Godzilla

Started by MacGuffin, March 29, 2010, 04:14:07 PM

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tpfkabi

It's doing well on Rotten Tomatoes. I wasn't expecting this.
It does have Walter White and Olson non-twin.

I saw the 98 Godzilla in the theater and have never watched it again.
I was more impressed with the soundtrack at the time.
I think I mesh parts of G 98 with The Lost World: JP, both of which I haven't watched in a long time.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

jenkins

Quote from: Drenk on May 14, 2014, 04:59:05 PM
So. It's definitely an atmospheric movie. And after Pacifim Rim, I'm glad that monsters in a city feel like monsters who are in a city. Why do we care? Why a monster in a city is so cool to watch? Most of this Godzilla is around Godzilla. Pacific Rim was focused on the monsters and the robots, and they fighter, and the monsters and robots looked dull. Here we have some amazing shots.

But. The characters are...well, not dumb...but everything is a cliché, and, actually, it didn't feel like there was characters. It tries, though. But I forgive it because we stay on humanity side, where the eyes are, where it is exciting to see monsters.
^new page reminder someone has seen godzilla(!!)

my guess is now leaning toward the apes winning the summer movie showdown

SailorOfTheSeas

I'm watching it tonight!I'm real deal excited.

I'll post my opinions laterr

Alexandro

It was solid and entertaining, very Spielbergy at moments but not as concerned with the human characters, which in this context is good because characters, thankfully, have no arcs or emotional obstacles to overcome and it's all very much about the problem of gigantic monsters destroying cities and how to deal with them. No corrupt authorities, blind government policies, no absent father reuniting with family, just that huge problem and everyone trying to solve it.

Great creatures and shots, and really a cosmic improvement over the last godzilla movie.

diggler

I really liked how they didn't force characters to act stupidly to move the plot along. Even the tightwad military guy came across as reasonable. It's amazing how much you serve your characters when they act believably. They might've stretched a bit of credibility with working the main hero into every situation, but it never felt too hamfisted. Cranston was good, almost too good for what was written as a stock conspiracy nut character. What sells the movie is the imagery though. The use of perspective really helped everything feel massive, lots of images stuck with me after it was over, specifically an overhead shot of Godzilla swimming in the ocean surrounded by Navy ships. It's not comedic in tone like the 1998 film, but it's having way more fun.
I'm not racist, I'm just slutty

SailorOfTheSeas

Just got back! I was expecting more of a massive and artsy horror/disaster film about Godzilla but its much more of a safe hollywood blockbuster. I have mixed opinions but overall enjoyed and liked it. Here are my positives and negatives.

Negatives:
1. For the first two thirds of the film the majority of the soundtrack is, imo, generic action film music that makes everything feel bland and takes out the tension.
2. The film rarely, especially in the later two thirds, fully dedicates itself to a scene and intercuts everything with a bunch of drama that gets real busy and uninteresting pretty fast.
3. Sometimes the monsters, when fighting by themselves in big open spaces and aren't hidden or contrasted to anything, look a bit mediocre and not all that impressive.

Positives:
1. Most of the acting is pretty great.
2. When the monsters are contrasted with small humans and when they're hidden by smoke or water or whatever they look and feel fucking awesome
3. The film has lots of great moments and scenes, its just a shame that loads of them aren't really dedicated to and are ruined by generic music and busy drama
4. When the film uses the monolith music from 2001, its amazing.
5. At some points you actually care about the human characters, which is a great achievement in a film like this.
6. The film is pretty beautiful and the cgi is great mostly.
7. There are some really cool little directorial flourishes throughout, although contrasting blandness of a lot of it undermines this at points

If you haven't seen it, these are my favourite scenes. Dw, i won't put any spoilers in.
1. The scene on the rickety bridge with the two soldiers
2. The sky diving scene
3. When the female and the male meet

Overall its a pretty good film. I thought it would feel a tad more sophisticated and tense rather than like a blockbuster. The spine of the film is very much of a hollywood blockbuster but there are still very sophisticated and tense moments throughout

Alexandro

Quote from: SailorOfTheSeas on May 16, 2014, 06:01:06 PM

4. When the film uses the monolith music from 2001, its amazing.


Yeah, that was a chilling sequence. And perfectly illustrates what you're saying about generic scores and how they undermine movies more than enhancing them. Just a small detour from the usual usual made the whole sequence feel transcendent.

Lottery

Rather enjoyed it.

The halo/Ligeti sequence marked the final third or so of the film and from that point onwards, the movie was quite impressive. Liked the little background stories and the general setup. Monster stuff was slow, brutal and prehistoric. Appreciated that.
Score was occasionally stylistically inconsistent but was overall rather good.

jenkins

hell yeah i snuck in godzilla prior to the magnificent ambersons. how i roll. quick:

agree with everyone and what they've said

locations were mentioned and japan was #1

director as artist, self as universal vs universal as self, the big screen priority was on universal as self, for the kids or whatever. prefer the self as univeral. but cool thing is, when this happens here it occasionally happens oriented from the monster's perspective. fuck yeah. also, cried in the beginning. you know why

mash it into into like 45mins, perfect, imo. that's all it needs, in a quick and easy sense. friend i was with said that before i'd said that's what i was thinking

echo most people who've seen this movie: think i like things and think i don't like things and i wanna see it again. the good is good

though. the apes might win. we'll see

pete

I hated it. hated how nothing happens while the monsters were artificially kept in the back. hated how the movie would cut to a phone call in which nothing was said during the monsters rampage. hated how godzilla maybe did five minutes total's worth of stuff and that last battle really should've been the first battle. hated how no character did anything useful (the ones that did died early on) except stare meaningfully at the monster while everyone else runs in the opposite direction. hated how the first time director knew like three crowd pleasing tricks that he used over and over again (every time you saw Godzilla before San Francisco it was a slow move up from his tail to his face as if you didn't just see that fucking move two scenes ago, and the "IS HE DEAD? HE'S NOT DEAD" trick they used twice in five minutes) Hated the forced cutaway/ fade to black in the middle of a monster battle for no reason other than the movie would've ended right there and then. Hated the script basically had this guy try to get on a plane from scene to scene just so the monster battles can happen behind him. Hated this movie confused having more human characters with being more human. Hated how this movie confused waiting with suspense. Hated how it kept coming up with clever and not so clever ways to not show the monsters (like a door closing as you're supposed to see it). But most of all hated how dull everything is in a movie these days. How every movie has to follow the special forces, even if we're dealing with super heroes, giant robots, or dinosaurs, even if the character said or did nothing that had anything to do with the movie. If you saw a guy in military pants shout into his phone in a lobby for two hours then snuck into Godzilla for the ending, you would've just seen the same movie as that fucking snoring audience.

this is a movie that just badly doesn't want to be godzilla. the 1998 movie wanted to be jurassic park, this one just wanted to be other movies that Americans have seen (Monsters plus The Host), but it's another genre misfire in which the filmmakers think they're too good for the material. this is going to be the thing that keeps happening now, as more and more franchises are bought by people who don't understand them.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

picolas

this is a really good try at a godzilla movie. it gets a lot of things wrong but i was never bored. i feel the need to break things down:

WHAT WORKS
• the monsters. they all have the right level of personality/crazy animal behaviour. slowly revealing all their habits and abilities plays like the best kind of nature doc. they're extremely well animated and their backstory is cool. (godzilla has a couple of false notes towards the end.)

• the action. completely thrilling throughout. on top of that, there is a wonderful degree of variety, not just in terms of what's going on, but tonally. this movie has a better grasp on spielberg/john williams-style action than anything jj abrams has ever done. it's not just dangerous, it's adventurous. there's a sense of wonder about what's going on. magic. something beyond man.

• the score. (mostly). this lumps in with the john williams vibes. the movie is so confident about the terror of the monsters that it takes a step back and goes 'whoaaaa, nature' etc etc. it's refreshing.

• elizabeth olson and cranston. they give it their best shot and manage to make things work/feel urgent when every other human is falling apart.


WHAT FAILS
• aaron johnson drops the ball so hard. i would be very curious to see a version of this movie with a capable lead performance because i almost believe it could all work if i didn't completely disregard everything he does on a gut level. he's not playing a real person. he's playing a 'type'. he's squinty and mumbly and buff. he plays nearly every dangerous situation like it's a minor inconvenience. he's too cool to ever get ruffled or not know what he's doing. basically, no one in their right mind should give a fuck about this guy, and 70% of the movie is predicated on giving a fuck about this guy.

• ken watanabe has no idea what he's doing. he appears stunned throughout the entire movie. that never changes once. that is all he contributes. his acting boils down to one face. no thought, no intention. just face. if you took a screencap of his face from any scene in the movie and blurred out the background and asked me for generally when in the movie that scene happened, i would be guessing every time. seriously, look at the many faces of watanabe in godzilla:









• the writing. i don't fully blame the writing because like i said there's a ton of variety and the humans/monsters are well-knitted together. there are some underdeveloped themes and stupid ideas here and there. unnecessary subplots. a lack of intentional humour. many elements of the story fall apart if you think about them for more than a few seconds. it makes no sense that johnson and cranston's characters are the only people to figure certain things out. i find the tone of the ending ridiculous, but i think that may be a directing decision. i think a lot of the writing could have worked with better performances and better tonal decisions. however, they would be covering for something fundamentally weak.

bottom line: i still enjoyed this a lot. it made me believe there's a great godzilla movie that could exist someday. it's just so damn hard to find someone who understands monsters AND humans.

Lottery

Yeah, with Watanabe, I'm glad they had a fair bit of focus on him. But it was kinda wasted because they never used him well enough.

picolas

no! it doesn't matter how you use him. he isn't a thing. he's a hollow shell.

jenkins

this thread has gone next level. whatever to say about the movie, glad it's brought a next level conversation

Quote from: pete on May 18, 2014, 12:15:43 AM
hated how the first time director knew like three crowd pleasing tricks that he used over and over again

enjoyed your whole post and think a lot of the movie's problems come from here. the director wasn't creatively adventurous! not often. sometimes maybe. the music problem, the acting problem, the embarrassing way characters would walk into midframe and turn around before they said important shit! am i sounding rude? what's the polite way to say...he wasn't an orson welles, that's for sure

pete

It's a terrible try at Godzilla. It's a studio that's so afraid of the 1998 Godzilla backlash that they'd do anything to keep the movie from being called silly - even at the risk of showing the fucking monster all of five minutes. And the fucking audience ate it up. Because they were flattered into liking something "serious", like boredom somehow is a respect of their fucking intelligence. The result is a movie in which "human drama" is used as a gimmick to not show the audience what they paid to see, and everyone is so raised on dull trash that they'd accept FEMA porn much more quickly than a monster walking the earth wrecking shit and having more than one battle against the other monsters.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton