Godzilla vs Kong Is What It’s Supposed To Be

Godzilla vs Kong is everything it needs to be. It’s exaclty what you want and delivers perfectly on its premise. It’s a spectacle of big ass movie making where two giant monsters slug it out with all the roaring, punching, biting, smashing, pounding and stomping you could want.

In the best way possible, it feels like a child wrote the movie by smashing their toys together. What else were you expecting? It whips ass.

It’s Thicc Lizzy and Beeg Monke duking it out. Once. Twice. And then a third time! Plus some other great monster scenes and an expansion of this universe further into fantasy and wonder. Also wink wink ending wink wink.

Thankfully this movie is shot well. If it wasn’t it would die a death. Such a big part of the wonder of these movies is how well they’re shot and how intense the sound is engineered. There’s cinematography on display and some actual style. Director Adam Wingard did have a vision here and made sure you can understand it. They’re shot from far away to give you scale but in tight to keep things intimate.

They aren’t hiding these characters in darkness or rain. There aren’t cutaways to the humans reacting to things we don’t see happening. There’s no confusion during an action scene. This isn’t Michael Bay Transformers. It isn’t a bunch of visual mess.

When they fight at night you get them backlight by the neon lights of Hong Kong. It works excellently to illuminate every nook and cranny of Godzilla’s scales. It works perfectly in theme with Godzilla and his radioactive white-blue scales and breath.

Kong moves differently, fights differently and sounds differently. This all gives him is own character instead of just being Monster 2. He’s the hero character. This movie is as much about him than it is anything or anyone else. The humans can communicate with him and he can communicate back. He can smile and emote. Godzilla doesn’t do any of that.

Humanizing Kong relies on the best human character in the movie, Jia. She’s played by Kaylee Hottle and is the only human character that Kong can trust. They communicate using sign language and without her, Kong would never get on board or trust the humans enough to fight for them against Godzilla.

The humans are the human characters. You’ve got your conspiracy freaks, mad scientists, regular fellas, military dudes, evil business pricks and good folks. Are the characters deep? No. Do they need to be? Also no. Would it be better if they were? I don’t know. They don’t really do too much but they do help to move the plot along and serve the framework of a story as you take a breath between action scenes.

It’s Tyranitar vs Rillaboom. That’s why you’re watching. The human drama is always the downside to these movies but there has to be a plot to action along. The humans do the least this time out compared to the others and that rocks.

I won’t get too into the plot as it can easily become spoilers, but Godzilla is attacking science corporation military experiment bases. We don’t know why. Then we find out.

There is also some evil human plot about energy or whatever. Doesn’t really matter. It’s just an excuse to have the humans around to speak exposition and move the movie from setting to setting.

That’s how we get our fight on aircraft carriers on the ocean with boats and missiles. That’s how we get our crazy theme park VR ride where we see more monsters and the world expands into fantasy. It’s how we get to the night time fight and then the day time fight.

For the most part the humans stay out of the way. They’ve finally realized that rifles and F-22’s aren’t going to do anything to these titans. The humans do get their little victory moments but they are little.

We’re here to watch the Dragonzord fight Optimus Primal. The movie doesn’t forget that. This movie is far more sci-fi fantasy than it is realistic. That’s what I want, but I did appreciate 2014’s Godzilla because of how real world it felt. Kong in 2017 felt the same, relatively speaking.

But I don’t know how you do King of the Monsters and then this versus movie by keeping things so grounded.

My only complaint for this movie is that I wasn’t able to see it in a theatre. I bought it on demand, turned the lights off, turned up the surround sound and made a night in of it. But that won’t do this movie justice the way that a giant screen in a dark theatre with a booming sound system would. I’m going to keep my eyes open for a re-run showing of this in the cinema sometime.

It’s all this and a bag of chips in under two hours. There are no wasted scenes and nothing is drawn out artificially.

I don’t know how you could watch this movie and be unhappy with it. Did you not know what you’re sitting down to watch? Give me more monster movies. I’d love to see one of these with Guillermo Del Toro at the helm.

This movie isn’t playing tricks on you. Godzilla. King Kong. Wrestlemania.

Sit back and mark out.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is Radical

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the movie is everything your brain would make you think it would be. When you picture that title, you get a certain movie in your head. That is exactly the movie that gets delivered. Godzilla. Monsters. And a Wrestlemania match to determine who is king. Oh and, like wrestling, some worthless human drama you want to skip over.

That isn’t to say that the movie is completely mindless. It isn’t Transformers. There is substance to this movie. There is movie to the movie. Maybe not as much as some audience goers would want, but it isn’t devoid of craft beyond well done CGI. The movie isn’t insulting you for watching it.

Now, maybe there is a Godzilla film someday that’s sort of Cloverfield-esque and focuses on the disaster movie side of how you could tell this where it’s all about a really interesting drama on the ground following an ensemble cast of not-invincible characters. But when you put Godzilla in the title, you gotta deliver on Godzilla. This movie does exactly that.

It’s Godzilla. It’s monsters. It’s well done destruction porn without feeling like Man of Steel. It’s a big, dumb, fun, good, well made, cheesy movie. Plus, have you ever subscribed to the theory of “F*ck Boston”?

It isn’t just a retread of a 1v1 monster fight as if it were a procedural show. “This week on Godzilla, he fights Ghidorah!” They really spider-webbed out to make this “universe” bigger without going all The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

If you’re a long time Godzilla fan, you’re gonna get your easter eggs and mythology. If you’re new-ish, you’re gonna get your mythology and a few nods you might remember. If you’re new-new, then I think it does a decent job of introducing you to the world and catching you up. If you’re a fan of the Fallout games, well this may be your new head-canon.

Since 2014 they’ve realized that there are more than just three or four of these giant monsters. Secret government organizations are researching them and trying to harvest/control them. There are fanatics who see Godzilla as basically Jesus. You have your “lets just blow them up!” politicians and military people. You have your scientists that are so horny for the science that they get blinded by the science so they don’t really see reality. That’s neat because it’s accurate. The human-world side of this is intriguing because we’re no longer the alpha species and watching people react to this is endless potential.

But the human-people story side is always so lame because they have to Main Protagonist Power a select few individuals where convenient plot armour protects them from the dangers of the world that everyone else is vulnerable to. I guess I get it. They’re actors, you’re paying for some name value, they want to deliver a performance, etc. It can just feel silly at times. It doesn’t help that the human-people story side of it kinda flatlines and stops evolving after like 40% of the way into the movie.

The Dad gets kind of annoying. The Mom sucks. Millie Bobby Brown is pretty good. Charles Dance didn’t get enough screen time to really round things out and fill up his character to max potential. The rest of the humans were adequate.

Ken Watanabe steals every scene. He really gets to act his ass off and its a pleasure. He’s the best human in the entire movie and really gets to shine. Full praise. I’d have rather he was the main character in the film instead of a supporting character. Less can be more though.

They get into it pretty early with the monsters/Titans and emphasize how little of a chance the humans have. Its almost a running gag that every time the humans are like “blah blah containment fields/our anti monster guns/super bombs” that the monsters brush it off as if it was a mildly coordinated house fly attack.

The McGuffin is pretty dumb. The rest of this paragraph is mild is spoilers for the first 14 minutes of the movie. How do you mimic something you’ve never been able to encounter ever just by spinning a dial? That’s like being able to speak a language just because you brained really hard. Yes, coexistence good. But the idea that all these monsters somehow all speak the exact same language and you just need to spin the computer dials like it’s a hack mini-game from Arkham Asylum is full on dumb. The existence of the Brown Note is more realistic.

There’s some Venom level dumbass-ness that happens. Like comically dumb plot just to make that plot get plotting. And that’s where I started to really tire of the characters we’ve been hanging out with. Luckily, outside of two extended lulls, they keep the monsters doing monster stuff.

The money in this movie really does go to the look and sound of the Titans. From the monster growls to the way they sound when they move to the sound of their breathing, it’s amazing. And then the music is even better. It’s a great score that never overpowers you but totally hangs out as a really good sidekick to add to the scenes.

The cinematography is good and has a few of those key frames that make you go “Wow!”, but I’m not really sure if this movie is shot any better than the previous one. There were a few times where the camera felt like it was doing too much and moving too freely and when that happens it can make the action and the monsters feel smaller than they are. It’s only a couple times, but I noticed it.

Every monster looks distinct and they each get their own colour which really aids the aesthetic. Most of the movie is so dark that it could have been a bit of a mess trying to track Godzilla vs Ghidorah and Rodan, etc. But because Godzilla gets blue, Ghidorah gets yellow, Rodan gets red, etc. it makes it easy to follow. They’re all lit excellently. It isn’t quite Pacific Rim with it’s colour palette and lighting, but it makes sure you know what is happening which is always appreciated in action movies of this scale.

They give the monsters their own characters. And while it largely isn’t much above Titans fighting to be the alpha, you get a sense of personality from them. Without giving too much hinted at+stated plot away, Ghidorah’s more about anarchy+destruction while Godzilla is about order and a semblance of coexistence (but he still makes sure the humans know who the king is). Mothra gets a bit of character and so does Rodan. It isn’t much, but it’s another step to making them more than just fighting monsters.

Much like the first Godzilla movie, this one is an In Theatre experience. You need to see it on a big screen with a booming sound system to really help add that weight and effect to the scale of these monsters. When your seat shakes as the monsters rumble, it helps the movie feel that much more visceral. When one of them roars loud enough to shake a building, you want that vibration. A D-Box showing would be an excellent way to get every penny out of your movie ticket.

If you wait until Netflix for a movie like this, you’re not going to get that chair shaking audio every time Godzilla steps forward. And with how much of the movie takes place at night time and in storms, you’re dealing in a lot of grey, navy and black tones which always suffer in the digital compression of movies on streaming services.

There isn’t much more you could want from a Godzilla movie. Unless maybe he fights King Kong next.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.