View: https://youtu.be/wVDtmouV9kM
This trailer was something else. The tone. The colors. The sense of scale. You felt like this movie was just going to be about these primal gods rising out from beneath the Earth and absolutely obliterating human civilization as they duke it out from continent to continent. AND THAT MUSIC.
But then the film came out and you spend so much of the film adventuring with the humans on this sort of flying, do-anything aircraft. The technology in this film seems like a different universe compared to the prior film, which seemed more grounded. The humans seem to always find themselves right in the middle of the mess and avoid close call after close call. There's a plot device that can call out to the creatures by mimicking their own calls, and they can apparently hear or sense this device being used from half a world away.
The film has some really good, fun moments, but much of the anticipation of seeing these creatures in their full glory is never fully realized, as Ghidorah, the main antagonist, creates a literal hurricane around itself everywhere it travels in the film. Most of the creature footage in this film is obscured by rain, dust, smoke, fog. All sorts of effects that seemed like they were holding back on fully lit, clear shots of these creatures. Seems like the merchandise surrounding this film was the closest you ever get to seeing the full visual design of these creatures. Mothra is criminally underused. I'll give Legendary all the credit, they responded to these criticisms with some of the clearest, best lit Kaiju action ever in the followup, Godzilla vs Kong.
Anyways, I remember this film never quite reaching my original expectations, as far as the scope, scale and tone that I thought was being established by the first trailer.
Do you all have any films where the trailer set your expectations to a level the full release never reached?
