Given that the whole genre of movies (not the myths themselves) spring from atomic anxiety in the first place, it’s nice that they opt to stay true to those roots. Silly humans with their industrialization and short-sightedness--they mess with things they don’t understand and then are all surprised when those things mess back.
Do you think in a couple of decades, kaiju movies will be focused on Chernobyl instead of the Pacific Rim?
Godzilla (2014), 25 March 2021, DVD via campus library
The initializing incident is set in Japan, so NATURALLY our introductory protags are a bunch of white folks. SIGH. (But geez, making sure Cranston’s character got to see his wife being engulfed by a radioactive cloud instead of just, like, knowing it happened? Yowch.) Anyway, it’s neat that they’re keeping the OG Godzilla movies as actual history, except that there is no way all that would have faded out of consciousness in a few paltry decades.
(Side note: Kind of funny that this movie came back-to-back with the second Avengers movie. Here, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen play a married couple. In the MCU, they play siblings. Weird. It’s kind of like how in Farscape, Ben Browder and Claudia Black are intense soulmates, but in Stargate, they’re the buddiest of cops. Actors, man.)
They make some EXCELLENT use of dark spaces and structures to create additional framing in so many spots. Kudos to director Gareth Edwards, I suppose.
As a side effect of the technique, though, a lot of scenes are almost illegible due to the constant darkness.
Also, they didn’t need to saddle Our Hero with an adorable little Japanese child, but I sure am happy they did. However, being distracted by Tiny Adorable Child meant the completely random emergence of Godzilla in Hawaii wasn’t given full focus. How did Godzilla know about the mothras? He just, like, woke up?
To hell with you, Vegas, I am glad to see you destroyed.
Watanabe’s reaction to the Americans OF COURSE opting for a nuke is beautifully understated: He hands his father’s pocket watch to David Strathairn’s military commander and says it stopped on 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945. Meanwhile, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character is apparently the only bomb expert on the West coast, like, sure.
One of the earliest trailers for this movie was mostly the HALO jump, and honestly, it’s a pretty darn good teaser.
Anyway, what the hell is this atomic breath thing? I have a lot of questions.
Kong: Skull Island, 28 March 2021, streamed via HBO Max
This movie is almost two hours, and yet the most interesting thing about it is whatever happened with Marlow and Ikari after they crash landed on the island. So why is it set in 1973? I legit do not understand why, because all it does is get a little punch-up with Cold War competitiveness. I guess...they wanted their military folks...to have jungle experience? Surely they couldn’t have just wanted to fetishize Southeast Asia of the era. Surely not.
Wait, Eugene Cordero is in this movie? WHAT UP, PILLBOI. But I’m pretty sure I only watched this the first time because, y’know. Hiddleston. Now I’m also very amused that Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson are also in this, just as I was amused about Olsen and Taylor-Johnson in the last movie. The MCU has extended backwards and changed how I perceive every movie from the past three decades, I guess?
The island is gorgeous, so of course they are immediately attacked by Kong. I mean, they sure are noisy and start the mission by dropping a passel of friggin’ seismic charges. WTF, America? (It’s horrifying, yes, but for real.)
GET OFF MY LAWN.
The way they characterize the natives of the island is pretty racist. But also I kind of like the way they paint Marlow’s relationship with them? I mean, everything with Marlow is golden, honestly. (Also, Hiddleston’s character is named Conrad. Yes, Marlow and Conrad, very clever, scripters.) Anyway, the one second of one of the natives taking pictures of Weaver is pretty cute. They could have done something interesting with these folks, but they got too stuck on the goddamn racist tropes.
“Sometimes an enemy doesn’t exist till you go looking for one.” But the skull crawlers are creepy as hell, dang.
Anyway, they really want us to believe in Conrad/Weaver as a relationship, but there’s, like, negligible chemistry for most of the movie. I mean, I guess it’s fine?
The ending of this movie is perfect. YAY, MARLOW.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 30 March 2021, streamed via HBO Max
Estranged scientist parents are the most interesting kind of estranged movie parents, aren’t they? Anyway, WHY WOULD YOU WORK THAT CLOSE TO A KAIJU? Y’all are idiots. But is that weirder than Serizawa trying to convince the United States military that they should consider humanity pets of Godzilla? Like. Dude.
There are seventeen other kaiju? Guys, I want to know a LOT more about whichever kaiju is in Wyoming. And the wooly mammoth one. (Also, they’ve got an outpost on Skull Island? Are they...are they containing Kong?) Ghidorah’s a pretty impressive one, though. And it has wings! That’s one up on Godzilla.
Emma going Thanos is horrifying. Like, I am completely down with preaching about overpopulation, but the solution is not culling a few billion people. Lord. (Is it more chilling than Serizawa’s religious fervor about Gojira? Yeah.)
Mills from Skull Island is Joe Morton in this movie! I wonder if San is still around. Or are we supposed to assume that Ling in this movie is San’s daughter? Which would make San’s mother also part of Monarch? Anyway, that would make things way too convenient in the family, but WHAT HAPPENED TO SAN, YOU MONSTERS.
Serizawa delivering the nuke to Gojira and sacrificing himself in the eyes of his god makes a lot of sense. We really needed a lot more about Serizawa, beyond his Hiroshima pocket watch. “Sometimes the only way to heal our wounds is to make peace with the demons who created them.” (In other news, Serizawa’s joke about fortune cookies would have been way better if he wasn’t, y’know, Japanese. I mean, it still works, but it has a whiff of “they all look alike” to it, too.)
Anyway, Millie Bobby Brown is great in this movie even though she only has, like, two personality traits. (Disappointed and defiant, but never both at the same time.) Plus, she got to say “shit” multiple times. Take that, typecasters!
Godzilla vs. Kong, 31 March 2021, streamed via HBO Max
Did they SERIOUSLY Truman Show Kong? WTF, Monarch? How have you been making extremely bad decisions for decades? Also, why are they still talking about the Hollow Earth theory as if Brooks didn’t get seriously substantiated on Skull Island in the 70s? Or at that weird underwater shrine from the last movie? Just because the exploratory team got smushed doesn’t mean the giant cavern system isn’t there.
How did they get Kong onto this boat?
Guys, Alexander Skarsgard is playing a dude that is self-effacing rather than reckless with the arrogance of an extremely tall man! I didn’t know he could do that! (Put Daniel Lind in the club with Daniel Jackson: Handsome scientist dudes who are considered zany fantasists. Oh man, am I gonna have to crossover these dudes?)
What’s with this outfit, my dude?
ALSO. First, what happened to the Iwi people when Monarch went and Truman Showed Skull Island? Second, did they make Jia a Deaf character because the Iwi didn’t speak in Skull Island, in addition to having the sign language buff? (I’d dig having this movie, The Sound of Metal, and A Quiet Place combined in a seminar on Deafness in Popular Culture. Also, kudos to casting for hiring Kaylee Hottle, who is actually Deaf.) Third, why are they acting like Simmons is an expert on Kong after studying him for ten years when the Iwi had hung out in that habitat since time began. WHERE ARE THE IWI, COLONIZERS? (This is particularly fraught since “iwi” is actually a Maori term , which means they’re trying to indicate some sort of authenticity and then erasing the actual people for the sake of convenience.) I mean, they say “the storm” killed all the Iwi, but again, they have been there since time began, so whatevs.
She is also adorable.
Kong’s got pretty good reach--it’s kind of hilarious to see Godzilla try to punch him with his tiny T-rex arms--plus he’s got the edge in terms of speed. Then again, Godzilla has the tail and that atomic breath thing? Which is...nonsense. But whatever. That sea battle was pretty amazeballs, but that was clearly advantageous for Godzilla, who can swim pretty dang well.
I appreciate that Kong’s response to snow is, like, What fresh hell is this? And I am not going to spoil details for the rest of the movie, but there are a couple of reveals that are just, like, OH MY GOD, you have got your audience down. Well done, chaps, well done!
For a film set mostly in Asia, there are surprisingly few Asian folks with speaking roles. Like, two. That said, Brian Tyree Henry is excellent, everybody else does what they’re expected to do, and the action is 100% legible. Like, it makes very little sense in terms of plot and, like, science (gravity inversion), but that’s not the point, really. Man, this was so satisfying to watch.
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