New American Godzilla Movie

I just saw this over the weekend on IMAX. One of the random shots I really liked was as someone in a crowd turns around, and you see a guy riding a parachute in between a few tall buildings - he’s almost at street level. There’s just time to register him, when a plane comes crashing down into a nearby building. Your brain puts 2+2 together and now you know there was another EMP attack.

The visuals on a number of the human bits were really good. I thought the monster fighting stuff was far too akin to guys in rubber suits swinging at each other - I was hoping they’d up the ante a bit. Or, take it to the next level of goofy and do some serious WWF “off the top ropes” style antics.

Also, this picture brings back a million happy childhood memories of watching all the monster movies on weekends as a little kid.

The only thing I don’t like about this idea is the very end. If you change it around so that someone has to save Godzilla from a secret superweapon you kind of remove part of the point of him being around, namely that no one knows how to stop him. Then you’re in “Wait, why would they not just throw the guy in jail and reactivate the weapon and use it on Godzilla then? Or just use it immediately on him showing up again?” territory. At least the way the movie ended we don’t know if the nuke would’ve killed Godzilla or not, and if there’s a sequel it’s an open question whether it would do anything to help since he’s been nuked before. I mean, if we knew we could kill Godzilla, then we wouldn’t need to let him wander around and fight stuff because anything he could kill we could kill without his help.

I think the Red Letter Media review of this (and the terrible Roland Emerich version) had a good idea for improving the human element:

Keep Bryan motherfucking Cranston around for your whole movie!

Overall I thought everything to do with monsters and Bryan Cranston was pretty great, and then the rest of the human element was pretty boring and where it fell down. But the negatives were not enough for me to not like it.

It’s a good ending. It just needs some sort of one-in-a-lifetime element to it. All the stars align and we might not ever get this chance again kind of thing. Best of all, after saving G-zilla and pooping on the man, the son can doff his hat and ride off into the setting sun.

Is there a good playlist for a guy who wants to check out the new film with his soon-to-be-adult daughter after watching the cream of the crop from the old ones? I know there’s a huge list movies from the inception of the series to now and that the spectrum of good-to-bad is pretty big. I’m envisioning a Friday night of 2-3 old flicks and then the new one in a Saturday matinee. Forgive me if I missed such a suggestion in this thread, trying to avoid spoilers.

The three best actors in this film were Juliette Binoche, Bryan Cranston, and Ken Watanabe. So when -

SPOILERS!

One of them gets killed in the prologue, one of them is killed at the end of act 1, and one of them just stands around looking dazed 90% of the time.

  • I realized Gareth Edwards was really dropping the ball as far as the human element goes. Which is unfortunate, because a kaiju film like Godzilla is basically a natural-disaster film. You watch a decent natural-disaster film to see shit get wrecked; but you watch a great natural-disaster film because you want to see characters you like triumph over adversity - or at least survive until the end credits. Godzilla is a lot of fun, but the second half fails the basic “I don’t care what happens to these people” test, which is why it falls short of being a great monster movie (IMHO).

To be honest, I think the original Gojira is the only one which still holds up as a “real” film. The franchise rapidly gets increasingly silly as they pile on more & more monsters; think of it as the kaiju equivalent of pro wrestling. Of course, if pro wrestling between grown men cosplaying as giant monsters is your thing, you’ll be in cinema heaven. :)

My ending is designed to setup this sequel.

Godzilla 2: MechaGodzilla boogaloo

The humans, having been thwarted by Snake Plissken in their previous attempt to kill Godzilla, build MechaGodzilla. MechaGodzilla is built for the purpose of kicking Godzilla’s ass cause that’s what humans do, humans kick ass(that should be an actual line in the movie). The first act should generate oohs and ahhs from the audience due to MechaGodzilla’s awesomeness in testing. Imagine a Rocky training montage but with MechaGodzilla instead of Rocky.

In the second act MechaGodzilla tracks down Godzilla and the fight commences. Godzilla kicks the crap out of MechaGodzilla because that’s what Godzilla does, he kicks the crap out of things(this should be an actual line in the movie). Just when Godzilla is about to deliver the coup de grace to a prone MechaGodzilla a new monster appears. It seems the fight has disturbed the slumber of a previously unknown beast. This beast attacks Godzilla since Godzilla is the one standing. Godzilla gets his ass beaten then the new monster leaves in triumphant glory. Godzilla gets up(he was knocked out next to MechaGodzilla) and storms off in a huff, embarrassed at getting punked. The military airlifts MechaGodzilla back to base. MechaGodzilla is rebuilt and upgraded, based on what the humans learned from getting beaten and seeing how the new monster fights Godzilla.

The final act is MechaGodzilla finding and fighting the new monster, doing well at first but then he starts losing, running out of ammo or whatever. At the last moment Godzilla appears, impressed by MechaGodzilla’s moxie, and finishes off the new monster. After teaming up in this fight a new understanding between Godzilla and humanity is reached and Godzilla walks off proudly, knowing he is king of the monsters once again.

Godzilla 3: Return of MechaGodzilla! Monsters 2 and 3 team up to kill all of humanity!

I would see both of those sequels.

This is awesome, but clearly based on the Godzilla wrestling movies instead of Gojira.

There will be NO shaking of Godzilla’s hand in my movie!

— Alan

Mothra, Rodan confirmed for Godzilla 2.

— Alan

Welp, and…

Rodan! Mothra! King Ghidorah!

Yay for King Ghidorah, who was always my favorite Godzilla antagonist. Still, the whole kaiju cast flies with the exception of big G. It would have been nice to put another pedestrian in the film. Do we really need both Rodan and Mothra? Why not Anguirus or Baragon?

Mothra >> Rodan. I rather like a Mothra, Godzilla, and Anguirus tag team, but we usually got Rodan on that team instead.

I don’t think that it’s clear that they’ll all be in the next movie - just that the franchise now has the rights to them, so they’re going to start appearing. Remaking Ghidorah King of the Monsters, which had all 4, would be fun though. Minus the space aliens. Please.

I guess I was thinking too small for the sequel. I thought adding one new monster plus a huge mech, so the humans would have a dog in the fight, was pushing things. The real sequel sounds a lot more ambitious.

I vote for a Pacific Rim/Godzilla crossover! :D

It just struck me that I had no idea what Ghidorah actually was. I just kept calling it Tiamat.

— Alan

DVD/Blueray is going to be out on Sept 16th.