! It is ok, I will bring him back. Here is my toy. Take good care of him! Oh shit! Monster attacks! I will save you kid! Kid safely delivered. The end. Toy assumingly lost into the ocean, with no care in the world.

And crazy black bus driver. FUCK ALL THESE WHITE FOLK, WE OUTTA HERE. VROOOOOM (5 seconds later) OH SHIT A POLE HAS FALLEN. NOW I AM STOPPED.

[TakingBackSunday]

KING OF THE MONSTERS: OUR SAVIOR?

ugh

[nudemacusers]

i didn't get any lovecraftian vibes at all from this. however it is basically a high budget not-dude-in-costume godzilla movie, genre markers and all. i thought it was aight. c+?

[Human Snorenado]

I lurve me some Gojira, so I'm sure I'll enjoy it when I get around to seeing it in the near future.

[nudemacusers]

having been exposed to basically every godzilla movie made over the last couple of weeks/month, yes, if you dig godzilla you'll like it. i was hoping for something a little outside of the parameters, which didn't really happen imo.

[Eric P]

I can kind of see the lovecraft thing (unknowable uncontrollable creatures older than man) but i don't know if that's a super deep reading of it

[Bebpo]

Yeah, I grew up on Godzilla films and can put up with a lot of crap to get my Godzilla.  It's why I don't hate this new one.  It was...ok at best to me personally for enjoying the bits I could enjoy, but it's definitely a bad, bad movie and should've been 100x better with a better director in charge.  Monsters had decent characters and intensity, like the river boat scene and the jeep in the forest; so not sure why everything outside the monsters in this one was so flat and awful.  It's possible Edwards wanted to make a good film but it got ruined by studio-blockbuster-focused development which forced bad aspects onto the film itself.

But then even the action scenes generally felt lacking in impact and B+ at best.  The best scenes were just the creatures coming into view and posing dramatically.  I think Edwards is an incredibly amateur director who needs another 10 years to bake and should not be directing 160 million dollar studio films already.

[Steve Contra]

"Digging Godzilla" doesn't mean anything though.  I mean there's 30 Godzilla movies in total, with wildly different tones. 

[nudemacusers]

"Digging Godzilla" doesn't mean anything though.  I mean there's 30 Godzilla movies in total, with wildly different tones.

some are goofier than others, and a couple have the monster shit in the background, but they're all cut from the same cloth.

[Tasty]

Yeah, and like I said. I can see people liking and even loving this Godzilla. I just didn't, and I don't see how someone not liking this one isn't valid. I agree with Rahx for the most part about the teasing, showing shit destroyed without showing the destruction, etc. But then again, I still enjoy the objectively awful Zilla with Matthew Broderick. So I dunno, maybe I'm not the best judge when it comes to this particular franchise.

At the end of the day, I'll probably end up watching the sequel in theaters anyway due to my pathetic geekery when it comes to this franchise. Especially if my favorite Kaiju of all time, King MOTHERFUCKING Ghidora, is shown in gloriously high budget CGI.

Ghidora

Hydreigon is like my favorite Pokemon cause of Ghidora

[Human Snorenado]

 

[Himu]

Bring up Pokemon in a thread about Godzilla, brehs.

[Tasty]

Yeah cause Godzilla is way more mature.

[Himu]

I didn't say that it was. Just that it is weird/funny.

[Tasty]

This is now a Pokemon thread. What's y'all favorite one?

[AdmiralViscen]

I like Godzilla (or at least, I did when I was a kid), and I had mad hype for this movie. It didn't live up to it but I did enjoy it.

If humans were gonna get that much screen time they probably should have had some personality, and the lead actor sucked dick.

[chronovore]

yeah, nobody said anything about maturity, it's just a really weird thing to bring up.  like the guy that has to connect everything to football or something.

That comparison was a total touchdown!

[MrAngryFace]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla,_Mothra_and_King_Ghidorah:_Giant_Monsters_All-Out_Attack

+

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla:_Final_Wars

[chronovore]

Ryuhei Kitamura directed Final Wars, didn't he? That was a fun ride.

[MrAngryFace]

its absurd and fantastic

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

its so absurd.  So, so, so absurd.  Even for a Godzilla film.

Every time I watch it I find new things to admire/hate.  I can't believe it took until my fifth rewatch or so to notice the Nazi-ish uniforms the good guys wear on their downtime.  Also, Don Frye as the white guy Chewbacca who seems unnatural at everything is pretty damn entertaining.



also, I'm not backing down from the Lovecraftian-ish angle.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Godzilla is namedropped as an actual ancient god at one point.  Godzilla and mutos have been essentially immortal and already once destroyed all life on the planet, they've been resting uneasily for eons since until their reawakening.

[close]

That's not exactly subtle.  Right?

the Godzilla nerd in me is pumped that this film is doing so well, and will likely kick off a franchise.  Holy crap, I now live in a world where there's going to be more Kaiju films coming at some point, that its not a dead genre anymore.  That feels good.

It would be even better if they put some of the weirder monsters in the next installment.  Biollante would fit in well in 'grim-dark-grounded' Godzilla.

[pilonv1]

This is now a Pokemon thread. What's y'all favorite one?

[Tasty]

[Himu]

Hyper zone, Japan has a lot of uniforms like that. See: persona 3 and other Japanese media.

[drew]

movie sucked.  maybe I'm just too old and these movies are for little kids like when I used to watch them...they killed off the best human character early and from then on it was CALL OF DUTY the movie.  had its moments though, the whole bit about the 50's nuke tests not being tests/the STALKERish goin in the irradiated zone/the scale of the first monster when he wakes up 0_0  I swear he shrunk by the time he got to the golden gate bridge though

[Shaka Khan]

[Great Rumbler]

Just got back from the movie and it was pretty okay. Not anything amazing and too slow in parts, but I was really into it when it mattered.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Godzilla wasting that female Rodan-thing with his atomic breath brought a tear to my eye.

[close]

[drew]

by that time the only thing that was bringing a tear to my eye was my raw ass

[Great Rumbler]

You shouldn't do stuff like that in a movie theater.