New Replies (Page 360)
Kong seconds before dying:
"I GOT YOU NOW!!!!!!!"
MinecraftDinoKaiju Kong would still get annihilated. Which–and I may be projecting here–might be the overall idea.
G. H. (Gman) "MechaGodzilla was just as much of a close-range brawler as it was a long distance weapon's barrage canopy. So unlike any other missile truck or tanks or maser tanks, it could get in close. The original MechaGodzilla was a true death machine."
I haven't gotten to see the movie in it's entirety, but I have seen a lot of the battle scenes, and I don't really recall many instances of Mechagodzilla doing melee battles.
"The Heisei MechaGodzilla makes zero sense. It's not any good at close combat at all (in fact I don't think it ever even uses its arms) and the tax dollars spent on making a walking tank look like Godzilla is ridiculous. All of its weaponry could've easily been put on a new Super X."
Agreed entirely. I recently got the movie on DVD, but then when I was done with it I was like, "wait, why do so many people apparently like this one"?
"Making multiple Absolute Zero canons is also impractical due to how expensive it is. They even replaced it with a triple maser on Kiryu for that very reason."
I mean, they wouldn't have to make multiple Absolute Zeros. They'd just need the one, hook it up to a power source, and then let her rip. They only made one Dimension Tide, too.
That actually brings me to another small thing I like about Kiryu; they actually kind of go more into depth about what could potentially go wrong with that kind of machine. One particular snippet that stood out to me was a reporter asking if the creation of a giant anti-kaiju mech was a violation of the sanctions placed on the country after WW2.
Well, if that's the case, then how about using Heisei Godzilla instead of Final Wars Godzilla? Maybe that would be more of an even match?
MinecraftDinoKaiju I probably would have saved him for last myself, but I'm not too broken up over it, to be honest.
Yeah, I'm going to agree with G. H. (Gman) on this one.
@G. H. (Gman)
But like I said, I wasn't sure.
Thanks for the clarification, though.
You know, I agree. They should've kept King Ghidorah as a final threat in the Monsterverse instead of what they did.
It's so disappointing.
I guess thats true guys... sorry thats just me wanting Godzilla to be more OP. Have a great day and Merry Christmas everyone!
Well as a fan of the original Showa Mechagodzilla, the original Mechagodzilla was an alien Trojan Horse.
G. H. (Gman) "It would've been far more effective had Serizawa and Graham found him drunk and hopeless in a bar--Then we would've seen a character struggling to pull himself together and while trying find his kids in the middle of a monster apocalypse. It would've been a more interesting situation to put any character in and we wouldn't have had to get that long exposition dump on the aircraft. (Which is an issue the movie has. Instead of seeing Mark at his lowest, we're told. Instead of seeing why King Ghidorah is a great nemesis, we're told, etc.)"
(begins jotting down notes for the rewrite)
"Coleman and Stanton could've been merged into one character; there was no reason to have two comedic relief characters."
Agreed, and (not to keep going back to it), but that's another thing I'm doing for my rewrite. Sam Coleman as we know him does not exist; his replacement is a liaison between the US government and Monarch who's more meant to represent the looming threat of the military taking over and simply wiping out the Titans.
I've never been a Charles Dance fan, so his role in the film (or apparent lack thereof) never really bothered me. He does have an expanded role in my version though, actually pursuing Madison down to Boston in an attempt to retrieve the ORCA before she messes up his apocalypse fantasy.
The aliens were trying to conceal their existence in Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla--Hence Fake Godzilla. They studied Godzilla extensively for it. Plus MechaGodzilla was just as much of a close-range brawler as it was a long distance weapon's barrage canopy. So unlike any other missile truck or tanks or maser tanks, it could get in close. The original MechaGodzilla was a true death machine.
The Heisei MechaGodzilla makes zero sense. It's not any good at close combat at all (in fact I don't think it ever even uses its arms) and the tax dollars spent on making a walking tank look like Godzilla is ridiculous. All of its weaponry could've easily been put on a new Super X.
As for Kiryu, it's suggested in the movie and source books that the Absolute Zero Cannon is a very expensive system that may only be compatible with Kiryu's power system. Since it drains 40% of Kiryu's power, it's insinuated in books that only Kiryu has enough energy to fire it.
Making multiple Absolute Zero canons is also impractical due to how expensive it is. They even replaced it with a triple maser on Kiryu for that very reason.
But you're right that the Godzilla-like appearance is justified since Kiryu is just armor for the skeleton. Plus the DNA computers bring the skeleton back to life in a way that it can move like a real animal.
JurassicKaiju14,
I liked the idea of Mark, but not the execution. The film seemed afraid to go on too long without Kyle Chandler's face onscreen. They wouldn't give any other cast around him time to shine.
Before they get to Castle Bravo he's exposition dumping his entire backstory to Dr. Graham. "Well after San Fransisco, I hit the bottle..." Really? It would've been far more effective had Serizawa and Graham found him drunk and hopeless in a bar--Then we would've seen a character struggling to pull himself together and while trying find his kids in the middle of a monster apocalypse. It would've been a more interesting situation to put any character in and we wouldn't have had to get that long exposition dump on the aircraft. (Which is an issue the movie has. Instead of seeing Mark at his lowest, we're told. Instead of seeing why King Ghidorah is a great nemesis, we're told, etc.)
Mark magically has all the answers to everything. "This Mothra is a decoy. They're going after something bigger." - "Take the guns off him." - "Show him we're not a threat." - "Show me his hunting path." - "I have an idea to lure big bird away from the town." - "They only do that to feed, to fight or... something more intimate." - "They're moving in a pack. They're hunting. It's not erratic." - "How many nukes do you have?"
He's invited to an outpost full of supposed military & scientific experts, but none of them come up with the conclusions Mark does. He's five years behind all of their knowledge/research, yet comes up with all of the big ideas! No wonder no one else had any decent arcs--Kyle Chandler's character upstages all of them at every turn.
Graham, Stanton, Coleman, Chen--None of them have an arc of their own and barely do anything to legitimize a supporting character role. In fact Coleman and Stanton could've been merged into one character; there was no reason to have two comedic relief characters. And the only thing Chen does is gawk and over-dramatically give the monsters titles: "The fire demon!" "The one who is many!" "Queen of the monsters!" If these monsters didn't have cool titles, there would be no need for her to be in this movie...
Emma of course, comes off as nuts--Any character with the line, "I couldn't be more sane," is immediately questionable. But what's worse is the movie wants to legitimize her. And of course Charles Dance is basically wasted as a bus driver for her needs.
The only two characters I liked were Madison, who had the balls to backtalk her mother's insanity, steal the Orca to stop the mayhem and defy King Ghidorah in front of him. Serizawa was tolerable as well, but his reasoning for sacrificing himself takes some stretching. (Why him? There's plenty of more experienced military personnel onboard the sub who also know what the stakes are.)
The entire film needed a heavy - heavy - rewrite to fix these issues. But Dougherty was more interested in other things.
Gmkgoji,
I tend to agree. Although I think Rodan has some of the best scenes in the movie, he comes off as too easily submissive. (To both King Ghidorah and Godzilla.) Plus giving King Ghidorah an ally in the final battle that rescued him from Mothra took away from his menace. Making the battle three against one would've given a better idea of how imposing and powerful King Ghidorah is.
I agree with you, it really is impractical. Still cool.
Gmkgoji Like I said, I totally get that it's one of those hyper-awesome sort of things. I'm just pointing out that from a military standpoint, it'd be a massive waste of resources and time.
I completely get what you mean. But still, this is a franchise of GIANT RADIOACTIVE MONSTERS.
I like your idea, but I wanted Rodan to have a larger presence.
Gmkgoji I probably would have kept his role mostly the same as in the film, but make it more obvious that he's not happy to be made Ghidorah's underling, and he's only doing it because he's absolutely scared of being curb stomped again. In the scenes where he and Ghidorah are fighting Monarch in DC, he'd be noticeably less peppy about destroying things, and when Madison activates the ORCA in Boston, he actually tries to slip away, only for Ghidorah to growl him down and make him follow him to Boston. When Godzilla and Mothra show up to take Ghidorah down, Rodan switches over to their side to fight him. Que the good stuff you've described. He'd get taken out after Ghidorah powers up again in a scene reminiscent of Anguirus's attack on him in Destroy All Monsters, but would turn up again after Ghidorah's death. Here he'd be a lot less reluctant to accept Godzilla as Alpha.
And I do plan on doing all of the above in that rewrite of mine.
So what I would have done, like in my Godzilla X Symphogear story, I would have had Rodan be a bigger threat. I would have kept the city destruction scenes and stuff, and I would also have Godzilla and Rodan fight on an island. I would make Rodan be like a MUCH stronger male Muto. Rodan would practically be a HUGE pain in the ass to Godzilla, dive bombing him, pecking at him, clawing him, and all that good stuff while at the same time, being very agile while in battle, making him almost impossible to hit by Godzilla. I want Rodan to be Godzilla's equal like in Ghidorah: The three-headed monster.
Gmkgoji How would you have written him?
G. H. (Gman) The only character in the movie who legitimately annoyed me was Sam Coleman, and that's because the guy doesn't do anything over the course of the film. Even One-Liners-Guy (AKA Rick Stanton) does more than him, even if it's just reading Godzilla's bio-signs or helping coordinate the Rodan chase or things like that. At least it's something useful. The one time Sam could have been helpful was in the scene where the Argo's doors get jammed. He's Monarch's chief of the Tech division or something, but then it's Mark who fixes it.
Speaking of Mark, he was actually my favorite character out of the whole thing. Maybe I'm just overly sympathetic (I'm probably the only person in the world who kinda felt bad for Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds), but there was something about that opening scene of him staggering through the ruins of San Francisco looking for Andrew that really hit me. We get so hopped up on watching the monsters fighting that we forget that every time they clash, it's a city-wide 9/11 for us. It kind of reminded me of some of the aftermath scenes of the 1954 film.
Going back to Stanton, I feel like the guy was wasted potential, however minor it may have been. His Monarch Sciences bio said that he was part of the bioacoustics division, so I expected him and Mark to work together on deciphering the ORCA's Alpha signal. In fact, that's another thing I'm gonna do in my rewrite; cut down on his jokes a bit and make him more of a nice uncle type character; somebody who'll make you smile when you need it, but is also serious when the time comes for seriousness.
I wish Rodan had more of a presence. His appearance in G:Kotm was rather lacking. He was there for fanservice practically.
The way I see it, the characters are characters, but the monsters are the main event. These movies have cut away from the creatures to the characters and back for 65 years. That didn't really bother me. The fact it was cutting back to some of the most annoying characters in the series is what bugged me.
ChrisRemix I'm doing the same thing in a way. Part of my KOTM rewrite is going to have segments told from the each of the four main monsters point of view; and that includes the fights. So when they start going at it, it's not from the humans' POV; it's from the monsters'.
It'll also give me a chance to really flesh out their backstories, especially in regards to Ghidorah's origins and Godzilla and Mothra's relationship.
@Gman Personally, as a fellow giant monster fanboy, I feel like the Monsterverse is too restrained. Like nobody whos behind it is willing to show give the monsters the chance to truly shine. For example, i love giant monster fights. It has a sandbox feeling when watching them, like they can use the cities, that us humans took years to build, as a battleground that demolishes it in mere minutes. The monsterverse movies have been super restrained when the fights came along. They know how to hype up to it, but not how to deliver the battle. When I get the chance, I will use it to recreate the battle from KotM and give it the best final showdown it should’ve had. To show that just because the monsters arent human, doesnt make them less of a thrill to watch. They dont need to be human for us to relate to them.
Noone ever danced like Yongary
One of the best innovations in Invasion of Astro Monster is the larger scale Godzilla foot and tail used for close-ups of detailed buildings being trampled on.
This allowed for a higher level of detail in the miniatures that showed more debris and objects inside the buildings spilling out.
This technique would be revisited to lesser effect in 1984, but done more competently in GMK.
MinecraftDinoKaiju,
I don't know if Kaneko has ever called himself a pacifist, but he's certainly against a lot of things that were going on in Japan at the time that have evolved into the issues we see today.
Honda was a pacifist, though.
JurassicKaiju14,
Well... we'll see if it happens. The "World of Godzilla" was more of an idea than an official announcement. It wouldn't shock me if Toho didn't actually follow up with it.
G. H. (Gman) If it ends with GvK, I personally won't be too bothered. I mean, I'd be happy if it did continue, but as long as it isn't left with any lingering threads or cliff-hangars or anything like that, I'll be happy.
And I am curious to see how Toho's World of Godzilla will play out. I think it's rather ironic that they're comparing it to the MCU when Godzilla had a shared movie universe long before Marvel ever got the idea...
Opposed to it? No. As long as it uses the style to its advantage and does something different.
I'd personally prefer tokusatsu to go new places--even if it's in the Shin Godzilla form of mixing CG with miniature work.
G. H. (Gman) After the Monsterverse, would you be opposed to a different visual direction that was far away from an Americanized take? Sort of the style and look of Gantz O?
JurassicKaiju14,
To be clear, I don't hate the Monsterverse. I suppose the way I can tell I'm a giant monster fanboy is because I can find something worthwhile in any these films, despite whatever flaws they may have.
Although I consider King of the Monsters one of the worst movies in the franchise, it still has likable qualities I truly do appreciate. And hey, at least it's not Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla.
But the fact I'm tired of it after only three movies is telling--And I'm ready to move on to the next thing for the franchise.
G. H. (Gman) "But CG effects is not why I personally got into the franchise to begin with--In fact it was an entirely different style and look of special effects that kept me so endeared to it"
Oh I'm not knocking on the old-style suitmation style. The amount of effort they put into sculpting the suits and building the miniatures is simply breathtaking, and I'm always down for physical props whenever possible. I just recently got Tokyo SOS on DVD, and I was really amazed by how much the style had been perfected by then (the movie itself was kind of meh for me though). I usually wind up going to great lengths to defend the style when talking with non-Godzilla fans, and I gained a lot more respect and admiration for the the stunt actors after reading about all the behind-the-scenes near-disasters the franchise's production has been through. Seriously, I hope the people who get into those things are paid well for their efforts.
Again, my appreciation for the MonsterVerse designs comes in how much they make me feel like I'm seeing the actual creatures that the designs are based off of.
But whatever. As long as we can agree to disagree on the MonsterVerse in an amicable fashion, I'm happy.
JurassicKaiju14,
Creating new fans is certainly not something I can fault the Monsterverse for. I'm glad it's introducing a whole new generation of fans to Godzilla that are excited by the creatures and themes. And hope said fans go back and see some of the much better films in the series. It's a big deal.
But CG effects is not why I personally got into the franchise to begin with--In fact it was an entirely different style and look of special effects that kept me so endeared to it. So seeing the same, boring Hollywood techniques that are used in literally every movie released in theaters every weekend of the year does nothing for me.
In Japan Godzilla was king of his own special effects style and visuals that launched an entire sub-genre. In America he's a pauper of what Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park pioneered. I hope to see more of the former in the future.
And if not? Well, at least I've got Ultraman.
The visuals Hollywood can achieve have been great so far. The problem with Hollywood making movies like these is bad writing and dialogue that just sounds downright sappy and cliche enough to notice.
TBH, as great as 2014 looked, I was bored to tears, shut it off about 2/3 the way through and never felt compelled to re visit.
G. H. (Gman) "If these movies were remade shot-for-shot, with the exact same script, the exact same characters, the exact same actors and the exact same settings/locations, but with tokusatsu visuals instead of Hollywood's, would they still be the best thing since individually wrapped cheese slices?"
As one of those people who really, really likes the MonsterVerse...probably not. Furthermore, I will admit that as much as I love KOTM, I probably could have written the movie a whole lot better (I'm trying to, actually). Of course there will be a movie that comes along that will inevitably be better. But that day hasn't come yet for me.
The real joy of the MonsterVerse is getting to see all these characters brought to life with all the CGI-effects that Hollywood can buy. Watching 2014, it felt like I was actually seeing Godzilla for real; like he'd leapt out of the movies and was now a living, breathing creature right before my eyes. A legend come to life. I generally prefer KOTM overall, but I'll never forget that feeling that I had watching 2014. It's also important to keep in mind that when 2014 came out, it had been 10 years since the last Godzilla movie, and 16 since the last American attempt – and lo and behold, it was better than 1998. Granted, that's not a high bar to clear, but even so, it was a tremendous relief.
Please don't think that I am ignorant of the MonsterVerse's flaws. That banner quote down below isn't just there to sound deep: "A true fan can acknowledge the bad while still appreciating and cherishing the good." But for all the problems that the MonsterVerse has, I still enjoy it all the same. This is the Godzilla that I've been growing up with. I became a fan around 2012 or so. Up until 2014 came out, all I had were images of the movie posters and Wikipedia plot summaries and trailers for the old movies on YouTube and all the other things passed around by fans. I was riding on the coattails of what had come before I started caring. But now I'm actually living in a new era of Godzilla, and I'm so happy to finally really be a part of it all.
The Monsterverse are very safe, producer driven movies--Especially post-2014. They don't really introduce anything we haven't already seen in the franchise and sort of come off as passable movies at best.
The characters are the main issue. Kong: Skull Island has had the best cast so far. They're not particularly well written, but they all do largely different things, or at least have different goals, and are engaging.
The problem with Godzilla 2014 is lack of engagement. The main character had no other supporting characters to bounce off of for two-thirds of the movie, making him rather boring to watch. It was a curious decision to separate him from the rest of the cast.
While the characters were more engaging in King of the Monsters, they were absolutely grating to sit through--Most of them didn't even have arcs, they just just sit around "tracking" and gawking at monsters. It wasn't until Madison got fed up with the situation that someone decided to actually do something. Her stopping the worldwide attacks and luring Godzilla and King Ghidorah into battle probably makes her the film's biggest hero. Also poor Charles Dance was completely, utterly wasted.
King Ghidorah was more intimidating when characters talked about him than when he was actually on-screen. We constantly have it rammed down our throats how Godzilla's rivalry with King Ghidorah is legendary, but we don't see King Ghidorah do a lot himself. We never actually see him destroy a city, ala prior movies. He retreats during the first battle after Monarch arrives (of all things), it was confirmed by Dougherty he would've lost against Godzilla in the second battle had the Oxygen Destroyer not intervened and he needed Rodan's assistance after Mothra arrived to help Godzilla in Boston. So much for visual storytelling establishing their rivalry. Not my favorite incarnation of the character by a long shot.
It really highlights just how well his introduction was handled in the original, 1964 debut--He was the last monster to show up in the movie, because the film built up to his big reveal, saving him for the final act - We were shown he's an alien, not told, because he landed in a meteor (*gasp* visual storytelling!) - We're highlighted how powerful Godzilla and Rodan are by seeing them pound each other for half of the movie, giving audiences an idea how strong King Ghidorah is if they have to team up with Mothra - We watch how quickly he can exterminate a single city, especially compared to Godzilla & Rodan - The military don't even bother mounting an attack on him. This is not about comparing which incarnation is stronger. This is about which was established better as a threat in terms of cinematic storytelling and build-up. Honda, Sekizawa and Tsuburaya nailed it. Dougherty and Shields decided to write the least effective route for a villainous nemesis possible.
I also dislike a lot of the weird, messy and confused thematic elements in these two Godzilla movies. But that opens up a can of worms few people here seem to agree with. Whatever the case, it's there and it's dumb.
I think the best way to critique the Monsterverse is to ask yourself: If these movies were remade shot-for-shot, with the exact same script, the exact same characters, the exact same actors and the exact same settings/locations, but with tokusatsu visuals instead of Hollywood's, would they still be the best thing since individually wrapped cheese slices?
How is the Monsterverse Godzilla a wimp?
