As you can tell, I liked Godzilla vs. Kong, but I can’t deny that there are a few, ahem, scientific implausibilities in the film, and Screen Rants Pitch Meeting guy digs into those with gusto:
Of course, remember what franchise we’re talking about. Compared to “He must have programmed himself to get big!” (Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon), Godzilla vs. Kong‘s leaps in plausibility are mere hopscotch…
Godzilla vs. Kong
Directed by Adam Wingard
Written by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields (story), Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein (screenplay)
Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Julian Dennison, Kaylee Hottle and Demian Bichir
This is the best of the Monsterverse movies. The people at Legendary Films seem to have finally figured out what viewers actually want (hot kaiju-on-kaiju city-destroying action) and what they want left on the cutting room floor (boring human backstory).
The movie opens with King Kong contained within a Truman Show-type dome over Skull Island and Godzilla attacking the Florida research facility of sinister Apex Cybernetics (think Yoyodyne or Weyland-Yutani). The movie quickly splits into two strands: Millie Bobby Brown’s character (a bit less useless than in Godzilla: King of the Monsters), her tubby geek friend (Julian Dennison) and a conspiracy theorist (Brian Tyree Henry) try to penetrate Apex systems to learn The Real Truth, while Kong, along with his deaf Child Monster Whisperer companion (Kaylee Hottle; think Kenny from Gamera, but much less annoying) and guardian Rebecca Hall (the bank-teller from The Town) help Alexander Skarsgard take Kong to Antarctica on an Apex-underwritten mission to the hollow earth to uncover a new power source.
If the last part sounds extremely unlikely, you’re right, but they’ve cannily kept explanations to a bare minimum to keep you moving on to the next monster scene. (You know that 5-15 minute segment where they have to knock out Kong to get him on the ship? They snipped that sucker entirely out and cut to him already in giant chains mid-voyage.) The first battle between Godzilla and Kong takes place at sea, with round one going to our reigning lizard champion.
There’s some delightful stuff with Kong reaching the hollow earth, where he roams the verdant green-and-purple landscape, fights some Quetzalcoatlesque giant flying serpents (which this rundown dubs “warbats”) and finds a giant ancestral throne room and (plot point alert) a Kong-sized Zilla-spined axe.
In the other plotline, the Scooby Gang discover that Apex is breeding Skullcrawlers (from Kong: Skull Island), and are promptly whisked via high speed underground tunnel to Hong Kong (Monsterverse tech seems to be advancing much faster than our own), where they discover that Apex head honcho Walter Simmons (Demian Bichir, basically playing Evil Tony Stark) has built to his own Mechagodzilla to put man back at the top of the food chain.
If you watched the Toho Godzilla films, you pretty much know how this is going to turn out.
We finally get Godzilla and Kong smashing up neon-lit Hong Kong in a truly epic battle royal that Mechagodzilla later joins. Legendary really makes use of the possibilities of CGI to make you feel like you’re in the middle of a battle between two giant monsters, with the viewpoint frequently swooping in and around the action. There’s even a scene where Mechagodzilla emerges from a hillside that I would swear is an almost exact lift from a Toho hillside monster emergence scene.
This is the Godzilla movie where Hollywood finally figured out how to get out of its own way. No “reinvented” Godzilla, no tedious backstories, no time wasted on pointless human drama, no 15 different studio executives having to stick their dicks in the soup to justify their salaries. Just compelling kaiju on kaiju action rendered with top-notch modern CGI that puts you in the middle of the city-stomping. (And none of the “they make their own weather so everything is dark and stormy” effect used to excess in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.) It bests all previous Moinsterverse films in just about every area (except Kong: Skull Island in cast; Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman and Tom Hiddleston beat Eleven, Ben Affleck love interest and a random Skarsgard hands down).
And it’s light-years better than the 1962 King Kong vs. Godzilla, which features perhaps the saddest Kong ever committed to film. (Banglar King Kong doesn’t count.)
If you like Godzilla movies, this one is well worth catching while it’s still in theaters.
Hundredth was a hardcore band that turned to shoegaze with their album Rare. Here’s a track off it:
Today is evidently National Unicorn Day, so it gives me an excuse to post this:
I sort of wanted to post it for St. Patrick’s Day, but forgot…
I have no idea who Kuuhaku Marinus is, though he seems to reside in Mexico and his ideogram (空白磨理成) seems to translate as “Blank Grid.”
Here’s a pleasant cover of Slowdive’s “Machine Gun”:
Bugjar hails from Boston, Massachusetts.
Enjoy one of the great Orson Welles’ contributions to the war effort: a story about gremlins, the supernatural critters that attacked World War II planes, more funny than horrific, and with a Christmas theme:
This was from his Ceiling Unlimited radio show, sponsored by Lockheed-Vega to dramatize aviation’s contributions to the war effort. Welles wrote, directed and starred in the first 13 episodes before others took over for him.
Cast credits start in at 13:10. See if you can guess who played the Irish lass before you get to them…
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
As a public service, I am once again offering up this video of William Shatner showing you how not to fry a Turkey:
Happy eating, and stay safe!
The Lego remake of the Star Wars Holiday Special evidently premiered today on Disney+.
Looks less a remake than a complete comic re-imagining.
I don’t have Disney+ (or any other streaming service), so I can’t tell you how good it is.
But it can’t help but improve on the original…
Many of the must-have homeowner amenities considered an essential feature are no longer to be found on modern homes. No longer are buildings including such once-essential features as coal cellars, lightning rods, fallout shelters or murder tunnels.
And remember: A murder tunnel is completely different than a corpse hatch.