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.

Aquaman: A Fun Blender Of Stupid

Beefcake.

What a trip! Aquaman is like the best movie that is a 6/10 movie. Like the best 6/10 that ever 6/10’d. Warner Brother’s DC’s Aquaman is what happens when you mix the following elements into one movie:

• Power Rangers
• Thor
• The 1980’s action stereotypes
• The Fast and Furious franchise
• A 2018 blockbuster budget

There’s no bones about it. This movie is Dumb! Capital ‘D’ Dumb. But it’s also fun.

It has some laugh out loud moments that are intentional. Then some I’m pretty sure weren’t intentional but they’re great anyway, like when ‘Africa’ by Pitbull plays. Or the green screen-CGI looks funny. The gratuitous slow-mo for 80’s style action glamour shots of abs and pecs and super hero landings, plus one scene that looked slow-mo’d through a free iPhone app.

It’s campy. They know it and they take it seriously enough that you believe it, but it’s still campy. I like how silly everything looks. People riding seahorses and sharks with saddles. That’s great!

Shark horses!

Embarrassing looking costumes but they own them. I can really appreciate that. Some of these outfits are stupid. These are some Power Rangers/Super Sentai level costumes. But they take them seriously. There are no winks to the audience. So you roll with it and smile. Amber Heard wearing a jellyfish dress? Sure!

One thing I really did find myself enjoying was the number of different “cultures” they dipped into and explored. The Atlanteans are clearly Greek inspired, with the Amber Heard ones are sort the Rohan to their Gondor, the seahorse people being a “tech” culture, the horrible demon sea creatures (where it felt like James Wan’s horror background really came through) and then the Crab People. That was fun. The Crab People were my favourite. And setting all these cultures up should make for a really fun sequel.

Jason Mamoa is fine. He does his thing. He is buff and large and dopey. Amber Heard is okay. Nicole Kidman needed more screen time. Seeing Dolph Lundgren go from direct to DVD trash to big budget trash warms my soul. It’s cool to see Patrick Wilson get a sizeable role.

The plot is by the numbers. Checkmarks and rubber stamps. Boilerplate. Whatever. No real twists. The romance is bland. It’s enough to keep you moving and get you through the world they want to show. It could have been tightened up but it wasn’t, and it gets by.

It’s a very Thor on earth story. He’s a fish out of water but reversed as he doesn’t really know much about the world underwater. So it’s a fish in water story. He’s unsure of culture, doesn’t care, fight, punch, ignorant, etc. There’s definite Conan The Barbarian vibes. That cheesy level of 80s hero buff-man saves everyone story.

Action and dialogue are often sequestered and it feels strange to have what feels like a 10 minute fight scene have no dialogue beyond grunts and CGI fight moves. If you’re trying to simulate a real serious fight, that’s one thing. But we know they aren’t. The tone of the movie isn’t that kind of tone, so you almost drift when you’re looking at the 14th CGI water attack in a row.

This really felt like DC’s first kick to the nuts of the Snyder-verse. Wonder Woman and Justice League were steps away, but they were still grim and washed out with speed-up/slow-down action scenes.

The look of Aquaman doesn’t “fit” that.

Gone:

• Five-pronged trident.
• Edgelord armour.
• Everything being grey and brown.
• Everyone frowning.
• Everyone’s life sucks.
• Not being able to talk without air.

In:

• An actual trident with three prongs.
• The 1960’s orange and green armour.
• Colours.
• People smile and make intentional jokes.
• Characters are allowed to be happy.
• There is daytime and sunshine.
• Able to talk under water.

And it should be that way. This is Aquaman. He isn’t Batman. He isn’t part of the Watchmen. He isn’t that serious, and audiences won’t take him that seriously. He talks to fish and pals around with seahorse people and crab people and is a bit of a knucklehead.

The only two real drawbacks to the movie to me come down to two things: run time and cinematography.

This movie could have been 45 minutes shorter and I’m sure if I re-watch it I’ll find myself using fast-forward through a good chunk of the middle 90 minutes. The entire B-Plot villain doesn’t need to be there. A fan edit that cuts that stuff down could really tighten this movie up.

As for cinematography it comes down to two issues. The first, I think they were trying to go for a “free-flowing” camera like it was in water. However, the camera spinning and zipping like crazy has times where you are looking at the screen unsure of what you’re looking at. I really hate looking at a movie and trying to “pause” it in my head so I can figure out who is who and what is what.

The second issue with the cinematography is the number of times they do the “one take” camera shot that is clearly like 1729 camera shots composited together. I can live without this ever happening again in any movie. If it is to happen, it needs to have a style and a trick to it. But there’s no substance to that kind of shot when it’s just zooming through windows and across rooftops then back to the street when everything is clearly a green screen in a sound stage.

However, they deserve huge props for the look of the movie. It could have been super distracting with the underwater effect but they found a way to make it blend in and you don’t notice it. The hair floats a little, the movements are floaty and swimmy, everything is blue and green without being grey, the costume and architecture is distinct and well done.

The movie is fun. It doesn’t take itself seriously. I don’t know if its “run to your nearest theatre” good, but it might be worth a free evening. If not, find a lazy evening once it is on Netflix and stuff yourself with popcorn.

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