Godzilla: Final Wars

"Listen, kid. There are two things you don't know about the earth; one is me, and the other is... Godzilla." 'Final Wars' is as fun as it is flawed. It's also, without a doubt, extremely stylish, the soundtrack and choreography are ridiculous (complementary), and bring so much energy to the film. 'Final Wars' often feels like a Takashi Miike movie with its goofiness and absurdity, but unfortunately it lacks his precision; the editing can be pretty clunky, and at points so jarring that I'd argue it ruins otherwise perfect scenes. I think time is a large factor working against this film; not that I think that it is too long, rather I feel that it's runtime was mismanaged. It's not until about forty minutes in, where Ozaki and the gang confront the Xilians at Space Nations, that the movie begins to finally pick up. Consequently, the extra thirty minutes they gave the film feel at best underutilized, and at worst wasted on a slugglish introduction. I think tightening up the pace and possibly pushing a three hour runtime would have felt better to watch. Speeding through every scene is not engaging, and actually makes action-packed moments feel more boring than if they had been given time to develop; I understand that the kaiju fight scenes have to be less detailed by necessity when working with a thirteen monster roster (I'm not counting Minilla, and I'll get to that in a second), but I'd argue that the majority (if not all) of the kaiju fights in this movie are far too brief. Just look at Hedorah's role in this movie as an example: fly out of the ocean, hug Ebirah, die. I'm baffled they even bothered making the suit considering how little screentime it has. There are also far more human fight scenes in this move than kaiju fight scenes, and it doesn't even come close. I wouldn't necessarily mind this as most of the human fight scenes are pretty enjoyable, but it gets to a point where they just end up feeling like more wasted time that would have been better spent elsewhere. The Minilla sideplot (if you can even call it that) is a place I that think more time could have been spent. Minilla does literally nothing to warrant the sudden power up, and it leads to the ending of the film feeling rather unearned. Have Minilla training against Kamacurus and Kumonga or something... put fucking Gabara in the movie, I don't care - just give me something to reasonably explain what was going on there. Same with this kid and his grandpa - who even are these people, and why am I supposed to care? As little as we do get to see them, the suits in 'Final Wars' do look pretty great for the most part. Godzilla is a nice amalgam of her previous designs *(Yes, HER. Gordon is the only character in the movie to use gendered pronouns for Godzilla, and he says HER)*. Gigan also looks very slick in his BDSM leather-wear, and Monster X is pretty cool too. Anguirus, Mothra, and Rodan are pretty par-for-the-course, but not bad by any means. I can't say the same for King Caesar or King Ghidorah, though. Usually having more mobility in a suit is a good thing, but it makes Caesar look a little too Super Sentai for my taste, and Ghidorah just looks bad - possibly the cheapest his suit has ever looked... also those hind legs just look super goofy and ruin any intimidation factor that he might have had otherwise. The main humans (and xilians) are all pretty hammy and I think the movie benefits heavily from it. Godzilla movies have definitely had better human characters before, but these guys are all so cartoonish that it's hard not to love them. The Xilian controller is such a fucking freak and I love him. What I did not love was Gordon opening his fist to palm-strike one of the mutants after she says "Are you really going to hit a lady?" It was weird and gross and I did not like it. Gordon was a fun parody of stoic masculinity up until that point, but that absolutely destroyed any likability he had. Do not stan. Also I wish Ozaki and Kazama would just kiss already... The mashing up of older Toho films in the movie was pretty cool, and the Gotengo being a main focus was inspired, though it makes me wish we got more Atragon sequels - I also wish that they'd done more with Gorath in this film; it's a plot point for a couple of minutes and then oop- hologram. Despite the fact I (apparently) have a lot of negative things to say about this movie, I do still find it to be one of the more enjoyable Godzilla movies. Perhaps it is that narrowly missed potential that makes me more critical than I might usually be... hmm... who knows? Oh, also I didn't really have anywhere else to say this, but the EDF uniform with the red armband is kinda yikes... It feels a little... Hugo Boss, if you catch my meaning... Shoots laser into my own review. "Sorry, I'm a vegetarian!"