I finally saw the movie yesterday after two previous attempts fell apart rather spectacularly. So my dreams of watching it in a big IMAX theater with as many people as possible evaporated and I went to see it after work, on a friday. tired as fuck, in a rather small (but comfy) and mostly empty theater. So yeah I'm rather biased because I love this fucking franchise but this movie was amazing. All the major problems I had with it lie with the motivations of the human antagonists which make no sense whatsoever. I had some mild issues with a nuke being used to revive Godzilla and by Serizawa of all people and the idea that the monsters radiation makes jungles grow n their footsteps made me go all Hans Solo from TFA.
That is not how radtiation works.
No good at all should come from nuclear energy, weapons or radiation in a Godzilla movie, but I'm willing to forgive since there were other parts of the movie that handled the topic with the care it demands. I liked the crew of the Argo and MBB as far as the human characters are concerned, even discount Rick Sanchez didn't annoy me all that much. I hoped that Ice Cube Jr would have a bigger role but he did well with what he was given. It's a shame that Serizawa and Graham are gone, I don't know how the rest of the cast will work without them in vs. Kong. Friday Night Lights got kinda prepped as the next Serizawa by inheriting his 124 page collection of dick butt sketches but I feel without those two we'll be missing some heart and warmth in the next movie.
So much for the humans, I thought the monsters were the real stars and this movie did give me everything I wanted as far as monsters and monster battles are concerned. I'm one of the guys who was absolutely fine with the Jaws-like approach in 2014 and I was surprised that KOTM pretty much continued along those lines. You get the same kind of build up, the same kind of camera angles and of course the human characters are inserted into the monster battles which puts their size into context and makes you appreciate how raw the fights are and how majestic the monsters look when filmed from these angles. I appreciated that, I'm sure most people didn't. It didn't feel like Godzilla had more screentime than in 2014 which, again, is fine by me and as I've been told over and over for all these years it's not about how much you've got but about how well you use what you've got.
The battle of Boston worked very well and ranks high among the best monster brawls in the franchise. As I hinted before I liked the way the human characters were inserted into the battle. I get a kick out of them doing their thing while these behemoths clash in the background and shit goes flying everywhere. People tend to feel robbed for some reason if parts of the battle are obscured or happen in the background, I sort of get this but I also know that most of the people who wish for a pure, unobstructed monster mash without cutaways to human characters would probably get hit by the Bayformers effect of over stimulation and wish for more restraint and... to put it plainly, craft in putting these creatures on the screen. It's one of the aspects that 2014, Skull Island and KOTM do better than their Japanese predecessors. You got guys running around while the apocalypse is going on around them and the stakes are high, at least after Graham's death shows there are no magic force fields that protect named characters.
Some random notes:
- loved the score, kind of wished that more classic themes had been used
- loved the hollow earth, ancient civilization stuff, it actually makes me wish for some sort of ( probably animated ?) show or film that is set in a time when that city was populated by people with Godzilla resting on that temple and people praying to him like he's an actual god, some fucking Conan/Tulsa Doom shit, well the box office results make that highly unlikely so I guess I should forget about that
- now this one might make matters worse for most people but I would have loved if instead of being eco terrorists the antagonists were some sort of Lovecraft inspired cultists looking to wake the elder/first gods and that these cultist had infiltrated Monach more thoroughly, that's a personal preference and I have no idea whehter he movie would have done better with critics, I also think they should have used First Gods instead of Titans as a name for the creatures
- I previously said that Mechagodzilla won't happen because the Legendary universe is too grounded, well scratch that, they went full sci-fi with those Monarch facilities and vehicles, the credits even hinted that Mechagodzilla is indeed happening or rather would indeed be happening if this movie hadn't been a box office disaster
- vs. Kong needs a classic Toho monster, I enjoyed Legendary's takes on KG, Rodan and Mothra, I want to see more reimaginings before the MonsterVerse gets shitcanned
