I also really liked Godzilla 2014 and while I don't think this is as good, yeah there are definitely some incredible looking shots that are basically designed to be turned into gifs and screenshots/posters.
The kaiju feel gigantic and weighty and menacing and powerful, all of that carries over pretty well from 2014.
EDIT: The showing was more or less empty for us as well, maybe 20-30 people max? It was in the afternoon, although it is during half-term holidays for the school kids so I would have hoped to see some more people in there.
I also really liked Godzilla 2014 and while I don't think this is as good, yeah there are definitely some incredible looking shots that are basically designed to be turned into gifs and screenshots/posters.
The kaiju feel gigantic and weighty and menacing and powerful, all of that carries over pretty well from 2014.
Name me one Kaiju fight scene that was impressive. None. Even in the Pacific Rim films, they were predictable and slow.
That sky dive scene in the 2014 is still the most iconic shot in a movie in recent memory for me. Gorgeous, and ominous, too. That's what this film offers. This obsession with CGI fight scenes isn't healthy. If you want a fight scene, watch the Jason Bourne or RAID films.
Skull Island's fight scenes were boring, yet people love that sort. The mind boggles.
Pacific Rim's fight scenes were great though and they were good enough for me to look past the more generic characters. On another note the most iconic shots for a Kaiju film came from the Godzilla 2012 trailer.
Huh...I'd have thought that for a movie that features a three headed, 300 foot tall golden dragon that shoots lightening, hollow earth would be an easy sell.
I expressed myself badly. I was replying someone saying that the critics are wrong about complaining the movie is not cheese
I LOVE the hollow heart stuff in Kong. A movie that embraces the cheese and silly of it's premise with a genuine heart.
Godzilla on the othet side has 0 heart or genuine emotion outside the monster side, exactly because it's trying to be more grounded and serious so things like the hollow earth don't quite work. Kaiju movies are cheese by nature and both Godzillas seems afraid to really embrace it
Just saw it, I'm surprised how close I came to outright hating it. It's easily the most disappointing film I've seen this year and reminded me way too much of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The Good:
+ Bear McReary's musical score is dope as hell, especially near the end.
+ Some great individual images.
+ Kyle Chandler and Ken Watanabe really try their hardest to salvage this mess.
+ The monsters look great...when you can see them.
+ The final 30 minutes were actually pretty decent as they zoned in on what everyone came to see while (mostly) pushing the bullshit to the background.
The Bad:
- The script. Hoo-boy this thing is a fucking mess. Reads like a first draft someone scrawled on a napkin and the studio bafflingly greenlit.
- More to the point the dialogue is frequently awful. Just generic placeholder platitudes and nothing creative or memorable (in a good way). A lot of really on-the-nose crap like Eleven calling another character a "monster" (humans are the real monsters, geddit?)
- Painfully bad comic relief. "Oh my God-zillah" was not some cheeky trailer edit like people insisted - it's just like that in the movie.
- Thomas Middleditch and Bradley Whitford's cringe-worthy characters should've been eliminated entirely.
- Eleven was annoying. Throwing a child into the middle of all the carnage is not what I want out of a Godzilla film.
- Too much human drama. They didn't really listen much to the complaints about the first; there's still tons of tedious soap opera drama here and again it all feels like placeholder crap you'd see in any forgettable blockbuster.
- The main plot twist is hilariously bad.
Awful considerate of Vera Farmiga to edit a video montage accompanying her villain monologue lmao
- Too many characters. There are like 20 characters in this thing and it ensures that most of them barely get a chance to do anything or become interesting.
- One character's death is handled very poorly
Sally Hawkins just disappears out of the movie like she had a family emergency and they had to quickly reverse-engineer her demise
- Too long gaps between the monster action.
- The direction is really bad, especially during the monster fights. Everything has this hideous grey hue to it, there are garish digital zooms that went out of fashion about 10 years ago, blurry CGI, obnoxious editing so it's tough to figure out what's going on. Would it kill them to just stage a fight that wasn't covered in rain/ash/fog etc?
- The post-credits scene is not worth 12 minutes of your life.
Most of all I'm just surprised how bored I was for long stretches of the film. More power to fans if they like it, but I don't think it's "expecting too much" for a film about monsters annihilating each other to actually have a vaguely interesting story and decent characters.
Just came out...
Trailer was much better than the actual movie imo.
Visually its good, I thought it would make me like it despite the rest, but it was too hard to overlook the flaws.
However it was my first time seeing a movie on a onyx led screen, and it really is perfect, great lighs and colors, and the 3d becomes actually great with this screen so theres that.
But the actual movie, aside from the visuals... yeah it was bad imo
I expressed myself badly. I was replying someone saying that the critics are wrong about complaining the movie is not cheese
I LOVE the hollow heart stuff in Kong. A movie that embraces the cheese and silly of it's premise with a genuine heart.
Godzilla on the othet side has 0 heart or genuine emotion outside the monster side, exactly because it's trying to be more grounded and serious so things like the hollow earth don't quite work. Kaiju movies are cheese by nature and both Godzillas seems afraid to really embrace it
I can't agree more with shaneo632. Your review is spot on and how I felt.
Not only the acting was ter-ri-ble, the dialogues made it even worst. So many near death situations and stupid decisions, I lost interest so fast. I know it's a monster movie but come on.
The movie was stunning at times, but that's about it.
Just saw it, I'm surprised how close I came to outright hating it. It's easily the most disappointing film I've seen this year and reminded me way too much of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The Good:
+ Bear McReary's musical score is dope as hell, especially near the end.
+ Some great individual images.
+ Kyle Chandler and Ken Watanabe really try their hardest to salvage this mess.
+ The monsters look great...when you can see them.
+ The final 30 minutes were actually pretty decent as they zoned in on what everyone came to see while (mostly) pushing the bullshit to the background.
The Bad:
- The script. Hoo-boy this thing is a fucking mess. Reads like a first draft someone scrawled on a napkin and the studio bafflingly greenlit.
- More to the point the dialogue is frequently awful. Just generic placeholder platitudes and nothing creative or memorable (in a good way). A lot of really on-the-nose crap like Eleven calling another character a "monster" (humans are the real monsters, geddit?)
- Painfully bad comic relief. "Oh my God-zillah" was not some cheeky trailer edit like people insisted - it's just like that in the movie.
- Thomas Middleditch and Bradley Whitford's cringe-worthy characters should've been eliminated entirely.
- Eleven was annoying. Throwing a child into the middle of all the carnage is not what I want out of a Godzilla film.
- Too much human drama. They didn't really listen much to the complaints about the first; there's still tons of tedious soap opera drama here and again it all feels like placeholder crap you'd see in any forgettable blockbuster.
- The main plot twist is hilariously bad.
Awful considerate of Vera Farmiga to edit a video montage accompanying her villain monologue lmao
- Too many characters. There are like 20 characters in this thing and it ensures that most of them barely get a chance to do anything or become interesting.
- One character's death is handled very poorly
Sally Hawkins just disappears out of the movie like she had a family emergency and they had to quickly reverse-engineer her demise
- Too long gaps between the monster action.
- The direction is really bad, especially during the monster fights. Everything has this hideous grey hue to it, there are garish digital zooms that went out of fashion about 10 years ago, blurry CGI, obnoxious editing so it's tough to figure out what's going on. Would it kill them to just stage a fight that wasn't covered in rain/ash/fog etc?
- The post-credits scene is not worth 12 minutes of your life.
Most of all I'm just surprised how bored I was for long stretches of the film. More power to fans if they like it, but I don't think it's "expecting too much" for a film about monsters annihilating each other to actually have a vaguely interesting story and decent characters.
Agree with pretty much all of this (Except I didn't like Kyle Chandler either)
There are 5 minutes where I was absolutely delighted with the movie and slapping my knee in approval but you have to sit through 90 minutes of mostly rubbish before you get to it.
And um, that bit at the end, (not the post credits tease) that was too much. Absolute nonsense.
So like TDLink has been saying for months, Millie is that bad huh? Well that sucks even more since (even though it's been reported already, I'll spoil tag it just in case)
she is in Godzilla vs Kong along with Kyle Chandler
The human perspective is what makes kaiju movies special, at least for me. It's partially why I only like a few in the genre, most don't attempt to mesh the giant monster action with the ground-level human drama/chaos due to that giant monster action
I'm assuming the movie doesn't skip over fights like 2014, but rather intertwines the fights with human stuff happening around and during the fights?
Wow that was actually bad.
The few action scenes were frankly just not fun to watch. Awful cinematography (like "taken 3" levels of bad) and boring to non-existant choreography.
Don't go in expecting awesome kaiju wrestling or extensive battles with a lot of destruction like in pacific rim.
Sure, you see more of the kaijus than in the 2014 movie in general, but mostly in establishing money shots.
I would even say that the actual battle scenes are altogether shorter and way worse choreographed/interesting to watch than the final fight in the 2014 movie alone.
I honestly don't know what they were thinking with this one. I expected a lot but not to be constantly underwhelmed by the action scenes. It's a shame because the creature designs are fantastic and all the ingredients for a fantastic godzilla experience are right there.
The story and human characters are awful but that was to be expected.
What I did not expect was that they also still constantly cut away to the human characters during the battles.
So, if you go in simply to enjoy more awesome kaiju battles than in the 2014 film (like I did) , this is sadly not what the film delivers. Well, there are more battles in theory, but they are neither well presented, nor interesting to watch.
Also, the shot of Rodan flying over the city is the only scene in the movie where a kaiju actively destroys a city and the audience gets a glimpse of the constantly alluded-to damage and catastrophe is shown. Everything else takes place in already destroyed and levels cities. Probably the biggest sin in a giant monster movie ;)
That's if course just my opinion of the film, I hope you guys enjoy it more than me and my group.
I have to agree that this was a disappointment. Definitely the worst film of the kaijuverse so far.
I think the biggest problems are the overemphasis on human characters and the frankly incoherent direction and editing in the kaiju action scenes. Also why is the whole film seamingly set at night.
Gotta admit I'm perplexed at the action sequences being not that great. I figured Michael Doegherty would have nailed the monster part, at least, given Krampus and Trick 'r Treat. (Haven't seen it yet. Seeing it with the wife tomorrow.)
Gotta admit I'm perplexed at the action sequences being not that great. I figured Michael Doegherty would have nailed the monster part, at least, given Krampus and Trick 'r Treat. (Haven't seen it yet. Seeing it with the wife tomorrow.)
From what I'm hearing it sounds like this film got the same treatment as Pacific Rim Uprising. Taking a smaller director who isn't well known for action films and giving him a decent budget and hoping it works. Which is a shame because Krampus and Trick r Treat are amazingly well directed.
Say what you will, but Gareth Edwards at least had some experience with shooting his film Monsters before taking Godzilla.
From what I'm hearing it sounds like this film got the same treatment as Pacific Rim Uprising. Taking a smaller director that isn't well known for action films and giving him a budget and hoping it works. Which is a shame because Krampus and Trick r Treat are amazingly well directed.
Say what you will, but Gareth Edwards at least had some experience with shooting his film Monsters before taking Godzilla.
Actually Godzilla 2014 was very similar in themes. I'm a big fan of Monsters and Ebert's great review sums it up nicely:
"Monsters" was written and directed by Gareth Edwards. He also created all the special effects. He shot on location. All of the characters, except the leads, are played by locals. They're untrained, which means they're all the more convincing. Edwards had a minuscule budget, but let's say he knew how to spend it.
"Monsters" holds our attention ever more deeply as we realize it's not a casual exploitation picture. We expect that sooner or later, we'll get a good look at the aliens close up. When we do, let's say it's not a disappointment. They're ugly and uncannily beautiful. We've never seen anything like them. And their motives are made clear in a sequence combining uncommon suspense and uncanny poetry.
Edwards is brilliant at evoking the awe and beauty he has been building toward, and at last we fully realize the film's ambitious arc. I think the lesson may be: Life has its reasons. Motives are pretty universal. Monsters are in the eye of the beholder.
From what I'm hearing it sounds like this film got the same treatment as Pacific Rim Uprising. Taking a smaller director who isn't well known for action films and giving him a decent budget and hoping it works. Which is a shame because Krampus and Trick r Treat are amazingly well directed.
Say what you will, but Gareth Edwards at least had some experience with shooting his film Monsters before taking Godzilla.
Based on what people are saying I'm really starting to wonder if the editing was completely fucked up/hacked up the fights since the version I saw (I haven't seen the finished final version yet).
Once I do see it I'll post my thoughts. Because the constant cutaway stuff does not gel with my memory of the movie at all, granted it was last year.
