Trent Achey

Hey you know what? This movie was awesome. I’m tired of pretending I’m above “big monster punch other monster, thing explode” because I’m not. I love how, for lack of a better term, experimental this movie is. There are long stretches where it’s just kong exploring and Kong communicating to other giant apes with no spoken dialogue and I love that. I genuinely believe that with how well we as an audience understand Kong they could make a movie entirely of just Kong going about his day and discovering something and having to stop it. They’ll never do that because it’ll cost too much money and they can’t put some big name actor in the movie for market value but it could be done. Godzilla takes a bit of a back seat this movie.. his subplot is that he senses something is coming so he's just storing as much power as he can to prepare. I adore how Godzilla is kind of just a big cat in this movie. The movie starts with him using the Roman colosseum as a cat bed and it ends with him going right back to that cat bed. Scar King is such a good antagonist and a welcome addition to this monster verse. It’s cool that I now have enough confidence in these films that they could make up a new monster and it doesn’t feel out of place. Shimo is also really good and Kind of cute when it’s not being controlled by Scar king. The absurdity of this movie by the end is a highlight for sure. Godzilla, Kong, shimo, and Scar King duking it out in hollow earth then warping back to the surface world landing right on the beaches of Brazil and just fucking throwing hands and destroying buildings, throwing buildings, throwing weapons all of it. It’s incredible. OH ALSO MOTHRA’S BACK AND I DIDNT REMEMBER THAT SOMEHOW. She also has something to do in this movie and doesn’t die at the end of it so she’s just here now,. I hope she’s in the next one because oh my god I love Mothra. Also getting some shades of Son of Godzilla with Kong paling around with the little baby Kong was really nice.  I researching this movie when it came out on streaming and I thought “yeah that was pretty okay, hopefully the next one will have monsters I recognize” now I’m totally okay with them using new monsters IF they can theoretically fit right into Godzilla’s usual monster line up like I feel Scar King can. Shimo when not being controlled feels a little too docile in comparison but we do know how distracting they can be so I do think it works. I’m excited for the next one because these movies are basically like a child smashing their action figures together with a budget and amazing visual effects and I’m all for it.

Hey you know what this is all around pretty fun. Still don’t really care about Molly Willy Silly Filly Billy Pilly Bobby Brown’s part in the movie but at the very least the film isn’t centered around her. I genuinely really love the relationship between Rebecca Hall’s Character, Jia, and the giant monkey I think that’s all super well done. Making Kong the central monster for this one feels right because with Kong you can insert a ton of personality into him and it doesn’t feel out of place because primates in and of themselves already have a ton of personality. Kong being able to communicate through sign language really doesn’t bother me at all I actually really like that, I remember the first time watching this and thinking how stupid it was the kong uses a weapon now it just makes sense. You can’t throw an unarmed gorilla into a fight with someone armed with a laser canon and that’s essentially what Godzilla is in comparison. The hollow earth was such a joy to see finally after at least two movies theorizing about it and I even think it’s mentioned once in the 2014 movie it’s nice to see it’s real and just as much of a “do whatever” region you’d ever want it to be. Gravity’s inverted in spots, there are places where the gravity is just lighter, up is down and down is up at times, all sorts of weird new creatures that we’d never see above ground because there’s no way in hell Godzilla wouldn’t just wipe the floor with them so they stay down there protected by the outer earth. I would like to know if we found these tunnels to hollow earth or if we made them and if so… how? Because it’s explained that once you reach a certain point in the tunnel gravity inverts and you’re basically ripped inside out in an instant so I’d assume if we built these tunnels either people would get far enough that they’d stop or some poor bastard had to go in there alone and people on the outside would monitor how far he got before he got atomized. Something so science fiction like that doesn’t really matter when you’re here for the monster fights but I know if this was made in the 60’s era of Godzilla there would be a 20 minute conference room scene where they break down all the science jargon into digestible information for the audience to understand. Though times are different now and people don’t want to get talked at they want to see things moving and moving this do in this. I think bringing someone in like Adam Wingard was a great choice because it’s clear he had such a vision for this movie. I know the director doesn’t really have anything to do with the big CGI battle scenes but I would like to believe Adam was responsible for the final fight being at night and being illuminated by Neon because that’s already just his style for his movies (the guest, you’re next). Can I also say, bravo to those CGI artists that put their blood sweat and tears into this movie because my lord is it amazing. All the water splashes, waves, and partial effects during the water fight are breathtaking. The building destruction, lighting effects, how detailed Godzilla’s face is, how detailed Kong’s face is, how much each hair moves on Kong all of it is text book perfect. It’s not every day I watch a big CGI heavy movie and feel the need to point out how good it is because it’s just so commonplace now that it almost always looks pretty good but my lord this stands out as a shiny example of how far we’ve come in computer effects.  All in all, I think this movie may be looked upon as “too stupid” for general audiences because we now are really officially going off the deep end with all the technological advancements since the 2014 Godzilla and with how grounded that movie is I can see some people getting turned off by that. For me someone who has seen every single one of these god damn movies, watched Godzilla go from bad guy, to savior of the world, to children’s icon, to dancing in space, to fighting monsters controlled by aliens, to fighting a sludge monster made of pollution, to even time traveling this movie isn’t as far fetched as it can get. I also like how we get a definite who would win scenario with Godzilla winning the Godzilla vs Kong fight but then both of them becoming allies by the end of the movie and teaming up to fight Mechagodzilla. (The Mechagodzilla design in this movie is really good too I wanna point that out, just not as good as Kiryu)

First one of monsterverse whose score I didn’t change. I don’t know this movie just doesn’t do it for me most of the time. I think it’s very fascinating to watch a movie where there are things happening and events are on screen, there is indeed action and explosions and monster oh my but at the same time nothing is happening. There’s a couple of movies that do that, I watched a lot that felt that way during my Halloween marathon of whatever movies I could find on Tubi. Things would be happening a plot or something but it never felt like were going anywhere. That’s this movie, things are happening we’re going from location to location and there are monsters all over the place at one point and yet it all feels empty. This movie gives you also the harshest whiplash of terrible garbage dialogue  even going so fair as to make Ken Watanabe make a joke about him reading something in a fortune cookie, then specifying that it was a really long fortune cookie because either way the joke doesn’t work. Speech was too long for the little paper in those cookies and also it just feels insulting to him. Yet he has a wonderful scene where he sacrifices himself to bring Godzilla back from the brink of death. I think it’s very cool how the original dr. Serizawa Died killing Godzilla and the new Serizawa died to bring back Godzilla. It feels a very full circle moment kind of thing. That’s the biggest problem with this movie truly that whole scene encapsulates it. There’s dialogue leading up to that scene is annoying and stupid and terrible but then we get the scene right after that where it’s well done striking visually and feels like a very genuine moment. Godzilla and Ghidorah are fighting in Boston and the family drama stuff with Millie Willie Silly Bobby Brown is happening and it doesn’t matter because who cares but then Ghidorah bites and electrical plant, absorbs the electricity, and boom fucking lighting from every direction splitting the clouds and it looks amazing. Or later when the mother bravely sacrifices herself to save her family and like yawn boring who cares? But then, Godzilla is overheating and every step he takes is lighting shit on fire and it’s awesome and amazing. This entire movie is whiplash. The Rick character is also just fucking obnoxious all he does is crack jokes and quip and it’s frustrating because the coolest shit with the monsters will be happening and then “uh oh here come Rick to put his two cents in”. The visual design is also a mess sometimes. That initial awakening of king Ghidorah in Antarctica is such a mess from a visual and editing standpoint that someone dies and everyone has a second to react to it and give the audience a minute to be like “oh fuck not HER!!” Meanwhile I had to wait until the next scene when everyone’s together to see who even bit the dust. Turns out it was Serizawa‘s assistant from the 2014 Godzilla, who would have guessed? Mothra also has fuck all to do and that’s just unforgivable. You put my girl in this movie and all she does is fight Rodan, and die? Sure she powers up Godzilla towards the end of the movie but is that really all she’s worth to the movie? And no hint that she’s coming back and spoiler she doesn’t come back in any of the other movies either. She’s born, cocoons herself, turns into Mothra, fights Rodan, dies. SHE DINT EVEN KILL RODAN RODAN’S BACK AT THE END OF THE MOVIE AND BOWS TO GODZILLA LIKE NOTHING EVEN HAPPENED! Like come on man Rodan killed the queen of the monsters and you’re just okay with that? I’m not, I’m pissed. Any fine movie but any normal person with a functioning brain who already isn’t a fan of Godzilla should probably just ignore this one.

I think this is the best monsterverse movie. There’s enough going on with the human characters that it’s never boring I like Sam Jackson’s obsession with taking Kong down, I like John Goodman’s portrayal of a man in over his head, Tom Huddleston is great as the straight man, John C Riley plays someone who’s been stranded and alone for 20 plus years great a little too goofy in parts but eh you know what he probably would be a little goofy after seeing what he’s seen, Brie Larson is great in this movie as well I love her being one of the first people to really take Kong’s side and to understand where he’s coming from in all of this. Of course you’re here for the monster stuff and I think this has the best variety and shows the most severity in all of these movies. The spider impaling that man through his mouth, the pterodactyls ripping that guy apart in the distance, the skullcrawlers offscreening Chapman to then the aftermath not only being a spray of blood over the area he was just sitting in but later his half digested skull is barfed up by the crawler that ate him all are great at showing you how absolutely deadly and brutal this island is.  I think the balance between monster and human action is pin point perfect for this movie. I also really like the small character change in Sam Jackson’s character Packard, where at the beginning he won’t accept that they lost Vietnam just says they are strategically retreating, then later when he’s trying to rally his men who are already doubting him that killing Kong is a war they’re not going to loose is so clear to me that he’s frustrated that America “gave up” and abandoned the fight. All this man has to live for is war, and fighting, and winning, and King challenged that and he couldn’t let that go. The color scheming of this movie and the amazing decision for some shots to just slow down for a second to let you live in the chaos and destruction is also one of the stand out things about this movie. Kong has always had a slightly better batting average than Godzilla I always thought and while I think Godzilla certainly has variety in his series, Kong does have the better movies… even if almost all of them are just retelling the first movies story again. This one thankfully is its own thing and is a different take on Kong that I like a lot. This movie has the action you want to see, and the adventuring that I wanted to see since to me the Kong movies should always have a good balance of monsters/humans adventuring and discovering new things. I like a good “we’re going on this journey of discovery and curiosity” type of movie and this one does deliver.