ROMG4 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:39 am
Jetty_Jags wrote: ↑Wed Apr 21, 2021 10:19 am
I actually think a kaiju only flick could work, BUT, it would have to A. completely excel on the non-verbal language of the kaiju themselves, something the MV has done well, but not well enough to carry a film by itself, and B. still restrain the kaiju action (which is the opposite of what people proposing this want to hear). You don't need people, or even speaking to tell a good story, just look at the some of Pixar's most impressive moments, the opening of Up and the first act of Wall-e, both of which convey their stories almost entirely through a visual medium (or at least without spoken word). I do believe a kaiju flick could achieve this, but it would definitely need to be more experimental than just 80 minutes of extended carnage. And this is coming from a guy who argues that in almost other cases, humans are absolutely necessary to grounding the narrative in kiaju films.
The biggest problem that faces a story focusing solely on the monsters is getting the audience to care it has to be structured very well. Take the show Primal for instance it has nearly no dialogue and expresses the story through body language, visuals, and audio, its structured very well and it has to be otherwise it would be a blur of visuals that would simply confuse the audience and give them nothing to care about.
The Godzilla series has always thrived on the fact that the monsters are just as much characters as the actual Human characters, its that combination and synergy that sets the Godzilla and wider Kaiju genre apart. When you take one away from the other either having weak human characters or removing the personality of all the monsters you get
The Godzilla Anime trilogy
You get a movie that misses the core soul and DNA of the Godzilla series, most of the people that just want "Monster fights" are the type that go watch XQC reacts to "x Compilation" video and call it the best thing ever. A movie that just focuses on the visuals with no care to advancing the story, no care to the actual characters in the movie is a soul-less, shallow, horrible ugly thing that would be the most regressive thing possible for the franchise
And it amuses me to no end that some of these same people that bemoan the lack of wider acceptance for the franchise want an entire movie to just be "fight scenes" when the most popular and harmful false stereotype for the franchise
is that
The other thing, too, is it would be waaaaaaaaay too expensive to pull off such a feat. Lest we forget that these CGI models cost money just to put onscreen, and not cheaply, either. G2014 cost $150m, and that was with around 20 minutes of kaiju screentime, so a Godzilla/kaiju movie with all monster action/fights would probably cost in the ballpark of
$500m, and that might be a
generous estimate.
But funny you should bring up stereotypes, a lot of Godzilla fans were upset that the 2014 movie wouldn't use suitmation. They were literally the
only ones who wanted that, everyone else was ready to laugh it out of the park at the site of "fake-looking men in rubber suits". A common counterargument from fans of the 98 Godzilla (GINO 98) is "G fans only hated it because it didn't feature a cheesy man in a rubber suit, hurr durr", I've seen such counterarguments on GINO 98's IMDb message board from back in the day (yes, I used to check out IMDb back when it was still around, sue me). Me? I knew it needed to get with the times and use CGI monsters if it were to be taken the
least bit seriously by general moviegoers. The rubber suits were actually a product of budgetary and technical limitations from when they were introduced that still exist
today (because Toho
isn't very good at using CGI, let's be honest), there's no way it would fly with general audiences in a modern day big budget Godzilla/kaiju movie yet that's exactly what they wanted and
asked for, which is ironic coming from the same people that want "moar mainstream appeal".