Muzman on 17/5/2014 at 17:57
Hooray! I saw a new release movie!
I rather liked it. I really don't see a lot of these crits people give it. It was mostly smooth as silk. Propelled itself along very nicely indeed. It was straight faced and understated, but not above the odd subtle little nod to just how crazy it all is. (See, Emerich and Bay make that the whole show.) There was an elegance to it you hardly ever see these days.
There was maybe a ten minute section somewhere in the second half where I thought it was taking its time and there maybe one too many cut-aways from epic monster combat. Other than that I really don't have a big problem with it.
Olsen doesn't have much to do it's true. But she's so good her job it's not really that noticeable. The sense of people getting swept along by events is really strong in general. I think it was the scientists that were sidelined the most. (and no I don't know where the EOD guy got his parachute training). It's certainly no more filled with plot conveniences and coincidences than any other film of late. Arguably much less. It's a classy picture in a sea of baroque overwritten nonsense.
Yes, a Godzilla movie is the tasteful and restrained blockbuster choice in the world. That is something.
Ostriig on 17/5/2014 at 19:27
Saw last night. I like to think of it as a fun two hours with a bad movie. Not as in "I want my money back" Dragon Age 2 sort of bad, but I wouldn't send anyone to see it in a hurry.
Quote Posted by icemann
Whilst Bryan Cranstan is his usual awesome self
Was he, though? I saw the trailer and I had a suspicion he might end up overacting it, and once I saw
all fifteen minutes of his performance, I kinda felt like I called it. It works with something like Breaking Bad, building up slowly from a placid, repressed personality into the fits of rage and continued intensity as you get to know the character and see the change, but here it kinda went from naught to sixty in five seconds. I understand the context, but not having gotten to build a rapport with the character, it felt unengaging.
He's not the only misused human prop in there, either. Ken Watanabe spends pretty much the entire film lallygagging around, with his shoulders slumped, occasionally offering such pearls of wisdom as "let them fight" and "hurr balance." What, was the guy who built the Yoda puppet out of town?
Quote:
but other than Cranstan
they're all
Sincerely yours,
ZylonBane
Quote:
You FINALLY see a fricken monster, but don't see Godzilla till ages later, and then when you DO see both monsters in the same place, they don't even show the damn fucking fight..
Yeah, I'm with you, by the time they got around to it, I was already out of popcorn.
Quote Posted by SubJeff
Godzilla is designed well except for the Peter Griffin pot belly but the way this film was laid out was all wrong. No one was scared of Godzilla, per se, and his motives make him pretty uninteresting.
I'm assuming this is a nod to the old fandom, right? 'Cause Godzilla looked a lot like a guy in a suit. Which is fair enough, but it reminded me a bit of (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQs1uTTjTAM&feature=youtu.be&t=2m13s) this commentary.
What definitely didn't sit right with me was the design of the "motu" things. N'Al already schooled me on the topic, but not being knowledgeable on Godzilla lore, the instant I saw the things last night I could picture the Hollywood execs having a convo.
"Like, it should be, like, um, you know, like a fucking insect thing! Yeah, giant insect versus dinosaur!"
"No, fuck that, I want a bat! A bat with a head that looks like a robot anvil!"
"Man, I'm telling you, like, insects, man! You seen Cloverfield? Like that!"
"Fuck it, let's do both!"
As for Godzilla's motives, what motives? Like,
balance, man.
Nature and shit.
I will say this about the movie, I thoroughly enjoyed the visuals. And not just the CGI being competent, but the actual visual artistry. The scene where the two marines hit the deck on the bridge,
with the thing skulking around behind them. Or the parachute jump, that was aces. I'd say consistently good visuals, with a couple of top-notch moments.
And the monster fight was good. Would've liked some more of it, though.
van HellSing on 18/5/2014 at 08:46
I mostly liked the movie, but I felt it was inconsistent in tone. One minute it tries to be a serious disaster drama, the next it's all silly fanservice. Also, the Nevada scene elicited a huge facepalm from me. You're telling me the US military didn't notice something blowing a huge gaping hole in the mountain housing their largest nuclear waste storage facility?...
june gloom on 18/5/2014 at 11:55
Considering the history of how we've dealt with nuclear materials in this country that's not really that much of a stretch...
nicked on 18/5/2014 at 13:52
Just got back from seeing this. Definitely a cinema film. The big monster moments would not be as good on a TV I reckon.
And I really can't see all the fuss about it being boring. Yes it takes a long time to get to monster fighting, but that's generally how it goes in well-written monster stories - take the time to build up the human characters so that the later horror and devastation is that much more relatable and effective. Now that does depend on the film engaging the audience with the human characters, so your results will vary based on how much you end up caring about them, but when the monster fighting does arrive, there's plenty of it - it's not like it's relegated to the last five minutes.
I thought it did a good, if not perfect, job in regard to building characters. There were several times when I was expecting a cliche, but the script was better than that - for example, the military commander guy who looked all set to fall into the "maniac warmonger who won't listen to reason" stereotype (a la Avatar), but actually just calmly executed a fairly reasonable-sounding plan, while still allowing room for undercurrents of debate on nuclear weapons.
Ideally I would have liked a heavier emphasis on the scientists, and less of Captain McAmerica and his family, but the main character certainly did his job as audience-surrogate well enough.
Not perfect, but not the trainwreck some had led me to believe.
Also, there was a terrarium in the ruined house at the start with a label on it saying Mothra, tee hee!
SubJeff on 18/5/2014 at 23:24
Quote Posted by Ostriig
As for Godzilla's motives, what motives? Like,
balance, man.
Nature and shit..
He wants to kill the things and then go back to sleep.
Scots Taffer on 19/5/2014 at 05:46
I feel much the same on the mornings when I'm nursing a hangover.
I'm just not sure how anyone could find much to like here. Very surprised at Fafhrd and Muz being tolerant to this movie's horrible, clichéd, cardboard cut-out protagonists and the sheer waste of talent in Wantanabe playing Man Who Screws Up Face And Provides Exposition, Cranston playing the beyond-overbaked grieving-husband fused with obsessed-scientist and crackpot-conspiracy-theorist, Binoche showing up long enough to get killed... only for us to get lumbered with US Marine Biglunk McWoodenActing and his (of course) nurse wife (a lovely Olsen who does well with what little she has).
If the primary drawcard is simply to watch Monsters Knock Shit Down, The Sexy CGI Edition, then I wish critics would stop saying how this movie "nails the human element" as it's massively misleading.
This isn't much better than your usual Bay or Emmerich vehicle IMO.
Muzman on 19/5/2014 at 07:19
I didn't find the characters that way at all really. Yeah the scientists get sidelined after a certain point, which is unfortunate. But I dunno. I didn't really spend any time imagining all the ways these characters ought to have been portrayed. They struck me as elegantly 'less is more' for the most part. Which is why you put good actors in the roles and get a lot of life out of a small part.
Johnson didn't strike me as wooden, but stoic and reserved, which is a performance. Maybe if Quicksilver is also stoic and reserved I'll have to settle for good casting. I dunno. This stuff about Cranston yelling all the time; well,...he doesn't. I particularly liked the look Watanabe and Strathairn share looking at the watch too. That sort of thing really sums up the tone.
Where other films of late (read, the last ..going on for 20 years now) flood you with big broad characterisations, loads and loads of declamatory dialogue, endless conflicts and mini dramas, shouting galore, a peppering or silly jokes, just in case you get bored along the way. This film says nup to all of it. You're either going along with its crazy premise or you're not. It's understated and makes a lot of surprising choices, not least of all because they actually worked. I thought anyway.
Muzman on 19/5/2014 at 10:58
Yeah but Angry Joe likes Man of Steel.
