and by King, I do not mean Kong. Saw the latest G v K movie just now – and here’s my review – (major spoilers ahead, so you have been warned).

So it was inevitable, by the end of the last movie (and if for no other reason that he has ‘king’ in his name) – it was Kong’s fate to fight Godzilla. Last time they fought (in the 60s), it was a draw. This time, it was largely the same outcome, but a lot more plot challenges along the way.

Without boring the reader too much, there are, simply stated, too many plot elements stolen from other movies, monster or otherwise, recent or old. I’ll simply name a few and you can figure out where you think they showed up in this movie: 2001 Stargate Sequence; Crazy Godzilla watchers tearing around in a van; Human-kaiju interface being used for ‘new’ mechas; little kids being used as a ‘friend’ for the kaiju; – i’m sure I saw more but simply can’t remember them all.  And you may spot some of your own?

There are other silly mistakes (the old-school Transformers problem of scale depending on scene and camera shot comes to mind in several places, just like it did in Cloverfield).  One unexpected amusing part – when the ‘evil Richard Branson‘ (effectively a Bond villain that thinks he’s saving the planet while stroking his own immense ego, immensely) gets killed by his own creation *just* as he starts “monologuing” – thereby saving us from having to hear it – but then a central character complains he ‘wanted to hear the speech’? Too funny.

I also liked that while it’s arguably partially stolen from Godzilla 2000 (specifically, the Godzilla Prediction Network in that movie) – the daughter of the GZ scientist from the previous movie (who is in this one too but only gets 2-3 token scenes this time around) is running around with a computer geek and connects up with another crazy kaiju conspiracy theorist who has a podcast they both follow. Arguably the best parts of the ‘human’ plot are with them, hands down.  The little girl who is Kong’s “muse” (akin to the tiny Japanese fairies in all the classic Mothra movies but not near as corny) is good, but her reactions are obviously meant to make you root for Kong (and that’s just wrong, of course 🙂 )

This makes for an interesting side plot/comment – in monster movies, one of the easiest traps to fall into plotwise is to have too much human interest plot and NOT ENOUGH MONSTERS! I would argue that the first of the GZ remakes balances this nicely, this movie somewhat goes slightly too much in the wrong direction (meaning more monsters, please). There have been unique takes on this angle though, e.g. Cloverfield is all about the disaster effect on the humans, and the monsters are the cause, but arguably not otherwise the center of the plot, really.

But a key point – does it deliver on the actual monster battles? Arguably the most important of any ‘monster’ movie – By and large, yes. There really weren’t enough of them, but for the most part, we get to see a lot of taxpayer-funded military hardware going to Davy Jones’ Locker, and a lot of future Hong Kong real estate developers are going to be pretty rich about 20 years from now, to be sure. I’ve never understood why in monster (or superhero) movies all the crowds seem (still) to be ‘hiding’ in skyscrapers when the all the fighting starts? I guess it makes for interesting camera work and effects? At least the crowds in Cloverfield actually seem to be trying to GET AWAY, excepting the roof rescue near the end of the movie.

So we get to see both GZ and Kong get in their hits, although the big ‘e-ax’ Kong wields is a bad version of Excalibur meets Harry Potter’s wand in the end with a little bit of Krull thrown in – although having it around pays off when the ‘real’ villain shows up in the end, courtesy of Evil Richard Branson (see villain snark above). And as per usual in these movies, apparently these megacorps have so much money as to build giant underground, magnetic tunnel transport systems and THEN be able to afford building a mecha-Gz only to know it doesn’t have enough power to actually DO anything for longer than a few minutes? Seems like bad decisionmaking to me, but hey, I’m no CEO. 🙂

In the end, as with all the non-Toho Gz movies of late (and their latest, Shin Godzilla, although it’s arguably closer to the 70s one) – the original, classic 70s ‘roar‘ of Gz is still left out of these movies, and that’s arguably the biggest plot flaw of all, besides no Ken Watanabe (and he is missed!). Of the three recent Godzilla movies, the first one (directed by Gareth Edwards) is still the best. The second one arguably has some of the best ridiculous monster battles (and still has Ken Watanabe), but is otherwise simply a set up for this movie, really.

Bash on, Titans – you make too much box office to stay out of the frame for long – I’m sure someone will make another – maybe Gz will fight a Jaeger or one of the Avengers or something – they did it several times with both Predator and Alien, after all :).

oh, Gojira, my muse….

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I think this episode was an improvement over the last one – some good unexpected stuff happening, they broaden the story to not just be about ‘the search for Spock’ – although there’s more than a bit about that, too – and some good action too….they are pushing the envelope a bit (not completely in a good way) with the Section 31 stuff, but i’ll remain in check on that one for now…

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The King is back, all hail the King.

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Tragic – and unexpected?!

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Earlier this week, kerewin and I checked out A Wrinkle in Time. I had wanted to see this, then when it came out and the reviews weren’t good, I was a bit sad, but still wanted to see it anyway.

Because to me, the original book is very much of my time (came out in the early 60’s, I was born in the late 60’s), it’s not a very conventional book by any means (besides being sci-fi to begin with) and I’ve always considered it one of my key early books that got me really interested in the genre generally.

I think for me the key appeal of the story is that it takes fairly heavy subject matter (the never-ending struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, tough social situations and family struggles) and doesn’t talk down to the reader, despite being a kid’s book in the end. Even re-reading it a couple years ago on a whim, it’s still a good (if now much quicker) read, has respect for its characters and tells a good story – the key criteria above all.

So it’s clear why Hollywood would have a problem making a movie based on this story, and my initial take on the movie is that they made a decent try at it. I liked the new approach of an African-American girl in L.A. – her younger brother is possibly even *more* precocious than the Charles Wallace of the book (who was pretty far along on his own), and the star power of Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine and Zach Galifinakis really doesn’t get in the way in the end, BUT….

1) they give short shrift to the main plot – they focus too long on Meg’s school problems and not long enough on the other aspects once they tesser to Uriel, Camazotz, finding Chris Pine (the dad) and then back – happens way too quickly and without enough dialog, at minimum.

2) they completely skip the whole Ixchel sequence (when they tesser out originally with their father and Meg is damaged by IT in doing so, and then she has to go back in, all alone, to rescue Charles Wallace). This is a critical part of the book that shows Meg at her most vulnerable, then launches her back into chaos (Camazotz again) and she learns an important lesson about herself and her inner strength. Because the movie skips this entire sequence, we go from an abortive ‘father rescue’ right to rescuing Charles Wallace – more plot thinning, as it were.

3) there are too many ‘musical segue’ sequences that play like a music video interlude between dramatic scenes. There are at least three and they really just waste screen time that could have been devoted to plot or character dialog…

4) Camazotz far more resembles ‘CGI Dagobah’ than the scary planet depicted in the book. While they start with the kids bouncing the ball in the neighborhood, they quickly blow that off and all of a sudden we have already rescued Chris Pine? Again, far too quickly and thins out the plot yet again.

5) And there is no ‘IT’ in this movie?! Arguably the scariest part of the book in many ways, at best, IT is depicted through a dark, hardly speaking voice while Meg and Charles Wallace scramble around in what looks like a modern version of Yoda’s summer home – Just not scary? And the ‘evil’ is largely depicted as Charles Wallace yelling at or scolding Meg. While it’s possible that the ‘disembodied oversized brain’ of IT in the book may not work cinematically these days – it’s still better than a not-scary root forest with some weird voice in the background? Plus, they keep calling IT ‘The IT’ – as if IT is a piece of evil furniture? Doesn’t work.

6) I saw part of an earlier 2003 adaptation of the book, most namely the first IT sequence – and while there they left out the ‘brain’ too – it is much creepier and weird, arguably truer to the book. I may now need to check out this earlier film just to see the differences.

Anyway, mixed bag, ultimately disappointing but I give them props for trying….

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