Being more specific in them being
giant monster films because few people specify
Daikaiju these days.
Kaiju-King42 wrote:Desghidorah wrote: When a Japanese kaiju film had an extremely lightly developed romance between two of the characters that could be totally missed as it adds nothing to either side, it's "Deep, tactful, and realistic"; when a Non-Japanese kaiju film had a couple expressing concern, doubts, worries, and support for one another, it's "obnoxious, unrealistic, and showy".
Do you have examples for these, out of curiosity?
It actually came to me after seeing some commentate on Guardian: Guardian of the Universe and Godzilla 2014. 2014's got issues, that is without a doubt. However some commentators were treating it like a complete remake of Gamera:GotU but a complete downgrade as well. Similarities certainly exist and I don't doubt for a moment Gamera wasn't on someone involved in the script's mind. But every chance to bring up a topic where the two seemed similar (such as the enemy kaiju menacing a bridge), regardless of if the contexts were very different, GotU was praised and 2014 was relentlessly bashed.
One such example would be the human characters. I rather like GotU's human roster, but stating they were all heavily invested in the finale aside from Asagi and her father Naoya or that the romance between Yoshinari and Mayumi was very well played out and developed? That's more than a bit of an overstatement. While a vast majority of 2014's characterization is lumped onto Ford and Joe Brody, it wouldn't at all be fair to say they 'ambled through the plot and learned nothing'. The Brodys actually serve as a very stark contrast to a common character type in Kaiju fiction, the "Ahab archetype",
which I lamented here. Having just seen both the subbed and dubbed GotU back to back while also streaming 2014 with friends, I can affirm I find the GotU human cast enjoyable, but not especially thoroughly deep. 2014's cast is even shallower for the most part, but by the same token it's not at all aggravating like some of GotU's obstructive bureaucrats are. However for all the reviewer's remarks of 2014's cast being baseless, thoughtless, and bland, the theme of what's important in life was set up and played out as best as I could have hoped it be. It's quite early with the Brody family with Joe being a workoholic, the implication Sandra Brody told Joe to never tell Ford he shut the breach door on her, Ford worrying he's repeating his father's separation with his own son, spelled out by a dying Joeseph telling his son that nothing is more important, and affirmed by the end with Ford reunited with his wife and child.
But if you followed the grandstanding G-fan reviewers, you'd think fleshing out to this degree was found in all of the GotU cast and there was no thought behind any of the "Pointless, baseless, American cash grab" at all. I could go into more, but that risks rambling. The tl;dr of it was any times the Japanese film was lacking and the American film actually put in effort, the earplugs and blindfold went in; and any time the roles reversed, you'd never hear the end of it. And I noticed this multiple times with other non-Japanese films, regardless of if there was a comparable Japanese film to be seen.
Fully, 100% admit this is all opinion based on my end. Hell I'm not even saying 2014 is better or worse than Gamera:GotU, but when a film makes a good choice or bad choice it seemed that was ignored solely on the merit of if it was a "proper" Kaiju film based off reviewer criteria.