A Tale of Two Godzillas
Original publishing date: March 31st, 2024
Hello everyone! Sorry it's been so long - going werewolf mode has its moments, good and bad.
Anyway, I think I may just end up making most of these these into the place where I talk about Godzilla, because who doesn't love Godzilla? Us fans have been getting served like monarchs for the past few months, and I'm so glad that it hasn't disappointed in that regard.
So, I should probably talk about both of the new movies that just came out! Well, "just" for one of them, but hey! The big G just won an Oscar, so it's still worth talking about!!
First things first, I suppose I should talk about Godzilla: Minus One. Man, what a movie! I went in with the expectations set that it'd be a solid, if somewhat underwhelming Godzilla movie. After all, how could a movie follow up something like Shin Godzilla and hope to compete? Well, that was definitely one way to do it. I was FLOORED by this movie, just a thoroughly fantastic film through and through. The human drama was gripping and had me rooting for and crying with them at every beat. I can't believe how well it was handled, to the point where I didn't want Godzilla to show up because I knew what it meant for them.
The found family felt very earned, and I like that there was a lot of time put into making it clear that Shikishima and Noriko weren't just destined lovers meant to be together. His refusal to marry her out of a respect for her autonomy was nice, and it made their connection feel genuine. Her fate had me absolutely destroyed, and had me HOOKED for the rest of the movie.
Man! Godzilla in this movie rocked the house. I love how utterly unstoppable it was for the entire thing - the boat chase and subsequent destruction, and man the rampage!! What a gorgeously terrifying sequence that had me absolutely locked in for the entire thing. Its beam being a nuclear-esque blast that just absolutely obliterates everything is such a great change of form, and easily matches up to the changes made by Shin.
I'm so SO glad that G:MO got the love it deserved at the Oscars. It was easily my favorite movie of the year and felt like a drama more than a monster movie. Does every movie have to strive to be something more? No! But this one did, and it did fantastically.
And that leads us into our next movie, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire!!
This movie was notably less "mature" than G:MO, but that was totally okay. It was so much fun to just sit down and zone into the absolutely awesome nonsense going on. The story was absolute garbage, half of the scenes were almost pointless, and the fights were well paced, well placed in the plot itself, and fun to watch. As far as a silly Godzilla movie is concerned, what more could you ask?
Well, maybe a few things! I'm still not over the change to CG, and I don't know if I ever will be for movies like this. There's just something lost in the transition away from sets that leaves me wanting. This movie does make the monsters "feel" bigger, which is a nice change from GvK's speedy overhead nonsense in HK, but there just isn't ever going to be something that feels as visceral as seeing someone really smash into something in real life, even if they're in a giant rubber suit.
The music was also absolutely sleep inducing. This is a shame in my eyes - Godzilla's music has always been iconic, and every new addition to that repertoire is welcomed at the end of the day. The Godzilla 2014 soundtrack is pretty good! Shin's "Who Will Know" is still an absolutely devastatingly beautiful piece of music. And yet, this movie could just as well have been absolutely devoid of music for all it meant. Yes, they used 80s rock songs here and there, but those always slide off me like water when they come up in movies. If it's not well-woven into the fabric of the movie, they might as well not be there.
The Hollow Earth setting is sorta confusing. Are the crystal structures just normal, or are those also weird? Is that why all the places that were previously undiscovered had crystals? Or was that normal? How big is the hollow earth? How far away was the crag that the Scar King came from to the Iwi city? What about from Station One? Where are all these places? I guess this is a natural issue with any movie that has to make up the place they're in, but I could never really put myself geographically into the hollow earth (haha, very silly haha) which made some of the plot beats feel like they may as well not have been there.
Okay - actually, can we talk about this? At the climax of the movie, Topper (the giant monster veterinarian - sure, I'll buy it) runs off to go back to Station One and fly a giant Mecha-glove for Kong. Badass, yes, and I was excited for this, but - hold on - the movie made a specific point to show that their ship was left several miles away in the middle of nowhere. WHY did they do this? What was the point at all? Why did they have the group go into the forest and have the pilot die (another utterly pointless scene and death) just to literally forget they did that? Whatever. Outside of this, I didn't feel like the plot had too many moments where it broke my suspension of disbelief, which was already stretched 2 miles wide.
So, all in all, it's been a good time to be a Godzilla fan. I'm excited for whatever comes out next, but I'm okay with waiting for a while until something comes out. Sometimes the wait is what makes things sweeter.
Goodbye again gemfriends! Until next time.