#kwo at the movies

[kaijuworldorder]

Gadzooki + Konky Donk: The Empire Magazine review

Oh shit I was supposed to post this weeks ago and forgot, oops. Anyway, having seen Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire a second time and solidified my opinion of it, yeah it's pretty good! Major glow-up from the previous entry. It's not perfect and is no less stupid than its predecessor, but it's the kind of dumb movie that I like, one that doesn't go out of its way to insult my intelligence or annoy me. The things that worked about Godzilla vs. Kong are here only way more, and the things that sucked are mostly not here. There's just enough substance that my adult self is happy, and all the mindless wild spectacle that makes kWo Junior cheer and want to bash action figures together. Adam Wingard said in an interview that his aim was to make a modern-day Toho Champion Festival movie, and I think he succeeded. I'm no longer nearly as worried about the future of the MonsterVerse as I was. I thought this picture was going to suck ass, but I sure ate my words. 4 stars, check it out if you haven't yet.

There's the short version. Under the cut, I'll get into specifics of what I liked and what I didn't. If you're still wanting to see GxK and somehow haven't yet, I recommend doing so before reading on, because I spoil a lot of the movie here.

WHAT I LIKED

Big-time Inhumanoids vibes. The tone, the “journey into a subterranean world to stop evil monsters from taking over Earth” plot, Skar King being kinda like Metlar personality-wise and living in a horrible lava hell, the wacky pseudoscience and power armor (well, just a gauntlet but you get the picture), the gruesome violence…I half-expected the end credits to sound like this. GxK is the closest I think we will ever get to a big-budget theatrical Inhumanoids motion picture, unless a miracle happens and Hasbro decides to give a shit again and buys back the rights. For those who aren't familiar with Inhumanoids: get familiar with it, you’ll thank me later.

Rebecca Hall's new hairstyle. Yeah.

Bernie no longer sucks. Way less grating and unfunny, doesn't parrot fascist talking points every goddamned second, and the sense of wonder he shows upon seeing the Hollow Earth for the first time really won me over.

Jia. One of the previous movie’s strongest aspects in my opinion, particularly her dynamic with Kong, and that holds true in this picture as well. She gets a good deal more to do, shows off more range, and her whole emotional arc in this hits just right for me. Feeling alone even though you’re not, feeling like you don’t fit in anywhere, thinking there must be something wrong with you but you can’t put it into words…these are things I can relate to all too well. And I won’t lie, I choked up when she chose to stay with Andrews at the end.

Unfridging the Iwi. The previous film’s most egregious, unforgivable misstep has been walked back, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s also good to see the Iwi having a more active role in the story, instead of basically being window dressing like in Kong: Skull Island, which as much as I love that movie was kind of a problem. It helps that the Hollow Earth Iwi are just extremely cool. Love the crystal spears, the gravity pyramid and all their other Sufficiently Advanced tech. They’re like if Seatopia weren’t horrible assholes, or if the Nilai Kanai were in a better movie. I like 'em!

Dentist! A thing I love about the MonsterVerse is how it comes up with creative stuff involving kaiju that no other movie has ever really thought to do (e.g. Godzilla flashing Chellen-kov LIGHT from his spines as a threat display). I also like that it shows how the world has changed in response to the emergence of Godzilla and the others—how culture, the economy, politics, and general day-to-day life have shaped themselves around these creatures. Trapper exemplifies both of these things really well. I doubt I would ever have come up with the idea of a kaiju veterinarian, let alone written a scene showing how a dental procedure on a 300-foot ape would work, but I'm so grateful for that level of worldbuilding. He’s also just a goofy weird guy and I like him.

Golden Earring "Twilight Zone" needle drop. One of my favorite songs of all time is in this movie and I know it's kinda stupid to pop for things like that, but goddammit I loved it.

Kong’s arc. There’s just something really satisfying about finally seeing a King Kong who isn’t the last of his kind. Plus he gets a Trendmasters accessory robo-glove gimmick, which is just stupid enough that I'm into it.

Monster rasslin'. I do wish the fight scenes had more weight and scale to them, but goddamn, they're just so much fun and visually engaging. I can't dislike a movie where Godzilla does a vertical suplex.

Sucko. I love this horrible little ugly-cute weirdo/giant ape version of Rock Howard, and not just because “hehe funni mokney” or the bit where Kong uses him as a blunt object to clobber those other assholes. I got genuinely invested in him and Kong bonding, as he realizes that barely anyone in the Skar King’s domain ever showed him genuine kindness before. He is good and can stay.

The Skar King. Fantastic love-to-hate-him scumbag villain, chock-full of personality. You really want to see Kong and Godzilla kick this guy’s ass, and his cruelty and tyranny getting paid back in full at the end is so satisfying. The only thing that really sucks about him is his uncreative name. Like come on, “Hanuman” was RIGHT THERE, especially since the Whipslash can totally stand in for a tail.

Skar King’s soldiers. I love these Lost City of Zinj-ass motherfuckers. They're nasty and fun and I want action figures of them yesterday, so hey uh, Playmates, maybe get on that? Not like you'd have to spend a ton of money either, just reuse the Ferocious Kong and Skar King body molds and make a couple new heads, splash some red paint on em and voila, instant gorilla warfare. That one balding ape with the fucked-up eye who Sucko kicks off the pyramid to his death might require some new tooling, but nothing major.

Shimo. It's nice to have an antagonist monster who isn't evil, and is still alive at the end of the picture. We don't often get reptilian monsters not named Godzilla that are babyfaces, and ice powers are rare in Toho kaiju circles. She's just a breath of fresh air, with a simple but effective design and a genuine emotional hook; I really felt bad for her when the Skar King was bossing her around and basically torturing her, and the joy she feels at her freedom from his control transcends onto me, the viewer.

Mothra is so fucking back. She makes her presence felt, she doesn't die this time, and she gets a little more to do here than in King of the Monsters, which I appreciate. I still say she ought to have a solo spinoff movie; she's Strong and Cool™ enough to stand on her own, and there's so much more you can do with her than just being Godzilla's conscience and bestest pal.

Tiamat. It was nice to see her in motion finally instead of just being relegated to tie-in comics that the movies ignore 99.9% of the time. Shame we’re never gonna see her again.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

Junkie XL's score. Soulless and unmemorable hackery, just like his work on Godzilla vs. Kong. The Skar King motif sounds like he started to compose something and then just gave up. He also has a Jimmy Hart version of "Mothra's Song" to accompany the previous movie's Jimmy Hart Godzilla theme, and it's just as lame. Bring back McCreary or Desplat, please and thank ya.

AVP-wi. As much as I like the Hollow Earth Iwi, I’m a little annoyed that the Iwi are now apparently the only ancient monster-worshiping culture there has ever been. It feels dumbed down, and limits what future stories in this setting will be able to do.

Godzilla Evolved. Boy oh boy do I have a lot to say about this, none of it good. Godzilla's new look is way too busy and overdesigned with all these spiky greebles all over him that make him look more like a Monster Hunter boss than the King of the Monsters, and his proportions physically hurt me to look at. Where did all the internal organs in his torso go to make his waist that slim? What the fuck is up with his arms? Why are there dorsal spines growing out of his elbows and forearms? It just doesn't look right. I get that they're trying to evoke the Godzilla 2000 design with the giant pink spines and slimmer body proportions and the spikier and slightly greener skin (it's even got the same feet) but it just isn't done that well, and besides, if I wanted to see that design, I'd watch that movie. It’s just fucking up the cohesion of the Legendary Godzilla design and eroding its visual identity even more, dragging it further and further in directions it wasn’t meant to go in a cynical capitalistic move to sell new toys. I said it in 2019 and I'll say it again: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Moreover, it's 100% cosmetic and doesn't actually affect the movie at all in any meaningful way, it's just Dragon Ball-style "new color = stronger" power creep. We keep being told how much more powerful Godzilla is now, but we're not shown any evidence that there's a significant difference. It doesn't feel like there's anything Evolved Godzilla does that regular Godzilla couldn't or hasn't before. He doesn't act any different or display new abilities. His new thagomizer and Batmanesque arm spines? Never uses 'em, they're just more surface greebles to clutter up the design. Why make changes like that if you're not gonna do anything with them? Hell, the only new trick Godzilla shows off in this, the classic blue Nuclear Pulse, is something he uses before he evolves! And then he never does it again after that! Even the atomic breath color change is meaningless. We're told it's stronger than before, but again, we never actually see that; it doesn’t seem to do any more damage to monsters or buildings than the old one did. Sure, it burns away Shimo's ice storm at the end, but Godziller burned a tunnel all the way through the fucking Earth with the regular blue breath in the last movie, so it doesn't really feel like something he needed a new form to be able to do. I don't believe for one second that Godzilla Evolved was necessary; there's not enough real difference between it and Original Flavor Godzilla to justify its existence. I realize that's probably unfair of me to say since I don't know if or how much anything that would've helped illustrate the difference better may have been part of the movie before but got cut for time, but to me at least, the effect on the finished film is that Most Powered-Up New Godzilla® just feels like a palette swap in a video game, and that's not great. Maybe instead, oh I dunno, you could have Godzilla have a rough time and just barely win against Scylla in Rome instead of wasting her in seconds, Final Wars-style? Maybe have a little flashback to the ancient war of Godzilla vs. Hanuman & 700 Big Gorilla, like show him barely surviving that, so we get an idea of what he's up against? Then when he powers up, we can buy that he's stronger now, like a sense of progression or something. Instead, what we get is basically a Hong Kong martial arts flick if it showed the hero doing a training montage and then beating all the bad guys, but didn't show any of why he needed to train in the first place, e.g. the bad guys kicking his ass. It's a payoff with no setup. I assume this is probably a side effect of Godzilla in New Empire being what immature people with bad opinions claim he was in Godzilla (2014)—a guest star in his own movie—so there might not have been a way to avoid this problem without significantly altering the pacing, but like…could they have at least fucking tried?

[kaijuworldorder]

Probably should've mentioned this before now but I saw that there Godziller Minus One and loved it, top tenner for me for sure. Great melodrama, great monster stuff. Check it out before it's gone from theaters if you haven't already.

[kaijuworldorder]

kWo At the Movies: Clifford the Big Red Dog

Cute, inoffensive, occasionally very fun. Dog is big. There's a two-headed monster sheep in it. 3 outta 5.

[kaijuworldorder]

MI22 At the Movies:

Now that I’ve seen it twice and had some time to think about it more, I’m finally ready to share my spoilery thoughts. Short version: I really liked it, and will for sure have to reshuffle my Top 10 Favorite Godzillers now!

Anyway, SPOILER TIME…

WHAT I LIKED

More Neat Worldbuilding: I really enjoyed getting to see more of Monarch’s inner workings, and expanding on the Hollow Earth stuff discussed in Kong: Skull Island, and…the fucking lost civilization of Mu???? We also see some really cool ideas regarding Titan biology and the complex ecosystem they inhabit, like Godzilla lighting up his dorsal spines as a threat display, which is a genius idea that I’m surprised no other film in the series has ever done, and Mothra and Godzilla’s symbiotic relationship (more on these later). And finally there’s the ORCA, which is both a nice expansion on Joe Brody’s research into bioacoustics from the first film and…maybe a stealth reference to Project T?

The Story: much as I love the 2014 Godzilla, one weakness of that film I will admit to is that its story lacked focus, jumping back and forth between Monarch and the military’s attempts to track/contain the monsters and some other guy who wants nothing to do with it and only becomes involved by accident or narrative convenience. This film doesn’t have that problem, with the human narrative running pretty parallel to what’s going on with the monsters. The plot may be a little thin, but who cares? It does what it needs to do. That post-credits scene also some…interesting implications, and I really want to see the MonsterVerse continue after Godzilla vs. Kong so we can get some kind of follow-up on it.

The Characters, Mostly: the puny hew-mons feel more compelling to me this time around, though some of them don’t don’t get nearly enough to do. Mark is a believable broken sad dad, stiff and shouty though he may be at times, and his arc of going from “kill all the monsters” to “leave the good ones alone” is nice. Emma is a good layered antagonist who gets a few good redemptive moments late in the film, and Maddie is a way better kid character than this series has had in some time, instantly care-aboutable and never grating. Alan Jonah…or…Jonah Alan…whatever the fuck his name is…Charles Dance’s character is a pretty interesting villain, though I wish he and his S.C.A.L.E.-esque crew of ecoterrorists got a bit more focus. The Monarch crew are pretty fun and memorable as well, although I didn’t catch a lot of their names. Jokey McChucklefuck annoyed me at first, but grew on me before the end. Science Beardman is OK too. The Doctors Chen don’t have a ton to do, but are likable enough and a really inventive way to include the Little Beauties and still keep things somewhat grounded. Soldier Lady is also pretty cool, and you can tell they wanted Danai Gurira but couldn’t get her. In terms of the returning cast, Serizawa gets more to do this time around beyond his gig as a kaiju eiga Dr. Loomis, including a tear-jerking echo of his heroic sacrifice from the 1954 film, only this time it’s to save Godzilla instead of kill him; I grew to love his character in this film, and he’ll be sorely missed in future installments. Graham does not get much to do, and I’ll get into that in a little more detail later, but I appreciated her presence nonetheless. Admiral Bad-At-His-Job is…still bad at his job, but you get the sense that he’s just trying his best.

Big Fella: Godzilla himself being great, of course, goes without saying, but I’m gonna talk about him anyway because he deserves it. While I adore the 2014 Godzilla design, the little changes made for KotM are very nice. The classic “maple leaf” spines return, with big crackly veins of Cherenkov light (what can that mean?) when he’s getting ready to spit, and he even gets a bit more of a club tail like the old Showa era suits. He keeps his expressiveness from the previous film, naturally; you can feel how pissed he is when Ghidorah shows up. Like I mentioned before, Godzilla lighting up his spines as a threat display is a fantastic idea. The way his eyes glow when he’s charging his atomic breath is also a neat callback to Godzilla: The Series. By the end of the film, he even gets to trot out that edgy alternate mode that certain elements of the fandom just can’t fucking let go of, Burning Godzilla. While I can’t say I particularly like Burning or the film it originally comes from, it’s handled really well here; the way everything around him starts catching on fire and melting is a nice touch that the makers of Godzilla vs. Destroyah could probably have included if they’d actually given a shit. The big nuclear pulses he fires off during this are impressive and cool, though Spiral Fire is notable by its absence.

Mothra: the Queen of the Monsters isn’t in this film as much as I’d like, but when she does get her time to shine (literally and figuratively), she’s pretty goddamn great. The bioluminescence really makes this version of Mothra stand out compared to her previous incarnations, and her design has really grown on me now that I’ve seen it in motion. She kinda does a role reversal from GMK, powering up Godzilla after Ghidorah fries her, and finally gets to use her stinger. I really like the idea of her species and Godzilla’s species having a symbiotic relationship as mentioned earlier, though I wish that had been fleshed out a little more; as it is, it kinda gets paid off without really being set up. Still cool, though.

OH SHIT, IT’S A BIG BIRDIE: Rodan really stole the show for me. He’s got a great design and is so chock-full of personality, a cocky bully who’s a sniveling coward underneath, immediately switching sides once things go bad for Ghidorah, kind of like 1970s Gigan. His moves after he emerges from the volcano as he battles the jets are impressive, and that reference to The Giant Claw he does is also pretty great.

King Fucking Ghidorah: This just might be my favorite incarnation of King Ghidorah ever. His expressiveness, overt (almost cartoonish) malice, how he commands other monsters to do his bidding, that sick wing-lightning shit he does, keeping the outer space origin, the heads being so full of personality and briefly arguing with each other, super-fast healing, his music being a prayer to the number three…all-around fantastic depiction of ol’ KG.

NEW FRIENDS NEW FRIENDS: some people would call the new Titans “uninspired” or “generic”. I would call those people “fuckheads”. Woolly mammoth/sloth/munky hybrid Behemoth is great, a simple but well-executed concept, and I need a toy of him like two weeks ago. Scylla, a cross between Krabby and Omastar, is a pretty good creepy-crawly. Mountain boy Methuselah is scarcely seen, but seems like a nice Angilas stand-in, with echoes of the early G14 “Rokmutul” concept or the Earth Eater from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Finally, there’s a new MUTO with spiky armor, and if you know me, you know how much I love the MUTOs, so I was delighted to see her.

The Action: there’s way more kaiju rasslin’ this time around and it’s pretty great, with Godzilla and Ghidorah locking horns multiple times and taking part in a fantastic tornado-tag match at the end with Mothra and Rodan fighting in the sky. It’s flashy and exciting, while never losing the sense of scale and weight seen in Godzilla’s 2014 outing.

The Visuals: YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING, UNLIKE WB’S SHITTY G14 BLU-RAYS. I really like this film’s use of color; it may not be as saturated as, say, Pacific Rim, but it’s a nice contrast with G14′s more muted, subdued color palette; now that the whole world knows that monsters exist, we can bring everything out of the shadows. The cinematography is also excellent. Ghidorah perched on top of the volcano howling his alpha call with a cross in the foreground, Serizawa making his way up the pyramid steps, Rodan and the other Large Lads bowing to Godzilla at the end as he roars triumphantly…these shots feel just as iconic to me as the head rising over the hill on Oto Island.

The Music: Bear McCrary’s score is so fucking good. I do miss Alexandre Desplat’s cues for the 2014 film, but Bear is more than a worthy successor. Hearing the classic Godzilla March and Mothra’s Song mixed in nearly brought tears to my eyes, and that cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Godzilla” is a real banger. The original material is fantastic as well, most notably the new Rodan and Ghidorah themes. All that hype chanting of the monsters’ names along with the music gets the blood pumping. It’s just so FUCKING GOOD I LOVE THIS FUCKING SOUNDTRA

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE SO MUCH

Stuffing Vivienne Graham Into The Fridge: this bothered me. It wasn’t movie-destroying like The Assassination of Mako Mori by the Coward Steven S. DeKnight, but it’s still a big dumb misstep in my opinion. Admittedly Graham didn’t really do much in either this film or the previous one, but like…why not give her more to do, then? Instead, they just kill her off, Serizawa’s sad for like 5 minutes, and that’s it. This seems to be a disturbing trend in Legendary monster movies: female character from the first film who’s well-liked by the fandom gets killed in the sequel to briefly fuel a male character’s angst and then is never mentioned again. Plus wouldn’t “it’s been an honor” have meant more coming from her than from Jokey McChucklefuck? If they pull this same shit with Madison or the Chens in Godzilla vs. Kong, I’ll be big mad.

Critical Ass: the ticking-clock element of “oh man, Godzilla’s gonna explode due to the excess radiation Serizawa fed him” during the final battle felt really clumsy and tacked on. His massive intake of power could just as easily be explained as something Mothra did, since he didn’t change into Burning form until after she sprinkled her pixie dust on him. If Burning Godzilla happened because of the nuke, why do we see Mothra’s wing patterns and hear her call when Godzilla does the nuclear pulse? Is it like a little of column A, little of column B type of thing? And of course the meltdown never actually adds up to anything, Big G’s totally fine afterward. This is something that probably should have been rewritten, or even cut altogether.

FINAL ASSESSMENT: despite a couple of things that didn’t work for me, I kind of love Godzilla: King of the Monsters a lot. It’s a real love letter to the series, and deserves to do so much better than it’s doing. See it in theaters while you still can, if you haven’t already.

RATING: 4½ charred Red Sox hats out of 5

[kaijuworldorder]

MI22 At The Movies - Pokémon: Detective Pikachu

It's super effective!

In all seriousness, I haven't smiled so much in a long time. I've been feeling lousy for the past couple of months, and Detective Pikachu was just the pick-me-up I needed. This film is fun, charming, has a lot of heart and a great sense of adventure, and feels like a genuine love letter to the Pokémon franchise. Give it a watch this weekend.

[kaijuworldorder]

MI22 At The Movies: Creed II

First time I’ve been able to get out to a theater in two and a half months, and I’m glad I did. Creed II is damn good, and stands tall alongside the best of the mainline Rocky films. It’s an emotional roller coaster, every character has a purpose and stakes and growth, the cinematography is great, the acting is great, the big bout at the end is fantastic, and it nicely concludes the story of Rocky IV. If you’re in the mood for a good boxing flick, you can’t go wrong here.

Also holy shit the dude who plays Ivan Drago's kid is HUGE. If we ever get another Street Fighter movie, there’s my first and only choice for Zangief.

[kaijuworldorder]

MI22 At The Movies: Black Panther

This is Marvel’s best film to date by a wide margin, full of beauty, excitement, authenticity, and heart. Black Panther is one of those really special movies that I’m gonna keep going back to, and people will likely still be talking about, for years to come. There’s not much else I can say that hasn’t already been said, so head on out and give it a watch.

Final rating: 5 mecha-rhinos out of 5

[kaijuworldorder]

THE BAR HAS BEEN RAISED

[kaijuworldorder]

G Goes to the Movies: TMNT Out of the Shadows

So for my birthday, which was Friday, I saw the new Ninja Turtles film. Really enjoyed it! Huge, huge, HUGE improvement over the last one. It felt like a good three-part episode of the cartoon, with lots of great fanservice and never taking itself too seriously. Give it a look if you haven't already.

[kaijuworldorder]

Spoiler-free thoughts on 10 Cloverfield Lane

Just got back from seeing 10 Cloverfield Lane, and I quite liked it. Very tense, suspenseful and creepy, and tells its story with well-written, well-acted characters. In my opinion, this is a star-making role for Mary Winstead; John Goodman is excellent as well, stealing nearly every scene he’s in, but I won’t get into specifics as I don’t want to give too much away. Lane’s connection to Cloverfield isn’t readily apparent unless you’ve got sharp eyes and followed the viral marketing for both films. More of an Easter egg, I guess, but I appreciate it all the same. I’ll probably give my full, spoilery thoughts in a couple of days, but for now I give it a solid recommendation. If you’re in the mood for a unique suspense thriller, head on out and give this a watch.

[kaijuworldorder]

Viewer beware...

Goosebumps was a good time! Fun tribute to the series and comes highly recommended. If you were a fan of the books, or if you’re just looking for a fun movie to get you into the spirit of the Halloween season, give this one a watch.