Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Showzilla »

Quick reminder

Godzilla beat kong to death back then too and kong needed to be revived as well

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Lesko »

miguelnuva wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 10:28 pm
Lesko wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:42 pm
KaijuKingGojira wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:00 pm

You do realise his “180 degree character turn” was explained don’t you? Also, he didn’t kill king like he did with king G and Muto’s because they were an actually threat to him- one was a rival Alpha and the others were parasites that preyed on Godzilla’s. Kong was an “inferior” titan that he essentially wanted to get to submit or just get out of his way, he wasn’t threatened by him so… he essentially bullied him for not knowing his place.
This is what I am talking about actually. If Kong was never a threat, then what about the war that the movie only mentioned in one line about the species? It isn't really a war if one side is not a threat at all. So either Kong's species wasn't a threat to Godzilla's, which makes the war between the two pointless, or they were a threat, but Godzilla was acting out of uncharacteristically against Kong despite Kong being a threat. Not sure if we are including novels out of the canon but I am pretty sure Godzilla was beaten by a member of Kong's species in a flashback sequence since the latter plot hole seems more likely. I am getting ahead of myself though, so my question is, which one is it supposed to be? The MV isn't rock solid on plot and I understand that but GvK has far more plot holes than any other entry by a long shot. Even KotM.
Godzilla has become a super member of his species. His species never had modern nuclear energy to feed off, never survived a fight with Muto Prime, never met Ghidorah and never fused with Mothra. Imagine you as a kid hear about a group of people that wiped out a large portion of your family. You then start training and fighting and now you are far and beyond stronger than your family that died. You then meet the last member of this group that has given you problems and now you're King. You give him a choice to bow down to you like all the others in your kingdom and instead he decided he won't bow. This in addition to you sensing your other great rival that you thought you killed and had taken over other Titans before in an effort to kill you.

This is what Godzilla is going through in GvK.
Well that makes sense I guess. That Godzilla is basically the apex of his species and isn't an ordinary member. Like how the special forces for the military aren't normal people. I guess the same maybe could be said for Kong. Perhaps Kong is special as well. However this brings up yet another plot hole in the MV. Why would humanity's nuclear weapons be any different from the radiation from Hollow Earth? Just seems to me like you get a whole smorgasboard of radiation there and it makes man made radiation seem puny in comparison.

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by miguelnuva »

Lesko wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:07 pm
miguelnuva wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 10:28 pm
Lesko wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:42 pm

This is what I am talking about actually. If Kong was never a threat, then what about the war that the movie only mentioned in one line about the species? It isn't really a war if one side is not a threat at all. So either Kong's species wasn't a threat to Godzilla's, which makes the war between the two pointless, or they were a threat, but Godzilla was acting out of uncharacteristically against Kong despite Kong being a threat. Not sure if we are including novels out of the canon but I am pretty sure Godzilla was beaten by a member of Kong's species in a flashback sequence since the latter plot hole seems more likely. I am getting ahead of myself though, so my question is, which one is it supposed to be? The MV isn't rock solid on plot and I understand that but GvK has far more plot holes than any other entry by a long shot. Even KotM.
Godzilla has become a super member of his species. His species never had modern nuclear energy to feed off, never survived a fight with Muto Prime, never met Ghidorah and never fused with Mothra. Imagine you as a kid hear about a group of people that wiped out a large portion of your family. You then start training and fighting and now you are far and beyond stronger than your family that died. You then meet the last member of this group that has given you problems and now you're King. You give him a choice to bow down to you like all the others in your kingdom and instead he decided he won't bow. This in addition to you sensing your other great rival that you thought you killed and had taken over other Titans before in an effort to kill you.

This is what Godzilla is going through in GvK.
Well that makes sense I guess. That Godzilla is basically the apex of his species and isn't an ordinary member. Like how the special forces for the military aren't normal people. I guess the same maybe could be said for Kong. Perhaps Kong is special as well. However this brings up yet another plot hole in the MV. Why would humanity's nuclear weapons be any different from the radiation from Hollow Earth? Just seems to me like you get a whole smorgasboard of radiation there and it makes man made radiation seem puny in comparison.
Our radiation seems better only when Godzilla and the Titans interact with it. Could be because not only is the HE energy in the HE maybe you can't splurge in it.

Or nukes could be like a fast food buffet, it isn't as good as healthy foods but there is more than enough for you to get.
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Dyrakro »

So I just watched the movie and gotta say it's a huge improvement over the abomination we got in 2019.
And I really don't want to nitpick again at a movie, as GvK does so many things right. There are two things that really bug me:

1. The actual Godzilla vs Kong fight is by no means a fight to death. The way Godzilla is presented in the movie is similar to an insecure playground bully that wants to beat up the stubborn new kid who isn't interested in fighting at all. I'd say the movie would've done better if Godzilla seemed like the villain for most of the time and him hunting down Apex wasn't this obvious. Of course many people like myself would've been rather annoyed during the first hour if Godzilla suddenly turned evil, but considering Apex unites with the MC and Kong this would lead to a better premise for the fight: Kong actually having to defend the people dear to him, as Godzilla doesn't do any difference between Apex and other people. That would've given the whole fight a fully different feeling. The way the monsters behave, the fights in Hong Kong ain't that suspenseful. We know that neither Kong nor Godzilla is actually interested in killing the other. Whenever one lays on the ground and stops moving, the fight ends and there doesn't seem to be any difference at all. If Kong would win, where would be the difference? The world is such a huge place, that one monster bowing to the other would lead to no differences in their actions. The world is such a big place, they could easily avoid each other afterwards.

2. Gidorah taking over MG and using him for his revenge on Godzilla should've been explored more. There is whole goddamn character arc we lost. During the final fight, MG isn't a mindless, running-around machine, but an avatar for a butthurt arch-nemesis of one of the titular characters.
This video is a pretty good and simple example of how a few little scenes could've given a lot more weight to MG and Gidorah's character. And seriously, aside of us nerds, who of the GA actually realizes that MG isn't rampaging on his own? I don't think many do. The friends I went with aren't that interested in the MV and neither of them actually noticed what happened to MG. They didn't care in the first place but I think it's rather sad that MG becomes like a generic doppelganger of Godzilla like this, when he is in fact a little more than that.
Last edited by Dyrakro on Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Mac Daddy MM »

Dyrakro wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pm*Snip*
FINALLY. So glad someone else has the same mindset. I love MV MechaGodzilla's design, but man do I wish all of his red was actually yellow to represent his ties to Ghidorah. It'd have also remained closer to the classic MG designs since all of them have yellow eyes. The beam even looks great in the yellow.
Last edited by Mac Daddy MM on Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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plasmabeam wrote: Tue Dec 05, 2023 3:03 am Hear me out on this. What if Godzilla is actually Suko’s father? In GvK when Godzilla defeated Kong and they were roaring at each other, what if Godzilla inseminated Kong at that moment and that’s why they were screaming?

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Moogabunga »

Dyrakro wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pmgotta say it's a huge improvement over the abomination we got in 2019.
That awkward moment when that "abomination" from 2019 is far better than GvK...

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Zasraniec »

Dyrakro wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pm So I just watched the movie and gotta say it's a huge improvement over the abomination we got in 2019.
And I really don't want to nitpick again at a movie, as GvK does so many things right. There are two things that really bug me:

1. The actual Godzilla vs Kong fight is by no means a fight to death. The way Godzilla is presented in the movie is similar to an insecure playground bully that wants to beat up the stubborn new kid who isn't interested in fighting at all. I'd say the movie would've done better if Godzilla seemed like the villain for most of the time and him hunting down Apex wasn't this obvious. Of course many people like myself would've been rather annoyed during the first hour if Godzilla suddenly turned evil, but considering Apex unites with the MC and Kong this would lead to a better premise for the fight: Kong actually having to defend the people dear to him, as Godzilla doesn't do any difference between Apex and other people. That would've given the whole fight a fully different feeling. The way the monsters behave, the fights in Hong Kong ain't that suspenseful. We know that neither Kong nor Godzilla is actually interested in killing the other. Whenever one lays on the ground and stops moving, the fight ends and there doesn't seem to be any difference at all. If Kong would win, where would be the difference? The world is such a huge place, that one monster bowing to the other would lead to no differences in their actions. The world is such a big place, they could easily avoid each other afterwards.

2. Gidorah taking over MG and using him for his revenge on Godzilla should've been explored more. There is whole goddamn character arc we lost. During the final fight, MG isn't a mindless, running-around machine, but an avatar for a butthurt arch-nemesis of one of the titular characters.
This video is a pretty good and simple example of how a few little scenes could've given a lot more weight to MG and Gidorah's character. And seriously, aside of us nerds, who of the GA actually realizes that MG isn't rampaging on his own? I don't think many do. The friends I went with aren't that interested in the MV and neither of them actually noticed what happened to MG. They didn't care in the first place but I think it's rather sad that MG becomes like a generic doppelganger of Godzilla like this, when he is in fact a little more than that.
I am not so sure about 1. but 2. I agree 100%. GvK falls short in the character development part whether the characters are human or not.

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Jaqua92 »

Dyrakro wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pm So I just watched the movie and gotta say it's a huge improvement over the abomination we got in 2019.
And I really don't want to nitpick again at a movie, as GvK does so many things right. There are two things that really bug me:

1. The actual Godzilla vs Kong fight is by no means a fight to death. The way Godzilla is presented in the movie is similar to an insecure playground bully that wants to beat up the stubborn new kid who isn't interested in fighting at all. I'd say the movie would've done better if Godzilla seemed like the villain for most of the time and him hunting down Apex wasn't this obvious. Of course many people like myself would've been rather annoyed during the first hour if Godzilla suddenly turned evil, but considering Apex unites with the MC and Kong this would lead to a better premise for the fight: Kong actually having to defend the people dear to him, as Godzilla doesn't do any difference between Apex and other people. That would've given the whole fight a fully different feeling. The way the monsters behave, the fights in Hong Kong ain't that suspenseful. We know that neither Kong nor Godzilla is actually interested in killing the other. Whenever one lays on the ground and stops moving, the fight ends and there doesn't seem to be any difference at all. If Kong would win, where would be the difference? The world is such a huge place, that one monster bowing to the other would lead to no differences in their actions. The world is such a big place, they could easily avoid each other afterwards.

2. Gidorah taking over MG and using him for his revenge on Godzilla should've been explored more. There is whole goddamn character arc we lost. During the final fight, MG isn't a mindless, running-around machine, but an avatar for a butthurt arch-nemesis of one of the titular characters.
This video is a pretty good and simple example of how a few little scenes could've given a lot more weight to MG and Gidorah's character. And seriously, aside of us nerds, who of the GA actually realizes that MG isn't rampaging on his own? I don't think many do. The friends I went with aren't that interested in the MV and neither of them actually noticed what happened to MG. They didn't care in the first place but I think it's rather sad that MG becomes like a generic doppelganger of Godzilla like this, when he is in fact a little more than that.
I think you're a bit off about Godzilla. Kong didn't want to be involved, but he WANTED Godzilla in Hong Kong. Godzilla as you describe it was like that in fight #1. That was territorial though.

In Hong Kong, Godzilla was just strolling through HK. Godzilla could sense *something* going down in HE. It pissed off Kong, who attacked Godzilla. Godzilla was toying with him, Kong got a good blow. Godzilla got pissed, and left Kong for dead.

Godzilla honestly hasn't changed as a character in any MV film. He was just bullshit and pissed off in this movie.
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

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Moogabunga wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:59 pm
Dyrakro wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pmgotta say it's a huge improvement over the abomination we got in 2019.
That awkward moment when that "abomination" from 2019 is far better than GvK...

Image
I don't agree at all with you in that one, but I respect your opinion aside of the fact that your post made me laugh a lot
Jaqua92 wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:56 am In Hong Kong, Godzilla was just strolling through HK. Godzilla could sense *something* going down in HE. It pissed off Kong, who attacked Godzilla. Godzilla was toying with him, Kong got a good blow. Godzilla got pissed, and left Kong for dead.
Maybe I fucked up a little in my explanation, what the creators were aiming for and befitting your explanation is alright. It's just that I'd have really liked to see an actual, suspenseful fight between Godzilla vs Kong during which the viewer actually would fear seeing one participant die. For example Batman vs Superman did a good job in delievering at least one character (Batman) who's interest it is to kill his enemy. This makes the whole fight more intense.
Jaqua92 wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:56 am Godzilla honestly hasn't changed as a character in any MV film. He was just bullshit and pissed off in this movie.
That's true, all MV Godzilla movies so far had a pissed off title character who just likes to fuck up other Titans businesses
Last edited by Dyrakro on Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by LSD Jellyfish »

Saw the film in theaters today. For some background, I watched it on its HBO Max release date, and then watched it twice. It’s been a few months, and I saw the film with my wife after we watched Godzilla 2014 again today.

I gotta say, I hope they eventually do some big theater re-release. I know corona is still an issue, but man, watching it on a big screen really did make a difference.

Anyways, 3rd time around, I thought the action was just as fun and memorable. But I recognized this time, that damn do all the monsters destroy a lot of buildings while fighting. Godzilla, Kong and MG smash each other through a lot of buildings. Lots of good usage of “physical action” and setting. I think the set piece of Godzilla vs Kong in the ocean is fantastic. The action is also well-paced in the narrative. Save for a few brief moments, the movie is always hitting you with some sort of action, or emotion, or something to look it. It never ignores either monster for far too long and it keeps things snappy.

Third time around I really really loved Jia, Kong, Nathan and their little crew. I actually also liked Maddison and Bernie a bit more, but I felt Bernie was carrying their section. What I realized is that while I don’t think it’s intentional, it reminded me a lot of some of the stuff I like in older films, like eccentric characters sneaking around Godzilla Land in vs. Gigan. I’m sort of okay with some of the rushed villain stuff, because honestly they would have overstayed their welcome if they gave some big monologue and I think the movie was well aware of that with their swift deaths. Spare for a few brief moments, the film never gets overly stupid, or obnoxious, in both the characters and the monster action.

My only major complaint is *drum-roll* Mecha-Godzilla. I actually think the design is pretty good, and I thought it was “cool”. However, it’s the weakest part of the film for me, because it again feels like regressing and relying on an established monster, to appeal to Godzilla fans, versus doing something uniquely original. I thought the film did a good enough job at establishing a core of Godzilla and Kong, and then it sort of just tosses that to the side with MG. Not an easy problem with an easy solution, so I’m not really going to hate on the film for it. It did also feel like they gave sufficient thought and build up to it throughout.

I think now that I have had time to dwell on it, I could probably rate it just as high, if not higher, than some of the later Heisei Entries, and Millenium Entries (92, 94, 95, GxMeg, Kiryu Saga, GFW). I think all the films I just stated will always have a place in my heart (maybe not GFW :P), and will always be special for launching some great concepts and thanks to all the unique practical effects and filmmaking going into it, but Godzilla vs Kong just felt like the Godzilla formula was taken and a really solid monster flick was made.

A lot of other takes on Godzilla will still surpass this, especially those with some sort of greater societal impact, meaning, or merit, but I can safely say that I think Godzilla vs Kong will be one of those Godzilla films that people will still be talking about in a few years and be a major high point in the series for some people.
Last edited by LSD Jellyfish on Sat Jul 17, 2021 8:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by LegendZilla »

I'm surprised to say this, but I actually like how Kong was the one to beat MechaG. I am a Godzilla guy through and through, but this movie really managed to make Kong the heart of the movie and my primate-brain couldn't help but compel me to relate to him and go along with it.

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Chris55 »

Did a post release interview with Adam Wingard back in June. It was supposed to be out at the end of June but life got majorly intense but, here it is!

Hope you like it!

https://www.tohokingdom.com/blog/interv ... 21-round2/
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Xx_The_Masquerade_xX »

Chris55 wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:09 pm Did a post release interview with Adam Wingard back in June. It was supposed to be out at the end of June but life got majorly intense but, here it is!

Hope you like it!

https://www.tohokingdom.com/blog/interv ... 21-round2/

Great Interview. Thank you Chris55 appreciate your time an effort in posting that for us!

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by ClandestineCanine9 »

Dyrakro wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:21 pmThis video is a pretty good and simple example of how a few little scenes could've given a lot more weight to MG and Ghidorah's character.
I see where it's coming from, though I would have made it overall a lot quicker. the flashback doesn't need to recap the entirety of KotM, it just needs to establish that it was a Ghidorah head that Godzilla ripped off. 2 brief scenes in a first person perspective and a more distinct Ghidorah roar that transitioned into the digitized version would have sufficed.

Added in 2 minutes 58 seconds:
the flashback doesn't need to recap the entirety of KotM
especially since the severed head wasn't around to see Ghidorah get incinerated at the end
Last edited by ClandestineCanine9 on Tue Aug 03, 2021 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by TitanoGoji16 »

Okay, so. This has been a post I've been menaing to make for some time now. To clarify, I have only seen Godzilla vs. Kong once so far, back when it was first released. I... well, I did not care for the movie. I haven't watched it again since then, though I do plan on doing so. So the following thoughts are based on my initial, months-old viewing. If when I watch it again and my opinion of the movie has notably changed, I'll make another post, but in the meanwhile, here are my initial thoughts on the film:

Spoiler:
  • All the other Titans are gone right off the bat and that whole "mankind and Titans learning to co-exist peacefully" thing promised at the end of GKOTM means nothing anymore. I don't think a movie has ever put me in that severe of a bad mood that quickly before. The death of Mako in Pacific Rim: Uprising was probably worse, but that was at least like 20-30 minutes into the movie.
  • "Ever since Skull Island was destroyed and every living thing on the island was wiped out..." Oh. Okay. Cool. I mean I was kinda hoping we'd get to see Godzilla on Skull Island at some point, but no, that's fine, too...
  • Kong literally has no agency throughout the film, he's just told to do things repeatedly by the humans. "Go in the portal." "Find the power source." "Fight Mechagodzilla." They literally carry him from destination to destination. He's basically a trained... well, monkey. Kong himself doesn't decide to do a damn thing in this movie on his own. Yeah, he's ferried to Japan in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla too, but once he's free, he's a monster on a rampage that does whatever he wants. He's not literally led around by the hand for the entire film.
  • The villains are quite possibly the most nothing characters I have ever seen in the history in of film. I can't even remember Evil Business Man's and Evil Business Man's Daughter's names without having to look them up. What was Evil Business Man's name? Mr. Apex? (No, I'm not kidding, you could put a gun to my head and I still wouldn't be able to remember their names.)
  • Serizawa's son was so wasted they literally should have just cut the character out of the film completely. At the very least, edit out the line where we're told he's Serizawa's son so we're not blue balled with quite possibly the most wasted potential ever committed to film. Imagine a future MCU movie introducing "the son of Tony Stark" as a villain and then killing him off before he even gets a line.
  • Madison and especially Mark have borderline no reason to be in this movie. And where is the rest of MONARCH? There are no other Titans on Earth right now. What could Rick and Chen and Brooks possibly be doing other than looking into a fight between Godzilla and Kong and later a giant robot Godzilla? And while he's not MONARCH, some sort of appearance from Admiral Stenz would've been nice.
  • It's disappointing that Mark has apparently reverted back to his old "Get off my lawn, y'damn lizard!" mentality. Sure, Godzilla is seemingly attacking mankind for no reason, but Mark had seemed to gain an understanding and respect for him in the previous movie. He should be just as shocked and confused about the whole thing as Madison is.
  • Why is the Deadpool 2 kid here? He adds even less to the story than the villains do. Why couldn't it have just been Madison and Bernie? Why not get rid of Bernie and make it Madison, Chen, and Mark/Rick? I'd actually care about those characters and they have good reason to be pro-Godzilla.
  • Considering the plot to this movie, I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't have been really nice to have Serizawa and Graham here for this. I think it's safe to say that seeing his beloved Titan savior turn against humanity as well as wage war with his ancient primate rival, not to mention seeing mankind tampering in God's domain by creating Mechagodzilla, would've resulted in some amazing Serizawa material.
  • "Go into the portal. There are others like you, family, on the other side." I feel like this really should've bitten Team Kong in the ass at some point, but then it never does.
  • The entire Hollow Earth / Kong temple / axe sequence is mind-bendingly stupid and this is coming from someone who loves the wackier movies like Godzilla vs. Megalon and Gamera vs. Guiron. Look, I get that apes are intelligent creatures to begin with and that "Kong is a thinking animal," but he's still a monster. This nonsense elevates him from a giant monster to a kind of fantasy race you'd expect to see in Lord of the Rings or something. "Kong was the lost prince of the noble Ape People of Narnia." It breaks the Goofy Meter and not in the way a kaiju movie should. I would've rather seen Kong use some ape ingenuity to put an axe together out of a tree and a rock or something instead of this Excalibur/Stormbreaker nonsense.
  • His home is gone. His people/followers are gone. He gets his ass handed to him early on by a powerful Titan. He spends a good chunk of the movie on a side quest to acquire an anti-'the big guy who kicked my ass earlier' axe... Why did this movie turn Kong into Thor?
  • Why did Evil Business Man's Daughter turn against Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgaard, again? Because Rebecca Hall said "You can't take that power source!" and then didn't really do anything to enforce that? Was that all? Also, why did Rebecca Hall say she can't take that power source? Wasn't literally the entire friggin' reason they took Kong into the Hollow Earth was so he could lead them to a power source that they could then take?
  • "I emailed you an analysis of an energy source which means you now have the energy source" I CAN'T EVEN WHAT
  • So, the big pay off to the Hollow Earth thing we've been hearing about for four movies, the grand reveal of the mysterious hidden world that monsters come from, is Kong runs down there for a quick errand to get an axe, as opposed to something epic like, I don't know, being the location of the big climactic showdown between the planet's two Titan kings.
  • Until now, the implication was that the Hollow Earth was just accessed by ordinary tunnels that humans and monsters could physically travel through. Actually, it was more than just an implication. We SEE it in GKTOM; the giant Godzilla temple that the submarine full of the main characters travel to is in the Hollow Earth. Rick spells this out for us. But now it suddenly involves a massive drop (even for a kaiju) and a Stargate-esque wormhole space portal. What. How the hell would monsters like Behemoth and Methuselah get out of the Hollow Earth if the process involved climbing up a giant tunnel and leaping upwards through an upside down portal? Hell, I can barely even imagine Godzilla pulling that off. How was the submarine in GKOTM not obliterated by this sudden magical shift in gravity and falling upside down? I haven't seen a movie have such blatant disregard for what the previous films established since The Last Jedi.
  • The movie insultingly glosses over the fact that Team Kong (Jia, Rebecca Hall, and Alexander Skarsgaard - the latter two characters' names I can also not remember for the life of me), while having the better characters, are actually among the villains of the film. They're literally helping the bad guys use Kong to attain a power source for their Titan-slaying doomsday robot (blatantly lying to and tricking Kong with the promise of finding family in the process). Yeah, they tell Kong to help save Godzilla from Mechagodzilla at the end, but at no point is there a moment where they seem to realize and acknowledge the part they played in bringing the machine to life. They just switch from helping the villains to stopping the villains because now the movie's almost over. Hong Kong is completely and utterly decimated and millions of people are killed because of their actions, and they get off entirely scot-free.
  • I don't mind Mechagodzilla being the overwhelming evil force that causes Godzilla and Kong to come together, but the way he's used in the film is about as "I don't know, here he is for some reason" as the Oxygen Destroyer was in GKOTM. Whether you liked the "Godzilla is attacking humanity because it's really Mechagodzilla in disguise!" theory or not, it would've at least built Mechagodzilla up as a villainous presence as opposed to him just being dumped into the film in the final act a la Doomsday in Batman v. Superman.
  • "Oh [shiitake], it's a Robogodzilla!" "Nah, man. That's Mechagodzilla!" Tee-hee, he said the name of the famous character! No, but seriously, this dialogue makes no sense, because in-universe, there's nothing wrong or incorrect with calling the giant Godzilla robot "Robogodzilla." It's not as if the machine had been introduced to them as Mechagodzilla and Bernie kept getting the name wrong or something. At the time they say this, all they know is that it's a giant Godzilla robot and "Robogodzilla" is just as good a guess at its name as anything else. The kid may as well have said "No, that's Mechagodzilla, which is a registered trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.!"
  • Maybe I'm alone in this, but there's no... oomph to this meeting of two of cinema's greatest monsters. The only reason it's a big deal is that we the audience know in a meta, copyright sense what an impossible feat this was previously thought to be. But in the movie itself? Godzilla already knows about Kong, the characters already know that Godzilla already knows about Kong, and Kong seemingly already knows about Godzilla but just wants to be left alone. There's no "Oh man, Godzilla and Kong are meeting for the first time!" aspect to any of it.
  • Speaking of Kong just wanting to be left alone... Why is Godzilla the only Alpha Titan in full-on "There can be only one!" mode? Why doesn't Kong have a similar attitude? Since when does the Eighth Wonder of the World have a problem with getting into fights with reptiles to prove how big his crown is? Kong is such a nothing character in this film. He doesn't want to fight Godzilla. He lets the humans dictate his every move. One of his big scenes is him crying in the rain wanting to go home. Jesus.
  • As a continuation and culmination of the previous two problems, Kong is portrayed as a scared widdle monkey and everyone is scared for him and oh no Godzilla is coming how are we going to save Kong from the big mean dinosaur? The narrative should've been that these two are evenly matched forces equally capable of wiping the other out in a true clash of the titans (and I say this as someone who was 100% on Team Godzilla) and instead everyone spends the entire movie fearing for Kong's safety, which in turn influences the meta-audience-narrative. Instead of "GIANT MONSTER VERSUS GIANT MONSTER! WHO WILL WIN?" the movie instead tries to retain the traditional sympathetic 'aww, just leave the poor guy alone,' 'animal pulled out of his natural environment' underdog portrayal usually used in Kong's solo American films, but doing that in a versus crossover movie works to the character's detriment. It puts a completely different slant on his fights with Godzilla. To compare it to another monster crossover, Jason Voorhees may have been the underdog in Freddy vs. Jason, but the characters didn't drill "We have to save Jason! If Freddy finds Jason, Jason is dead! We have to keep Jason away from Freddy! He stands no chance against Freddy! We're so scared for Jason!" into our heads for the entire movie. Despite Freddy's superior abilities, the film still presented their fighting as a fairly even match.
However, it's not all bad:

Spoiler:
  • The fights are absolutely amazing. At long, long last, they finally stopped all their cutting-away-from-the-main-reason-you're-watching-the-movie nonsense from Godzilla (2014) and GKOTM and just allowed us long, extended fight sequences between Godzilla and Kong. The fight at sea is great and tense (though it is decidedly not 18 minutes long... I have no idea what the hell Junkie XL is talking about) and the big main fight in Hong Kong is quite possibly one of the greatest kaiju fights ever put to film.
  • I loved the King Kong vs. Godzilla nod when Kong shoves the butt end of the Fin Breaker into Godzilla's mouth.
  • I love how much expression and personality Godzilla has in this movie. He hates Kong with a passion and is not afraid to show it, with absolutely no reservations about laughing at and reveling in Kong's suffering, or going apeshit (no pun intended) whenever Kong manages to land a good blow. This fight is clearly personal on a level that even the fight with Ghidorah never was. It's arguably the most character Godzilla has had in the MonsterVerse thus far and it's great.
  • I really appreciate that this movie continued the tradition of Godzilla's atomic ray and one of Mechagodzilla's lasers clashing against each other.
  • I liked the relationship between Kong and Jia even though it wasn't really developed very well. I felt like there needed to be a "Kong springs into action to save Jia from danger" scene, but there never was.
  • As dumb as Madison's Scooby-Doo plot was and as pointless as Mark's inclusion was, it was ultimately nice to see them again.
So, yeah. I don't hate this movie. There are some nice aspects to it. But I thought it was really stupid on a level the MonsterVerse had pretty much successfully managed to avoid until now and was fairly disappointing for a crossover of this magnitude.
"Name me one fight where Anguirus didn't get his dick kicked in."

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by godzillabadger »

Greetings all! First post here, and if this has already been addressed before, my apologies. In what I consider a nod to the original(Universal)release of King Kong vs. Godzilla is the scene where Godzilla pursues Kong while crawling on all fours. Reminded me of the explanation of just what Godzilla is from KKvsG where the paleontologist describes Godzilla as a cross between a T-Rex and a Stegosaurus, which is exactly what I thought he looked like while pursuing Kong. You know, long back legs, short forelegs, tiny head, and plates on the back. The only thing missing were the tail spikes. Actually thinking back on it, there are a lot of subtle(and some not-so-subtle)nods to past kaiju films, many of which have already been discussed here. Just an observation I thought I'd pass along...

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by Legendary Gojira »

TitanoGoji16 wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 2:26 pm Okay, so. This has been a post I've been menaing to make for some time now. To clarify, I have only seen Godzilla vs. Kong once so far, back when it was first released. I... well, I did not care for the movie. I haven't watched it again since then, though I do plan on doing so. So the following thoughts are based on my initial, months-old viewing. If when I watch it again and my opinion of the movie has notably changed, I'll make another post, but in the meanwhile, here are my initial thoughts on the film:

Spoiler:
  • All the other Titans are gone right off the bat and that whole "mankind and Titans learning to co-exist peacefully" thing promised at the end of GKOTM means nothing anymore. I don't think a movie has ever put me in that severe of a bad mood that quickly before. The death of Mako in Pacific Rim: Uprising was probably worse, but that was at least like 20-30 minutes into the movie.
  • "Ever since Skull Island was destroyed and every living thing on the island was wiped out..." Oh. Okay. Cool. I mean I was kinda hoping we'd get to see Godzilla on Skull Island at some point, but no, that's fine, too...
  • Kong literally has no agency throughout the film, he's just told to do things repeatedly by the humans. "Go in the portal." "Find the power source." "Fight Mechagodzilla." They literally carry him from destination to destination. He's basically a trained... well, monkey. Kong himself doesn't decide to do a damn thing in this movie on his own. Yeah, he's ferried to Japan in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla too, but once he's free, he's a monster on a rampage that does whatever he wants. He's not literally led around by the hand for the entire film.
  • The villains are quite possibly the most nothing characters I have ever seen in the history in of film. I can't even remember Evil Business Man's and Evil Business Man's Daughter's names without having to look them up. What was Evil Business Man's name? Mr. Apex? (No, I'm not kidding, you could put a gun to my head and I still wouldn't be able to remember their names.)
  • Serizawa's son was so wasted they literally should have just cut the character out of the film completely. At the very least, edit out the line where we're told he's Serizawa's son so we're not blue balled with quite possibly the most wasted potential ever committed to film. Imagine a future MCU movie introducing "the son of Tony Stark" as a villain and then killing him off before he even gets a line.
  • Madison and especially Mark have borderline no reason to be in this movie. And where is the rest of MONARCH? There are no other Titans on Earth right now. What could Rick and Chen and Brooks possibly be doing other than looking into a fight between Godzilla and Kong and later a giant robot Godzilla? And while he's not MONARCH, some sort of appearance from Admiral Stenz would've been nice.
  • It's disappointing that Mark has apparently reverted back to his old "Get off my lawn, y'damn lizard!" mentality. Sure, Godzilla is seemingly attacking mankind for no reason, but Mark had seemed to gain an understanding and respect for him in the previous movie. He should be just as shocked and confused about the whole thing as Madison is.
  • Why is the Deadpool 2 kid here? He adds even less to the story than the villains do. Why couldn't it have just been Madison and Bernie? Why not get rid of Bernie and make it Madison, Chen, and Mark/Rick? I'd actually care about those characters and they have good reason to be pro-Godzilla.
  • Considering the plot to this movie, I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't have been really nice to have Serizawa and Graham here for this. I think it's safe to say that seeing his beloved Titan savior turn against humanity as well as wage war with his ancient primate rival, not to mention seeing mankind tampering in God's domain by creating Mechagodzilla, would've resulted in some amazing Serizawa material.
  • "Go into the portal. There are others like you, family, on the other side." I feel like this really should've bitten Team Kong in the ass at some point, but then it never does.
  • The entire Hollow Earth / Kong temple / axe sequence is mind-bendingly stupid and this is coming from someone who loves the wackier movies like Godzilla vs. Megalon and Gamera vs. Guiron. Look, I get that apes are intelligent creatures to begin with and that "Kong is a thinking animal," but he's still a monster. This nonsense elevates him from a giant monster to a kind of fantasy race you'd expect to see in Lord of the Rings or something. "Kong was the lost prince of the noble Ape People of Narnia." It breaks the Goofy Meter and not in the way a kaiju movie should. I would've rather seen Kong use some ape ingenuity to put an axe together out of a tree and a rock or something instead of this Excalibur/Stormbreaker nonsense.
  • His home is gone. His people/followers are gone. He gets his ass handed to him early on by a powerful Titan. He spends a good chunk of the movie on a side quest to acquire an anti-'the big guy who kicked my ass earlier' axe... Why did this movie turn Kong into Thor?
  • Why did Evil Business Man's Daughter turn against Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgaard, again? Because Rebecca Hall said "You can't take that power source!" and then didn't really do anything to enforce that? Was that all? Also, why did Rebecca Hall say she can't take that power source? Wasn't literally the entire friggin' reason they took Kong into the Hollow Earth was so he could lead them to a power source that they could then take?
  • "I emailed you an analysis of an energy source which means you now have the energy source" I CAN'T EVEN WHAT
  • So, the big pay off to the Hollow Earth thing we've been hearing about for four movies, the grand reveal of the mysterious hidden world that monsters come from, is Kong runs down there for a quick errand to get an axe, as opposed to something epic like, I don't know, being the location of the big climactic showdown between the planet's two Titan kings.
  • Until now, the implication was that the Hollow Earth was just accessed by ordinary tunnels that humans and monsters could physically travel through. Actually, it was more than just an implication. We SEE it in GKTOM; the giant Godzilla temple that the submarine full of the main characters travel to is in the Hollow Earth. Rick spells this out for us. But now it suddenly involves a massive drop (even for a kaiju) and a Stargate-esque wormhole space portal. What. How the hell would monsters like Behemoth and Methuselah get out of the Hollow Earth if the process involved climbing up a giant tunnel and leaping upwards through an upside down portal? Hell, I can barely even imagine Godzilla pulling that off. How was the submarine in GKOTM not obliterated by this sudden magical shift in gravity and falling upside down? I haven't seen a movie have such blatant disregard for what the previous films established since The Last Jedi.
  • The movie insultingly glosses over the fact that Team Kong (Jia, Rebecca Hall, and Alexander Skarsgaard - the latter two characters' names I can also not remember for the life of me), while having the better characters, are actually among the villains of the film. They're literally helping the bad guys use Kong to attain a power source for their Titan-slaying doomsday robot (blatantly lying to and tricking Kong with the promise of finding family in the process). Yeah, they tell Kong to help save Godzilla from Mechagodzilla at the end, but at no point is there a moment where they seem to realize and acknowledge the part they played in bringing the machine to life. They just switch from helping the villains to stopping the villains because now the movie's almost over. Hong Kong is completely and utterly decimated and millions of people are killed because of their actions, and they get off entirely scot-free.
  • I don't mind Mechagodzilla being the overwhelming evil force that causes Godzilla and Kong to come together, but the way he's used in the film is about as "I don't know, here he is for some reason" as the Oxygen Destroyer was in GKOTM. Whether you liked the "Godzilla is attacking humanity because it's really Mechagodzilla in disguise!" theory or not, it would've at least built Mechagodzilla up as a villainous presence as opposed to him just being dumped into the film in the final act a la Doomsday in Batman v. Superman.
  • "Oh [shiitake], it's a Robogodzilla!" "Nah, man. That's Mechagodzilla!" Tee-hee, he said the name of the famous character! No, but seriously, this dialogue makes no sense, because in-universe, there's nothing wrong or incorrect with calling the giant Godzilla robot "Robogodzilla." It's not as if the machine had been introduced to them as Mechagodzilla and Bernie kept getting the name wrong or something. At the time they say this, all they know is that it's a giant Godzilla robot and "Robogodzilla" is just as good a guess at its name as anything else. The kid may as well have said "No, that's Mechagodzilla, which is a registered trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.!"
  • Maybe I'm alone in this, but there's no... oomph to this meeting of two of cinema's greatest monsters. The only reason it's a big deal is that we the audience know in a meta, copyright sense what an impossible feat this was previously thought to be. But in the movie itself? Godzilla already knows about Kong, the characters already know that Godzilla already knows about Kong, and Kong seemingly already knows about Godzilla but just wants to be left alone. There's no "Oh man, Godzilla and Kong are meeting for the first time!" aspect to any of it.
  • Speaking of Kong just wanting to be left alone... Why is Godzilla the only Alpha Titan in full-on "There can be only one!" mode? Why doesn't Kong have a similar attitude? Since when does the Eighth Wonder of the World have a problem with getting into fights with reptiles to prove how big his crown is? Kong is such a nothing character in this film. He doesn't want to fight Godzilla. He lets the humans dictate his every move. One of his big scenes is him crying in the rain wanting to go home. Jesus.
  • As a continuation and culmination of the previous two problems, Kong is portrayed as a scared widdle monkey and everyone is scared for him and oh no Godzilla is coming how are we going to save Kong from the big mean dinosaur? The narrative should've been that these two are evenly matched forces equally capable of wiping the other out in a true clash of the titans (and I say this as someone who was 100% on Team Godzilla) and instead everyone spends the entire movie fearing for Kong's safety, which in turn influences the meta-audience-narrative. Instead of "GIANT MONSTER VERSUS GIANT MONSTER! WHO WILL WIN?" the movie instead tries to retain the traditional sympathetic 'aww, just leave the poor guy alone,' 'animal pulled out of his natural environment' underdog portrayal usually used in Kong's solo American films, but doing that in a versus crossover movie works to the character's detriment. It puts a completely different slant on his fights with Godzilla. To compare it to another monster crossover, Jason Voorhees may have been the underdog in Freddy vs. Jason, but the characters didn't drill "We have to save Jason! If Freddy finds Jason, Jason is dead! We have to keep Jason away from Freddy! He stands no chance against Freddy! We're so scared for Jason!" into our heads for the entire movie. Despite Freddy's superior abilities, the film still presented their fighting as a fairly even match.
However, it's not all bad:

Spoiler:
  • The fights are absolutely amazing. At long, long last, they finally stopped all their cutting-away-from-the-main-reason-you're-watching-the-movie nonsense from Godzilla (2014) and GKOTM and just allowed us long, extended fight sequences between Godzilla and Kong. The fight at sea is great and tense (though it is decidedly not 18 minutes long... I have no idea what the hell Junkie XL is talking about) and the big main fight in Hong Kong is quite possibly one of the greatest kaiju fights ever put to film.
  • I loved the King Kong vs. Godzilla nod when Kong shoves the butt end of the Fin Breaker into Godzilla's mouth.
  • I love how much expression and personality Godzilla has in this movie. He hates Kong with a passion and is not afraid to show it, with absolutely no reservations about laughing at and reveling in Kong's suffering, or going apeshit (no pun intended) whenever Kong manages to land a good blow. This fight is clearly personal on a level that even the fight with Ghidorah never was. It's arguably the most character Godzilla has had in the MonsterVerse thus far and it's great.
  • I really appreciate that this movie continued the tradition of Godzilla's atomic ray and one of Mechagodzilla's lasers clashing against each other.
  • I liked the relationship between Kong and Jia even though it wasn't really developed very well. I felt like there needed to be a "Kong springs into action to save Jia from danger" scene, but there never was.
  • As dumb as Madison's Scooby-Doo plot was and as pointless as Mark's inclusion was, it was ultimately nice to see them again.
So, yeah. I don't hate this movie. There are some nice aspects to it. But I thought it was really stupid on a level the MonsterVerse had pretty much successfully managed to avoid until now and was fairly disappointing for a crossover of this magnitude.

You...pretty much summed up my thoughts and feelings on this movie. I loved seeing Godzilla and Kong battle again in modern times, and loved seeing Godzilla win (#TeamGodzilla), but ultimately I was kinda let down for the reasons you laid out. I mean, I enjoyed it, but not as much as I wanted to.
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by JAGzilla »

TitanoGoji16 wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 2:26 pm Okay, so. This has been a post I've been menaing to make for some time now. To clarify, I have only seen Godzilla vs. Kong once so far, back when it was first released. I... well, I did not care for the movie. I haven't watched it again since then, though I do plan on doing so. So the following thoughts are based on my initial, months-old viewing. If when I watch it again and my opinion of the movie has notably changed, I'll make another post, but in the meanwhile, here are my initial thoughts on the film:

Spoiler:
  • All the other Titans are gone right off the bat and that whole "mankind and Titans learning to co-exist peacefully" thing promised at the end of GKOTM means nothing anymore. I don't think a movie has ever put me in that severe of a bad mood that quickly before. The death of Mako in Pacific Rim: Uprising was probably worse, but that was at least like 20-30 minutes into the movie.
  • "Ever since Skull Island was destroyed and every living thing on the island was wiped out..." Oh. Okay. Cool. I mean I was kinda hoping we'd get to see Godzilla on Skull Island at some point, but no, that's fine, too...
  • Kong literally has no agency throughout the film, he's just told to do things repeatedly by the humans. "Go in the portal." "Find the power source." "Fight Mechagodzilla." They literally carry him from destination to destination. He's basically a trained... well, monkey. Kong himself doesn't decide to do a damn thing in this movie on his own. Yeah, he's ferried to Japan in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla too, but once he's free, he's a monster on a rampage that does whatever he wants. He's not literally led around by the hand for the entire film.
  • The villains are quite possibly the most nothing characters I have ever seen in the history in of film. I can't even remember Evil Business Man's and Evil Business Man's Daughter's names without having to look them up. What was Evil Business Man's name? Mr. Apex? (No, I'm not kidding, you could put a gun to my head and I still wouldn't be able to remember their names.)
  • Serizawa's son was so wasted they literally should have just cut the character out of the film completely. At the very least, edit out the line where we're told he's Serizawa's son so we're not blue balled with quite possibly the most wasted potential ever committed to film. Imagine a future MCU movie introducing "the son of Tony Stark" as a villain and then killing him off before he even gets a line.
  • Madison and especially Mark have borderline no reason to be in this movie. And where is the rest of MONARCH? There are no other Titans on Earth right now. What could Rick and Chen and Brooks possibly be doing other than looking into a fight between Godzilla and Kong and later a giant robot Godzilla? And while he's not MONARCH, some sort of appearance from Admiral Stenz would've been nice.
  • It's disappointing that Mark has apparently reverted back to his old "Get off my lawn, y'damn lizard!" mentality. Sure, Godzilla is seemingly attacking mankind for no reason, but Mark had seemed to gain an understanding and respect for him in the previous movie. He should be just as shocked and confused about the whole thing as Madison is.
  • Why is the Deadpool 2 kid here? He adds even less to the story than the villains do. Why couldn't it have just been Madison and Bernie? Why not get rid of Bernie and make it Madison, Chen, and Mark/Rick? I'd actually care about those characters and they have good reason to be pro-Godzilla.
  • Considering the plot to this movie, I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't have been really nice to have Serizawa and Graham here for this. I think it's safe to say that seeing his beloved Titan savior turn against humanity as well as wage war with his ancient primate rival, not to mention seeing mankind tampering in God's domain by creating Mechagodzilla, would've resulted in some amazing Serizawa material.
  • "Go into the portal. There are others like you, family, on the other side." I feel like this really should've bitten Team Kong in the ass at some point, but then it never does.
  • The entire Hollow Earth / Kong temple / axe sequence is mind-bendingly stupid and this is coming from someone who loves the wackier movies like Godzilla vs. Megalon and Gamera vs. Guiron. Look, I get that apes are intelligent creatures to begin with and that "Kong is a thinking animal," but he's still a monster. This nonsense elevates him from a giant monster to a kind of fantasy race you'd expect to see in Lord of the Rings or something. "Kong was the lost prince of the noble Ape People of Narnia." It breaks the Goofy Meter and not in the way a kaiju movie should. I would've rather seen Kong use some ape ingenuity to put an axe together out of a tree and a rock or something instead of this Excalibur/Stormbreaker nonsense.
  • His home is gone. His people/followers are gone. He gets his ass handed to him early on by a powerful Titan. He spends a good chunk of the movie on a side quest to acquire an anti-'the big guy who kicked my ass earlier' axe... Why did this movie turn Kong into Thor?
  • Why did Evil Business Man's Daughter turn against Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgaard, again? Because Rebecca Hall said "You can't take that power source!" and then didn't really do anything to enforce that? Was that all? Also, why did Rebecca Hall say she can't take that power source? Wasn't literally the entire friggin' reason they took Kong into the Hollow Earth was so he could lead them to a power source that they could then take?
  • "I emailed you an analysis of an energy source which means you now have the energy source" I CAN'T EVEN WHAT
  • So, the big pay off to the Hollow Earth thing we've been hearing about for four movies, the grand reveal of the mysterious hidden world that monsters come from, is Kong runs down there for a quick errand to get an axe, as opposed to something epic like, I don't know, being the location of the big climactic showdown between the planet's two Titan kings.
  • Until now, the implication was that the Hollow Earth was just accessed by ordinary tunnels that humans and monsters could physically travel through. Actually, it was more than just an implication. We SEE it in GKTOM; the giant Godzilla temple that the submarine full of the main characters travel to is in the Hollow Earth. Rick spells this out for us. But now it suddenly involves a massive drop (even for a kaiju) and a Stargate-esque wormhole space portal. What. How the hell would monsters like Behemoth and Methuselah get out of the Hollow Earth if the process involved climbing up a giant tunnel and leaping upwards through an upside down portal? Hell, I can barely even imagine Godzilla pulling that off. How was the submarine in GKOTM not obliterated by this sudden magical shift in gravity and falling upside down? I haven't seen a movie have such blatant disregard for what the previous films established since The Last Jedi.
  • The movie insultingly glosses over the fact that Team Kong (Jia, Rebecca Hall, and Alexander Skarsgaard - the latter two characters' names I can also not remember for the life of me), while having the better characters, are actually among the villains of the film. They're literally helping the bad guys use Kong to attain a power source for their Titan-slaying doomsday robot (blatantly lying to and tricking Kong with the promise of finding family in the process). Yeah, they tell Kong to help save Godzilla from Mechagodzilla at the end, but at no point is there a moment where they seem to realize and acknowledge the part they played in bringing the machine to life. They just switch from helping the villains to stopping the villains because now the movie's almost over. Hong Kong is completely and utterly decimated and millions of people are killed because of their actions, and they get off entirely scot-free.
  • I don't mind Mechagodzilla being the overwhelming evil force that causes Godzilla and Kong to come together, but the way he's used in the film is about as "I don't know, here he is for some reason" as the Oxygen Destroyer was in GKOTM. Whether you liked the "Godzilla is attacking humanity because it's really Mechagodzilla in disguise!" theory or not, it would've at least built Mechagodzilla up as a villainous presence as opposed to him just being dumped into the film in the final act a la Doomsday in Batman v. Superman.
  • "Oh [shiitake], it's a Robogodzilla!" "Nah, man. That's Mechagodzilla!" Tee-hee, he said the name of the famous character! No, but seriously, this dialogue makes no sense, because in-universe, there's nothing wrong or incorrect with calling the giant Godzilla robot "Robogodzilla." It's not as if the machine had been introduced to them as Mechagodzilla and Bernie kept getting the name wrong or something. At the time they say this, all they know is that it's a giant Godzilla robot and "Robogodzilla" is just as good a guess at its name as anything else. The kid may as well have said "No, that's Mechagodzilla, which is a registered trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.!"
  • Maybe I'm alone in this, but there's no... oomph to this meeting of two of cinema's greatest monsters. The only reason it's a big deal is that we the audience know in a meta, copyright sense what an impossible feat this was previously thought to be. But in the movie itself? Godzilla already knows about Kong, the characters already know that Godzilla already knows about Kong, and Kong seemingly already knows about Godzilla but just wants to be left alone. There's no "Oh man, Godzilla and Kong are meeting for the first time!" aspect to any of it.
  • Speaking of Kong just wanting to be left alone... Why is Godzilla the only Alpha Titan in full-on "There can be only one!" mode? Why doesn't Kong have a similar attitude? Since when does the Eighth Wonder of the World have a problem with getting into fights with reptiles to prove how big his crown is? Kong is such a nothing character in this film. He doesn't want to fight Godzilla. He lets the humans dictate his every move. One of his big scenes is him crying in the rain wanting to go home. Jesus.
  • As a continuation and culmination of the previous two problems, Kong is portrayed as a scared widdle monkey and everyone is scared for him and oh no Godzilla is coming how are we going to save Kong from the big mean dinosaur? The narrative should've been that these two are evenly matched forces equally capable of wiping the other out in a true clash of the titans (and I say this as someone who was 100% on Team Godzilla) and instead everyone spends the entire movie fearing for Kong's safety, which in turn influences the meta-audience-narrative. Instead of "GIANT MONSTER VERSUS GIANT MONSTER! WHO WILL WIN?" the movie instead tries to retain the traditional sympathetic 'aww, just leave the poor guy alone,' 'animal pulled out of his natural environment' underdog portrayal usually used in Kong's solo American films, but doing that in a versus crossover movie works to the character's detriment. It puts a completely different slant on his fights with Godzilla. To compare it to another monster crossover, Jason Voorhees may have been the underdog in Freddy vs. Jason, but the characters didn't drill "We have to save Jason! If Freddy finds Jason, Jason is dead! We have to keep Jason away from Freddy! He stands no chance against Freddy! We're so scared for Jason!" into our heads for the entire movie. Despite Freddy's superior abilities, the film still presented their fighting as a fairly even match.
However, it's not all bad:

Spoiler:
  • The fights are absolutely amazing. At long, long last, they finally stopped all their cutting-away-from-the-main-reason-you're-watching-the-movie nonsense from Godzilla (2014) and GKOTM and just allowed us long, extended fight sequences between Godzilla and Kong. The fight at sea is great and tense (though it is decidedly not 18 minutes long... I have no idea what the hell Junkie XL is talking about) and the big main fight in Hong Kong is quite possibly one of the greatest kaiju fights ever put to film.
  • I loved the King Kong vs. Godzilla nod when Kong shoves the butt end of the Fin Breaker into Godzilla's mouth.
  • I love how much expression and personality Godzilla has in this movie. He hates Kong with a passion and is not afraid to show it, with absolutely no reservations about laughing at and reveling in Kong's suffering, or going apeshit (no pun intended) whenever Kong manages to land a good blow. This fight is clearly personal on a level that even the fight with Ghidorah never was. It's arguably the most character Godzilla has had in the MonsterVerse thus far and it's great.
  • I really appreciate that this movie continued the tradition of Godzilla's atomic ray and one of Mechagodzilla's lasers clashing against each other.
  • I liked the relationship between Kong and Jia even though it wasn't really developed very well. I felt like there needed to be a "Kong springs into action to save Jia from danger" scene, but there never was.
  • As dumb as Madison's Scooby-Doo plot was and as pointless as Mark's inclusion was, it was ultimately nice to see them again.
So, yeah. I don't hate this movie. There are some nice aspects to it. But I thought it was really stupid on a level the MonsterVerse had pretty much successfully managed to avoid until now and was fairly disappointing for a crossover of this magnitude.
Yep, basically all of this, with the addition that Kong and Godzilla's rivalry was so underexplained that the battles held little meaning for me. I didn't get what made Godzilla hate Kong so completely, while Kong seemed to just want nothing to do with Godzilla. No, comic book bandaids and "well, if you look real hard at the previous films and extrapolate to connect the dots..." don't count as an explanation. And whether it technically explains some things or not, Mechagodzilla muddying the issue is a major problem. Godzilla and Kong should've been focused on each other, and MG should've been unknown to both until the end.
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darthzilla99
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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by darthzilla99 »

JAGzilla wrote: Wed Aug 11, 2021 7:13 am
TitanoGoji16 wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 2:26 pm Okay, so. This has been a post I've been menaing to make for some time now. To clarify, I have only seen Godzilla vs. Kong once so far, back when it was first released. I... well, I did not care for the movie. I haven't watched it again since then, though I do plan on doing so. So the following thoughts are based on my initial, months-old viewing. If when I watch it again and my opinion of the movie has notably changed, I'll make another post, but in the meanwhile, here are my initial thoughts on the film:

Spoiler:
  • All the other Titans are gone right off the bat and that whole "mankind and Titans learning to co-exist peacefully" thing promised at the end of GKOTM means nothing anymore. I don't think a movie has ever put me in that severe of a bad mood that quickly before. The death of Mako in Pacific Rim: Uprising was probably worse, but that was at least like 20-30 minutes into the movie.
  • "Ever since Skull Island was destroyed and every living thing on the island was wiped out..." Oh. Okay. Cool. I mean I was kinda hoping we'd get to see Godzilla on Skull Island at some point, but no, that's fine, too...
  • Kong literally has no agency throughout the film, he's just told to do things repeatedly by the humans. "Go in the portal." "Find the power source." "Fight Mechagodzilla." They literally carry him from destination to destination. He's basically a trained... well, monkey. Kong himself doesn't decide to do a damn thing in this movie on his own. Yeah, he's ferried to Japan in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla too, but once he's free, he's a monster on a rampage that does whatever he wants. He's not literally led around by the hand for the entire film.
  • The villains are quite possibly the most nothing characters I have ever seen in the history in of film. I can't even remember Evil Business Man's and Evil Business Man's Daughter's names without having to look them up. What was Evil Business Man's name? Mr. Apex? (No, I'm not kidding, you could put a gun to my head and I still wouldn't be able to remember their names.)
  • Serizawa's son was so wasted they literally should have just cut the character out of the film completely. At the very least, edit out the line where we're told he's Serizawa's son so we're not blue balled with quite possibly the most wasted potential ever committed to film. Imagine a future MCU movie introducing "the son of Tony Stark" as a villain and then killing him off before he even gets a line.
  • Madison and especially Mark have borderline no reason to be in this movie. And where is the rest of MONARCH? There are no other Titans on Earth right now. What could Rick and Chen and Brooks possibly be doing other than looking into a fight between Godzilla and Kong and later a giant robot Godzilla? And while he's not MONARCH, some sort of appearance from Admiral Stenz would've been nice.
  • It's disappointing that Mark has apparently reverted back to his old "Get off my lawn, y'damn lizard!" mentality. Sure, Godzilla is seemingly attacking mankind for no reason, but Mark had seemed to gain an understanding and respect for him in the previous movie. He should be just as shocked and confused about the whole thing as Madison is.
  • Why is the Deadpool 2 kid here? He adds even less to the story than the villains do. Why couldn't it have just been Madison and Bernie? Why not get rid of Bernie and make it Madison, Chen, and Mark/Rick? I'd actually care about those characters and they have good reason to be pro-Godzilla.
  • Considering the plot to this movie, I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't have been really nice to have Serizawa and Graham here for this. I think it's safe to say that seeing his beloved Titan savior turn against humanity as well as wage war with his ancient primate rival, not to mention seeing mankind tampering in God's domain by creating Mechagodzilla, would've resulted in some amazing Serizawa material.
  • "Go into the portal. There are others like you, family, on the other side." I feel like this really should've bitten Team Kong in the ass at some point, but then it never does.
  • The entire Hollow Earth / Kong temple / axe sequence is mind-bendingly stupid and this is coming from someone who loves the wackier movies like Godzilla vs. Megalon and Gamera vs. Guiron. Look, I get that apes are intelligent creatures to begin with and that "Kong is a thinking animal," but he's still a monster. This nonsense elevates him from a giant monster to a kind of fantasy race you'd expect to see in Lord of the Rings or something. "Kong was the lost prince of the noble Ape People of Narnia." It breaks the Goofy Meter and not in the way a kaiju movie should. I would've rather seen Kong use some ape ingenuity to put an axe together out of a tree and a rock or something instead of this Excalibur/Stormbreaker nonsense.
  • His home is gone. His people/followers are gone. He gets his ass handed to him early on by a powerful Titan. He spends a good chunk of the movie on a side quest to acquire an anti-'the big guy who kicked my ass earlier' axe... Why did this movie turn Kong into Thor?
  • Why did Evil Business Man's Daughter turn against Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgaard, again? Because Rebecca Hall said "You can't take that power source!" and then didn't really do anything to enforce that? Was that all? Also, why did Rebecca Hall say she can't take that power source? Wasn't literally the entire friggin' reason they took Kong into the Hollow Earth was so he could lead them to a power source that they could then take?
  • "I emailed you an analysis of an energy source which means you now have the energy source" I CAN'T EVEN WHAT
  • So, the big pay off to the Hollow Earth thing we've been hearing about for four movies, the grand reveal of the mysterious hidden world that monsters come from, is Kong runs down there for a quick errand to get an axe, as opposed to something epic like, I don't know, being the location of the big climactic showdown between the planet's two Titan kings.
  • Until now, the implication was that the Hollow Earth was just accessed by ordinary tunnels that humans and monsters could physically travel through. Actually, it was more than just an implication. We SEE it in GKTOM; the giant Godzilla temple that the submarine full of the main characters travel to is in the Hollow Earth. Rick spells this out for us. But now it suddenly involves a massive drop (even for a kaiju) and a Stargate-esque wormhole space portal. What. How the hell would monsters like Behemoth and Methuselah get out of the Hollow Earth if the process involved climbing up a giant tunnel and leaping upwards through an upside down portal? Hell, I can barely even imagine Godzilla pulling that off. How was the submarine in GKOTM not obliterated by this sudden magical shift in gravity and falling upside down? I haven't seen a movie have such blatant disregard for what the previous films established since The Last Jedi.
  • The movie insultingly glosses over the fact that Team Kong (Jia, Rebecca Hall, and Alexander Skarsgaard - the latter two characters' names I can also not remember for the life of me), while having the better characters, are actually among the villains of the film. They're literally helping the bad guys use Kong to attain a power source for their Titan-slaying doomsday robot (blatantly lying to and tricking Kong with the promise of finding family in the process). Yeah, they tell Kong to help save Godzilla from Mechagodzilla at the end, but at no point is there a moment where they seem to realize and acknowledge the part they played in bringing the machine to life. They just switch from helping the villains to stopping the villains because now the movie's almost over. Hong Kong is completely and utterly decimated and millions of people are killed because of their actions, and they get off entirely scot-free.
  • I don't mind Mechagodzilla being the overwhelming evil force that causes Godzilla and Kong to come together, but the way he's used in the film is about as "I don't know, here he is for some reason" as the Oxygen Destroyer was in GKOTM. Whether you liked the "Godzilla is attacking humanity because it's really Mechagodzilla in disguise!" theory or not, it would've at least built Mechagodzilla up as a villainous presence as opposed to him just being dumped into the film in the final act a la Doomsday in Batman v. Superman.
  • "Oh [shiitake], it's a Robogodzilla!" "Nah, man. That's Mechagodzilla!" Tee-hee, he said the name of the famous character! No, but seriously, this dialogue makes no sense, because in-universe, there's nothing wrong or incorrect with calling the giant Godzilla robot "Robogodzilla." It's not as if the machine had been introduced to them as Mechagodzilla and Bernie kept getting the name wrong or something. At the time they say this, all they know is that it's a giant Godzilla robot and "Robogodzilla" is just as good a guess at its name as anything else. The kid may as well have said "No, that's Mechagodzilla, which is a registered trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.!"
  • Maybe I'm alone in this, but there's no... oomph to this meeting of two of cinema's greatest monsters. The only reason it's a big deal is that we the audience know in a meta, copyright sense what an impossible feat this was previously thought to be. But in the movie itself? Godzilla already knows about Kong, the characters already know that Godzilla already knows about Kong, and Kong seemingly already knows about Godzilla but just wants to be left alone. There's no "Oh man, Godzilla and Kong are meeting for the first time!" aspect to any of it.
  • Speaking of Kong just wanting to be left alone... Why is Godzilla the only Alpha Titan in full-on "There can be only one!" mode? Why doesn't Kong have a similar attitude? Since when does the Eighth Wonder of the World have a problem with getting into fights with reptiles to prove how big his crown is? Kong is such a nothing character in this film. He doesn't want to fight Godzilla. He lets the humans dictate his every move. One of his big scenes is him crying in the rain wanting to go home. Jesus.
  • As a continuation and culmination of the previous two problems, Kong is portrayed as a scared widdle monkey and everyone is scared for him and oh no Godzilla is coming how are we going to save Kong from the big mean dinosaur? The narrative should've been that these two are evenly matched forces equally capable of wiping the other out in a true clash of the titans (and I say this as someone who was 100% on Team Godzilla) and instead everyone spends the entire movie fearing for Kong's safety, which in turn influences the meta-audience-narrative. Instead of "GIANT MONSTER VERSUS GIANT MONSTER! WHO WILL WIN?" the movie instead tries to retain the traditional sympathetic 'aww, just leave the poor guy alone,' 'animal pulled out of his natural environment' underdog portrayal usually used in Kong's solo American films, but doing that in a versus crossover movie works to the character's detriment. It puts a completely different slant on his fights with Godzilla. To compare it to another monster crossover, Jason Voorhees may have been the underdog in Freddy vs. Jason, but the characters didn't drill "We have to save Jason! If Freddy finds Jason, Jason is dead! We have to keep Jason away from Freddy! He stands no chance against Freddy! We're so scared for Jason!" into our heads for the entire movie. Despite Freddy's superior abilities, the film still presented their fighting as a fairly even match.
However, it's not all bad:

Spoiler:
  • The fights are absolutely amazing. At long, long last, they finally stopped all their cutting-away-from-the-main-reason-you're-watching-the-movie nonsense from Godzilla (2014) and GKOTM and just allowed us long, extended fight sequences between Godzilla and Kong. The fight at sea is great and tense (though it is decidedly not 18 minutes long... I have no idea what the hell Junkie XL is talking about) and the big main fight in Hong Kong is quite possibly one of the greatest kaiju fights ever put to film.
  • I loved the King Kong vs. Godzilla nod when Kong shoves the butt end of the Fin Breaker into Godzilla's mouth.
  • I love how much expression and personality Godzilla has in this movie. He hates Kong with a passion and is not afraid to show it, with absolutely no reservations about laughing at and reveling in Kong's suffering, or going apeshit (no pun intended) whenever Kong manages to land a good blow. This fight is clearly personal on a level that even the fight with Ghidorah never was. It's arguably the most character Godzilla has had in the MonsterVerse thus far and it's great.
  • I really appreciate that this movie continued the tradition of Godzilla's atomic ray and one of Mechagodzilla's lasers clashing against each other.
  • I liked the relationship between Kong and Jia even though it wasn't really developed very well. I felt like there needed to be a "Kong springs into action to save Jia from danger" scene, but there never was.
  • As dumb as Madison's Scooby-Doo plot was and as pointless as Mark's inclusion was, it was ultimately nice to see them again.
So, yeah. I don't hate this movie. There are some nice aspects to it. But I thought it was really stupid on a level the MonsterVerse had pretty much successfully managed to avoid until now and was fairly disappointing for a crossover of this magnitude.
Yep, basically all of this, with the addition that Kong and Godzilla's rivalry was so underexplained that the battles held little meaning for me. I didn't get what made Godzilla hate Kong so completely, while Kong seemed to just want nothing to do with Godzilla. No, comic book bandaids and "well, if you look real hard at the previous films and extrapolate to connect the dots..." don't count as an explanation. And whether it technically explains some things or not, Mechagodzilla muddying the issue is a major problem. Godzilla and Kong should've been focused on each other, and MG should've been unknown to both until the end.

Using continuity is hardly extrapolating. The simple explanation based on movies only (and both KOTM and GvK were filmed almost at the same time and GvK was supposed to come out less than a year afterwards orginally before the pandemic hit so you can't say they didn't have some continuity in mind) is that
1. Godzilla rules the titans all around the world except Skull Island
2. Law of the titans is that there can only be one Alpha
3. If you agree to declare Godzilla is the alpha in a way he understands you, he let's you live (this is scene the first time when the monarch base in KOTM stands down and again when they turn off the boat in GvK).
4. If you don't submit, you're saying to Godzilla "submit to my rule or die".
5. Kong's POV is that he doesn't know nor care about the law of titans.

While Godzilla started the first fight under the assumption kong knows about Titan rule (we know Kong doesn't know but Godzilla doesn't know, therefore Kong not bowing to Godzilla is confirming Godzilla's suspicions from Godzilla's pov) second fight Kong started himself.
And before anyone jumps on "But Godzilla blow a hole in Hollow Earth", he didn't start until Hollow Earth radiation was being drawn to the surface. That means one of two explanations.
1. He didn't know Kong was down there and therefore he was warning anyone taking Hollow earth radiation better stop or die. Therefore it
2. If Godzilla did know Kong was down there, then he didn't care kong was down there until hollow earth radiation was being moved to the surface. Therefore Godzilla was giving Kong a warning to back off.

So if you really want to extend it, Godzilla was basically using an extreme version of castle doctrine on the world except skull Island.

Keep mind everything mentioned is movies only.


And another per peeve: GvK is not the first time Godzilla went on all fours. He's on all fours briefly in KOTM right before he lights up Ghidorah's head in his mouth.
GVK: TNE is a modern day 70s Showa Godzilla movie. Being a massive budget modern blockbuster CGI film instead of traditional 70s tokusatsu techniques doesn't change that. Fight me.

Anguirus and Godzilla being friends in the Showa series is cannon. Deal with it.

Monsterverse is not similar to either MCU nor Bayformers just because all three are big budget CGI blockbuster franchises.

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Re: Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

Post by miguelnuva »

Godzilla's relationship with Ghidorah is all you really need to explain his relationship with Kong. More information makes the stroy complete but Kong not knowing his place in the world doesn't stop Godzilla from being worried.

If I raised a Lion in the zoo and then brought him to another pride in Africa, the Alpha is still going to run him off.
Mothra vs Godzilla> Gojira

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