A fair review of
KOTM (+
Dark Phoenix):
I like that Jay actually gave
Shin Godzilla a try after he watched
KOTM and he really likes it. He can actually see its greatness. Big plus for Red Letter Media *
salutes*.
Also, for those who don't know, the skit at the beginning is a jab at Kristian Harloff's rant about not being invited to the Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge theme park
.
For those who don't know, Godzilla movies are practically divided into two types: the "serious" ones and the "popcorn" ones. The serious ones consist of
Gojira (1954),
Godzilla (1984),
Shin Godzilla (2016) and probably Hollywood
Godzilla (2014) if you want to count that one (at least it gets A for effort). The rest are either flat-out silly "popcorn" movies or straddling the lines (with mixed results). But most of them are still fun to watch. Fun fact: the 60s era of Godzilla movies actually have better special effects compared to Hollywood's effect-laden sci-fi movies at the time and simply look richer. So, Japanese Godzilla movies already surpassed Hollywood movies for a good decade.
To this day, there's still no contender for a serious Godzilla movie that can stand on the level of 1954 and 2016. Hollywood have yet to make a truly great serious Godzilla movie. The 2014 can only reach the level of 1984 at its best.
___________________________________
Now it's time for my own impression:
So, I just watched
Godzilla KOTM and…damn, what a ride! It might not mean much for non-fans but there’s just so much love that this movie has for all the Toho kaiju lore. The monster fights are fantastic and half of that excitement is generated from seeing the familiar kaiju in this shiny Hollywood makeover done by a director who is a fan of Godzilla.
But of course, the movie has shortcomings. The human story is basically just nonsensical filler except maybe for a couple of plot points in the movie. But I’m grateful that none of the human characters are annoying (for me, at least). Most of them are just meh except for Serizawa who gets a well-deserved scene for himself.
Actually, my main nitpick for the movie is something that
Shin Godzilla & even
Kong: Skull Island already fixed, which is: things being obscured either by snow, smoke, cloud, rain or thunderstorm. I just don’t get it. Michael Dougherty is a Godzilla fan, so I think he would like to see the monsters in more broad daylight setting and in steady panoramic shot. But even he seems to insist to have the monsters fight in heavily atmospheric environments. Whether it's budget or purely artistic choice, I don’t know.
The monster scenes that we actually got are already beautiful to look at, but it would have been better if the fights took place in a clearer day with nothing obscuring the view.
Even if Ghidorah canonically brought thunderstorm with him, why couldn’t they make the fight happen during the day? Also the camera & now-let's-cut-to-human-while-the-kaiju-fight-is going-on moments is kinda annoying. It’s not quite a shaky-cam like in
Bayformers, but the camera sometimes move & zoom so much which can be distracting at times. Also, Oxygen Destroyer...it's so poorly depicted.......what have they done to you, my boy!
Still, all in all, for this Godzilla fan,
KOTM is an enjoyable ride worth the price of admission.
I heard that
KOTM’s opening weekend box office is weak and have a high chance to underperform. Well, in that case, I’m glad that they already wrapped up shooting for
Godzilla vs. Kong so they can’t really cancel it now. They already put so much money for the project. GvK will probably be the last Hollywood Godzilla movie that we’ll ever get in this decade (and probably the next) not only because there’s not much money in it anymore (even though
Godzilla 2014 &
Kong 2017 made more than enough profit) but also because Legendary’s contract with Toho will be over after 2020. Right now, Toho is probably waiting for the contract to expire before they make their new Godzilla movie (probably continuation of
Shin) and frankly, I’m more interested in Toho’s next project than Hollywood ones. Hollywood already has a Godzilla solo movie, a Kong solo movie, a Godzilla movie with Ghidorah-Mothra-Rodan in it, and the upcoming Godzilla vs. King Kong movie (they even managed to showcase their own original kaijus throughout those movies). Those are pretty much the essential movies that need to be adapted by Hollywood for the novelty of big budget CGI. The rest is more fluff than anything. So yeah, if GvK marks the end of the MonsterVerse, I think I'll be content (assuming GvK is good enough and not a disaster). My expectation & excitement will then be directed at future Toho outings.