Review by filmtoaster
VIP3EDIT: It has now been revealed the original film/script was radically different, longer, and explained many of my issues presented in this review. Studios, stop butchering your films to be more palatable to audiences.
This is what happens when the people who say, "Godzilla movies don't need to have good human stories," get their way. Easily one of the weakest Godzilla films ever made and the worst of this series. You're not a fan of this franchise if you say Godzilla movies don't need story. Every one so far has had an interesting enough script to justify it's monster bits, even the worst Showa or Heisei outings do more. It's not even really sure what it wants to be. Kong is propped up as the hero and clearly the protagonist of this story with Gojira making cameos as he hunts the organization Apex, but then Kong just loses anyways. What purpose is there for even setting up these monsters as sympathetic when all writing and soul is tossed out the minute they start brawling in Hong Kong. It actually forgets humans exist for a good four minutes as these two punching bags throttle around neon buildings. Craft is gone, it turns into The Avengers, with barely any collateral damage. "Oh but, you can follow the journey through the monsters! You don't need humans to have that nuance." Oh really? Godzilla doesn't like Kong being off his island, he puts him in his place, story done. Talk about deep. No moments to breath or for a character to properly react. This is hot off the heels of King of the Monsters, a film that continues the themes of Skull Island and Gareth Edward's Godzilla. Dougherty's outing before this deeply explored the themes of what it means to live with these monsters on Earth. How do you continue living when a relative of yours has been taken at the hands of one of them, do you shut yourself off or do you try to change the world? Emma became essentially so riddled with guilt she released the devil on Earth. How are these monsters really not so different from us, considering they were birthed out of our own arrogant, persistent lust for control over this world. It's too much to get in to, but that film dealt a great deal with overcoming grief, putting your faith in God, coexistence, and forgiveness. Mark's scene where he looks in to Godzilla's eyes and finally restores his faith is one of my favorite moments from this series. There is nothing in Godzilla vs. Kong that could be remotely construed as a plot. Charles Dance's role has been replaced for some reason, we have a wacky podcast conspiracy guy that serves as just a walking prop for the viewer to see world explanations, Kyle Chandler as Mark has been reduced to a cameo, and on that note: Why is he working at Monarch? He consistently hated Godzilla until he had a change of heart and faith by virtue of Serizawa and Mothra. Monarch didn't change to the good guy, they're still an organization on the cusp of lawsuit and government shutdown. Would GvK mind explaining that for us? How and when was Apex formed? How is it possible the creation of MechaGodzilla never leaked out? The world has been introduced to the titans. It's plainly established everyone is obsessed with these things, the internet and news won't shut up about them. The government doesn't know this is how Apex is using their power supply? In '14, it's at least explained their research on the MUTO was a government cover up for Monarch, that's why Joe in that film became a crackpot theorist who wouldn't let the nuclear incident go. But it's not 2013 anymore, the creatures are no longer a big secret. In King of the Monsters, the people unleashing Ghidorah to rival Godzilla are small band of eco-terrorists, they aren't a multi-billion dollar corporation. It makes no sense and done so much more poorly. It's rushed and done with quips. The most we ever get in terms of world building is a single shot of a map and newspapers, talking about the UN vetoing Godzilla or Apex facilities springing up across the map. We don't hear internal communication or even have a Senate scene like in this last film. The world has simultaneously been expanded greatly and shrunken to nothing, something Pacific Rim Uprising also horrifically accomplished. This series was built off the foundation of engaging with this science fiction, government monster universe through the lens of a sympathetic every-man that's been hurt by the monsters in some way, usually a familial death. Dr. Nathan Lind is given two words to establish he lost a brother in the Hollow Earth, but nothing ever comes of that information. Humans? There are storytelling devices used to get the audience from scene to scene. In the same span of runtime, from '14 to this, Bryan Cranston is grieving over his dying wife, to this has a fat guy making jokes about toasters. The most amount of interesting character development are thrown away in two very specific pieces of dialogue. The little native girl's family was killed by the storm surrounding skull island, which we saw in Kong's film, as was the whole island wiped out. I imagine there was a sequence that explored this and able to give a more tragic or perhaps resounding, uplifting message of sticking with family even when you've suffered so much loss. It would fit the overarching narrative that's stuck to this MonsterVerse so far, but it seems the cutting room floor did a number to this movie, as even stated by director Adam Wingard. It really does feel like the movie is playing damage control. Audiences didn't understand the previous films' stories, so they got fed up trying to understand them and just declared they don't want any characters in these movies. So we get walking action figures that say the words necessary to get us to our next fight. The best potential that existed in one of these dolls was Shun Oguri's character, Ren Serizawa, who is related to the Serizawa of previous films, the one who sacrificed himself to save Godzilla and prove humanity needed to accept him as their king. It was a very touching, holy piece in the last film, and Ren could work as an antagonistic son who resents his father for giving up his life to this monster he doesn't understand, and we could go through a similar arc Mark Russel did in the last film. None of this is realized, he is a dummy test pilot told to get in the goddamn chair, like it's an Evangelion reference. The most amount of enjoyment anyone could get out of this is the splodge of CGI dumped on to the screen with no visual grace or narrative substance. If that's all you want, then I pity what this means for blockbusters. Edwards crafted a fantastic character movie in 2013 and the series has been handed a blow here.
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@filmtoaster Actually there was way too much "human story" in this movie. We're introduced to 4 protagonists before we see any monster action. Cut out everything but the little girl and her surrogate. Or cut them out too. Would be more fun purely from Kongs perspective; watching him trying to make sense of these silly humans.
Review by BLAQK
VIP7The first 90 minutes of this movie are absolutely fantastic. They build up Marla as such a despicable, horrid creature that I was actively begging for the Mafia to get sick revenge on her.
The last 30 minutes are Season 8 Game of Thrones level of terrible and ruin what was about to be one of my favorite movies this year. The steps they want to strain credibility were insane. Firstly her surviving after being drugged and put in the water were questionable. The mafia failing to kill her girlfriend was just...how in the world did they fail killing that girl?Marla just fell in the water (and I'm not going into the 3 minutes she was able to kick in a glass front window underwater and maintain holding her breath), but she still has her wallet to buy things at the convenience store. She gets to her girlfriend literally just before the place blows up, which she had no control over because she literally waited for a taxi.
They complain that they have nothing left but the diamonds, and but they also apparently have a handy wig, a taser, some morphine knockout drugs to pull off some James Bond type of killing of Peter Dinklage. And then when Dinklage survives, he agrees to be her partner. Look, I get she's smart and was gonna kill it with the mafia. But the shit she did was unforgivable, and it strains my belief that Dinklage wouldn't just go out and torture her the first chance he gets. They did not present him as being a "money first" guy, so him overlooking the mother being thrown IN A PSYCHIATRIC WARD is nuts.
Look, I enjoyed 70% of this movie. It was an excellent horror thriller to that point. I would've loved if this movie went the route of Dinklage and the mob being mostly outsmarted by the crazy, maniacally, absolutely dastardly woman. But that movie NEEDED to end with Dinklage personally killing Marla. No if, ands or buts, anything but that ending ruins the point they spent the rest of the movie going for.It really hurts me to trash this movie, because Pike was fantastic again in her role as a villain and Dinklage really made me want his character to succeed. But that ending was the worst type of cop out possible.
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@mrblaqk most of your criticism is fair, but I wanna point out that if you wanna make someone’s death seem like an accident, it’s a good idea to leave them with their wallet. Not observing their death is a bad idea tho.
The house was not about to explode. The gas was just meant to poison her, which is completely insane after they’ve already beaten her to a pulp and trashed the house. These people were terrible murderers.
