Holy shit!

 

Problem is that's not something the average movie-goer would piece together.

Spoiler

Us as Godzilla fans, after Mecha-Ghidorah and Kiryu from the Heisei and Millennium eras, know exactly what's going on. But the average Joe who only has vague memories of the KOTM after-credits scene won't immediately suspect that Mechagodzilla is Ghidorah's mind taking over the robot.

 

True to a point, but at the same time the average movie-goer isn't going to see this movie. Mainly Godzilla/Kong fans will actively seek this out.

 

Yeah I know, I've seen Anaheim Electronics' business records but this isn't one of those cases.

It was all about the callback Easter Eggs and Sequel Bait which this movie delivered a portion of and saving the rest in a bag of tricks should Toho give the greenlight for the next movie.

 

You can barely even notice it the first time

 

Man.

Man oh man.

This was fun.

This was a lot of fun.

The shots in this film, holy damn. Godzilla gazing out from a sea of flames. Kong's wonderful emotional capacity and how he reacts to new surroundings. The intensity and clarity of their battles.

There's a lot I can say and muse about this movie. But right now, I just wanna lean back and say, with satisfaction, that I really and truly adored it.

 

Um- Marvel Movies are all humans. Even aliens are humans.

These movies have giant monsters. Quite the difference.

What specifically?[/QUOTE]

 

Hell yes!

 

Godzilla is so happy. He's so happy. I'm happy too.

 

Apparently a lot of human scenes were cut from the movie because of KOTM's reception and I'm not surprised at all.

 

Is it just me or is Godzilla doing his impression of the Joker? I bet it's just me as usual.

 

That's not the only film in the franchise though. And really only like 3 Toho films have tried to evoke the same tone as this one. Most of them are like the movies GvK homaged.

Spoiler

Bernie surmises that they have another skull in the Mecha-G; Ghidorah was such a freak of nature that his brains coordinated via telepathy, which apparently would have been faster than the response time of neurons traveling down one neck and up the other. This sort of "mental wifi connection" is what connects the pilot's seat to Mechagodzilla. Which means that thing he sits under might actually be Ghidorah's dissected brain.

There were four skulls in total. Ghidorah came out of the ice with three. Godzilla bit off the left head (Kevin) in Mexico, which Jonah took at the end of KotM. Then Ghidorah grows the left head back. When Godzilla uses his big explosion at the end, we never see what becomes of the other two heads (the movie leads you to believe Ghidora's body is vaporized) but the center head is eaten by Godzilla. So if Apex had a pair of heads, it seems likely that they took the ones left over in Boston. Perhaps Legendary became confident enough in a new contract getting inked that they pushed Jonah back to the next movie.

Not for nothing, Kevin is the head that had the most exposure to the Oxygen Destroyer...

Also not for nothing, Mechagodzilla was partially controlled by a satellite uplink. Which means that if they wanted, they could say that his brain is still up there. In case, say, Apex built a second Mech for redundancy...

 

About that...

Spoiler

Kevin got bit off, but still survived the Oxygen Destroyer with Center and Righty.

Center was a final snack, but Righty and Kevin Jr:


...vaporized. though technically so is Center if Godzilla wasn't eating him, but catching the last piece before it could regenerate.

 

That's too bad, because it goes a long way to explain why Ren is even in this movie or in the role he played, Shun Oguri feels wasted in that role lol.

 

I could probably talk about this movie all day but in brief: it's the lizard-brain spectacle (pun intended) I had hoped for. Just a ton of fun with cool ideas, great visuals, and some of the honest-to-god best kaiju action... maybe ever? The final 30 minutes are something else. There's plenty of dumb shit in there and it probably didn't need such an expansive human cast (Skarsgard in particular felt superfluous) but it was coherent and enjoyable throughout. This movie completely made up for the disappointment I felt with KotM.

Some miscellaneous spoilers:

Spoiler

Kong sticking the axe in Godzilla's mouth was a fun nod to 1962. If only we saw Kong accidentally danger roll into a giant boulder.

I was pretty shocked that Godzilla won given that Kong is clearly the underdog, and by proxy the hero of this movie. Granted, I was glad to see Big G take the W after seeing him lose in the 1962 film (kinda) and believing that he 'should' have won ever since my early childhood, but that was still pretty brutal. I almost felt bad for rooting for Godzilla when he effectively mauled Kong, that was effing vicious.

Of course, the real real winner was friendship, and seeing the two big guys ultimately team up was so satisfying. Godzilla charging up the axe so Kong could Sub-Zero the shit out of Mechagodzilla? Fantastic. Speaking of, what an awesome take on Mechagodzilla; loved the weaponry, loved the sound design, loved the way he looked. There was definitely some Kiryu inspiration with Ghidorah's consciousness taking over, and it totally worked as a classic, albeit predictable, "arrogance of man" moment when he turns on Simmons.

The Hollow Earth was a super cool environment and I hope we see more of it if the Monsterverse continues. Maybe Megalon is chilling down there or something, I dunno.

Kind of a shame that they didn't do anything with Ren Serizawa. There was potential there for an interesting story about his relationship with his father, but he's ultimately just a henchman who could have been anyone. I don't even think they acknowledged his relationship with Ishiro in the movie. Maybe that was cut in editing?

Wingard really loves to blindside you with his needle drops, huh? Can't say I ever expected to watch a kaiju movie that ends to "The Air That I Breathe."

 

Loved it, can't wait for the 4k release.

 

Saw in an actual movie theater and was suitably entertained

Does anyone else think Kong should have

Spoiler

signed 'coward' as godzilla was departing?

it would have been a big laugh and a face-saving kind of thing Kong might do as a sort of middle-finger to the King...

still was worried they were setting up Kong for a underdog comeback victory but I knew they would team-up somehow and allow the loser to bow out gracefully

Godzilla was definitely playing the antagonistic villain role while we were following Kong on his hero's journey, so I hoped they weren't setting up Godzilla for big upset (even though we all know there's no way Godzilla should lose to Kong I could see that sort of mindless force of nature vs thinking/problem-solving conflict being set up)

could have done without the continuation of the kid from the last film...pretty much the whole human storyline last time was the cringiest dumbest thing[ in any Godzilla film.../SPOILER]

 

Wow, I guess I'm the only one here who prefers Kong to Godzilla.

Spoiler

And as such, I feel a bit disappointed by this movie. If you're going to play Godzilla as the antagonistic asshole, seeking out Kong just to defeat him and Kong needing protection by the humans, Kong should've had more of a victory than that. If you aren't specifically a Godzilla fan, this kind of feels like weak storytelling with little payoff. It should have concluded with Godzilla leaving Kong alone out of respect for his ferocity and determination, not because he's willing to drop the axe and "know his place" after a defeat.

 

Everybody gangsta until

Spoiler

Godzilla starts speeding towards you on all. Fucking. Fours, like a giant crocodile hell bent on murdering you. Huge props to the mighty Kong for doing as good as he could have in that situation, but man, literally without the axe powered up, he had absolutely nothing to challenge Godzilla with. And, once the latter decided that enough was enough, let’s chill on the atomic breath and go in for the kill, he ended that fight quickly and decisively. I even think had Godzilla applied a bit more pressure, he would’ve done the same to Kong’s chest as he did to Ghidorah’s. But, with Kong essentially telling him to fuck off, he surprisingly earned Godzilla’s respect, and was spared... Even though he still... Died, lol.

I guess Godzilla wasn’t expecting what was basically this kid to shout back at him, and he probably allowed Kong to remain outside of the traditional hierarchy where he doesn’t have to bow, and they now have each other’s mutual respect and understanding.


That being said... Godzilla still got his own ass molly whopped by Ghidorah controlled MG. Ghidorah was having waaaaay too much fun surfboarding him across Hong Kong .

 

SUCCESS!!! WB has released the claim on my Skull Island review, so here is the uncut version without the scan lines:

[/QUOTE]

You know what I mean though.