So! With that out of the way, I'll start. I get the impression I've picked up a reputation for disliking the Monsterverse. That is not the case. Godzilla vs. Kong pissed me off for reasons I'll go into below, but my overall opinion is generally positive.
Godzilla (2014): I don't have any strong opinions either way on this one. I haven't seen it since 2016 and am due for a rewatch, but as I recall, it's a solid middle-of-the-road type movie. As an attempt at Americanizing Godzilla, it was worlds better than GINO and frankly just about the best we can realistically ask for from modern Hollywood. Gareth Edwards was a good director with some kind of actual vision that succeeded well enough. Frank Darabont's section of the script was great and Brian Cranston obviously gave us an engaging first act. The rest is lesser without them, but not deal-breakingly so; ATJ might be kind of bland, but that's not the worst thing a protagonist can be. He carries things along well enough.
Godzilla himself is wonderful. I wasn't sure about the design in still images, but it's one of the best in action. He's regal, he's powerful, he's expressive. He fights tooth-and-claw, vicious and animalistic, in a way suits could never really give us, and that was hugely welcome for me. His late Showa-esque relationship with humanity was also welcome after decades of Heisei/Millennium villain or aggressive antihero roles.
The MUTOs... at the time I think I was underwhelmed. My brothers understandably wrote them off as the same spindly, multi-limbed things that are in every other American monster movie these days, and I probably agreed. They've grown on me a lot, though. At the very least, nothing else in the Toho pantheon looks like them, and they serve their purpose as dangerous-but-tragic animal antagonists. The scenes of their EMPs knocking fighter jets out of the air are very dramatically godlike, and highlights of the MV so far.
I was irritated by the lack of military action and destruction, and the kind of wide, stable, distance shots of the kaiju that we get all the time in Japanese movies. The harmless nuke was also a big stain on the movie, and really one of the worst things you can possibly do in this franchise. These things are what they are, though. Godzilla was never going to come to America without some kind of cultural hangups bogging things down.
Kong: Skull Island: Another generally middling film. The human cast is pretty easily the overall best in the MV so far, with Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly giving good performances as memorable characters, and the ensemble cast of soldiers were entertaining. Tom Hiddleston was wasted on our utterly forgettable generic lead guy, and the weird, unfocused sloppiness of the script was just a problem in general, letting the good aspects of it down. The director handled the action well, though.
Kong himself was very fresh in this (!) original, non-remake story. I was very glad to see the brown hair and bipedal stance of the Toho version return. He feels just like a powerful, wild, god-king monster should, and I don't remember having any complaints about him. Skull Island itself is very cool, with its menagerie of original monsters replacing the traditional dinosaurs. I love the Sker Buffalo, especially; it was nice to see some cute, peaceful herbivores to break up the train of killer predators a little bit. The Skullcrawlers, again, weren't the most standout or memorable creations ever, but they did what they had to. An overall flawed but enjoyable ride.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Things start to get rougher here. The good outweighed the bad, by a lot in some areas, but the cracks are big and ugly. No one in the cast is particularly memorable, and most of those that are stick in my mind for being annoying. I don't let a few bad jokes hurt the movie too much for me, but they were there. Mark being overwhelmingly the brains of the operation was irritating. The sledgehammer blunt tell-don't-show exposition feels so clunky, although I've softened my stance on it since rewatching GvD a few weeks ago; I suspect it heavily inspired the writing here, and I can't get too mad if that was the case. It sucked in '95 and it sucks now, but if it was at all meant to be a callback for fans, it's semi-okay. The plot was handled poorly, with Charles Dance being terribly sidelined. The breakneck speed of it all is a problem, because a lot of big things are happening and we don't get time to digest any of them. Once again, military action and destruction are minimal. It's all just sloppy and feels immature and unprofessional, everything I hate about the typical modern blockbuster.
But the monsters save the day. Once again, the Monsterverse lives up to its name: they are the real stars here. Ghidorah! Rodan! (!!!) Mothra! A bunch of noobs! All up there on the American big screen, brought to glorious life by American CGI, expressive and mobile and full of detailed life that rubber and wires could never quite give them. It was such a huge, satisfying relief, seeing Dougherty do my old friends justice on the world's biggest stage. Were there problems? Inadequacies? Room for improvement? Of course. But none of them were GINO. Hollywood took a shot at Toho's other Big Names, and they didn't miss. That deserves celebration. Ghidorah, in particular, was just outstanding. Yeah, he lacked some of the chaos we're used to, but this sinister, slinking, malevolent serpent god made a kickass kaiju villain, and had his moments of impressive grandeur. The filmmakers did a fantastic job utilizing the new medium of CGI to let the monsters move and behave in ways they couldn't with traditional effects, interacting with humans and all that. Some people don't like the cutaways and insistence on keeping the humans in the thick of the action, but (for the most part) I felt like it was a good move. Suitmation simply doesn't allow the humans to scurry around the monsters' feet, dodging tails and explosions right in the middle of a fight. It was a good attempt at utilizing the technology to do something new.
The handling of the nukes was again awkward at best; I think a case can be made that the intention was to show nukes as a positive thing that keep the world in balance and prevent war. The execution was wonky, but taking an American stance in an American take on Godzilla is an understandable route to go. Anyway, we got a return by Burning Godzilla out of it, and he was pretty cool for what he was. Sometimes big dumb spectacle is enough.
And then there was the Oxygen Destroyer. The less said here, the better.
The fanservice was appreciated. I don't always go for that stuff; Disney Star Wars, for example, typically just makes me mad. But seeing things like Raptor 1 referenced here made my day. Raptor 1! Half the people here, probably a lot more than half, didn't get something that obscure. Someone working on this movie knew what they were talking about, and I can respect the shit out of that.
The Alpha system has the downside of elevating certain monsters way above the crowd, but it was something new, and I could embrace it. Seeing Godzilla finally take his place as King of the Monsters in a very literal way was a strange moment, but very satisfying. The other monsters actually bowed. Dumb? Yeah, but in a good way. I was hyped as hell to see this new world being taken back and terraformed by its new pantheon of kaiju gods, ruled over by their vicious but just king, and then-
Godzilla vs. Kong: -nothing was done with it. At all. I was more or less prepared for the movie to sideline the other Titans and the world they'd created. I didn't expect it to be a big, central deal, although I couldn't help but hope for that. But it was a bat to the face to see it absolutely retconned. No mention whatsoever. There hasn't been a Titan sighting in three years. This is really a standalone movie, but the studio mandated a cinematic universe, so you're just going to have to deal with it. I'm not a real big continuity guy, but when you totally disregard the game-changing ending of your previous movie, that just doesn't feel right. Skull Island being destroyed and the Iwi wiped out off-screen also felt really bizarre, lazy, and mean-spirited. I've moved on and made my peace with it now, but damn did it take the wind out of my sails in the moment.
So that led to my initial viewing falling on its face right out of the gate. I was tired that day, anyway, and not in the best frame of mind to put up with bullshit. Godzilla losing all of his regality to become a snarling, crawling, rabid lizard hurt, too. The chopped up movie clearly had reasons for Godzilla to hate Kong so much, but they got edited out, so I was left scratching my head and asking what the hell was going on during the final battle.
Mechagodzilla was there, I guess. He was ugly, and his whole scene reeked of bing bang pow zoom CGI excess.
Everything else about the movie felt half-baked or shredded in editing. The characters were utterly forgettable, with the exception of Jia, but she couldn't carry this thing alone.
Eh, that's enough, I guess. I've been typing for two hours, and I'm done.
I'm going to rewatch GvK soon and try to give it a fair reassessment. I don't expect much to change, but we'll see.Three out of four are enjoyable, and that ain't turrible. The Monsterverse is weighed down by modern Hollywood's problems, but it has its strong points and a lot to like. If some better writers can get involved, there's potential for a promising future. GvK torpedoed my investment in the story and the details, but that has an upside: I don't care what happens next. So that improves my odds of walking into the next movie and being fine with whatever it is. Going in with low expectations has historically worked out very well for me.
: Big, dumb, and fun. It pairs the action that was positive about KoTM with a human story that is simplified (perhaps too much for many tastes) and shorter. It doesn't pretend to be that interested in the human end of things, so its ambitions are less lofty, and as a result it lets itself succeed in being an action flick with some super charming monster moments. If this were all the Godzilla series ever offered, we might complain, but it was a welcome refreshment after KoTM overstayed its welcome. Would be better with slightly smarter writing and humor, but this is preferable to long, bloated, and ponderous.
