Gozilla: King of the Monsters

[Greg]

Ken Watanabe is back!

 I can barely remember what happened in the 2014 edition of this franchise. I completely forgot that it was in San Francisco. And the Monarch corporation has a throughline in the Warner Bros Monsterverse? Good to know. (How much of a verse is it if there only two monsters? Kong and Godzilla?)

Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmigia play the unhappy parents to 11 from Stranger Things. 11 gets to swear. The breakup of their marriage plays against the reawakening of all the Titans on the planet. Don't get me wrong, I thought the Titans were greek gods not asian monsters. 

The action ramps up when there's a kidnapping by ecotourists bent on freeing the monsters or using them for their own ends. But the kidnapping might not really be a kidnapping. And why are going down this family drama when there are monsters to see destroying the world. Turns out Thanos makes in an appearance in a female guise. She wants to use the monsters to reset the balance of the planet. Again, just show the monster battles. And their are a lot of them. Who knew a Mastodon was a Kaiju?

In the original version brought to the US, they filmed extra scenes with Perry Mason in english to give the film some context for the US audience. This is what this felt like. They had a family drama cut around a monster film. 

The big four do appear and battle: Ghidorah, Rodan, Mothra, and Godzilla. We get their back stories as well. The film makers thought it necessary to come up with a rational of how they get around the world so quickly. Again, Monsters should be smashing. 

Bradley Cooper is on board to tell us how long until things happen. Ghidorah will meet Godzilla in ten minutes. The bomb will hit Ghidorah in five minutes. Godzilla will discharge in twelve minutes. I thought for sure he'd be one of the first to get squashed.

And everyone is way too serious. 

I did like the shoutouts to Mothra's twins. The end credits were kind of fun with their nods to what the Titans awakening did for the earth. I watched some of the extras and they were as serious as the movie so I had turn them off.

[Drunk Monk]

Audition - can you just stand gaping in awe? Cool. You got the part.

I fell asleep twice. Don’t think I missed anything. The human stories, especially 11s rents, were dumb. The kaiju battles were prolly great in 3d imax but left a lot to be desired on a seatback screen. Fortunately it was a turbulent flight which added greatly to the experience - like d-box or sensaround.

11 was ok. Ken had some super dumb lines but he struggled through. The rents were freakin annoying. That whole story arc was dumb. SPOILER ALERT Z’s twins shouldn’t be named Dr Chen and Dr Ling - if they were twins they’d have the same surname. Greg, what happened in P1 was they crossed SF with this huge missile using unchartable routes faster than possible even without traffic kind of like 11 does to and from Fenway. Must be those dimensional tunnels through the earth. And you’re right - wth was up with dat mastodon? And so many countdowns...10,9,8,7,when the heck will this film have more Kaiju fights? 6...5...4...oh never mind - when will it end? END SPOILER

If this was recut so there was only the Kaiju battle scenes and set to an extended dubstep remix of BOC’s Godzilla, that would rock. But two hours of gaping in awe was way too long.

Not DOOM worthy but I’ll still watch Godzilla v Kong cuz I luv Godzilla that much.