Usually I will eat up giant monster movie slop, no matter how bad. You’re talking to someone who adores even the badly dubbed English version of Godzilla vs The Smog Monster (Hedora).
I wasn’t too impressed with 2014s American Godzilla, but it got a pass from me for at least trying to understand the anti-nuclear message. Hated the pro-US military stuff tho.
But holy shit, Godzilla KoTM was hot garbage. Which is surprising because it had all the ingredients to be great, it had Ghidorah, Rodan and Mothra, all with fantastic redesigns. However the story was just bad, not the fun kind of bad, bad to the point that was hard to sit through.
Never before have I seen the idea of Godzilla so missunderstood.
Godzilla as a concept is famous for being an allegory of nuclear weapons and a warning that using destructive technology can have unforseen repercussions. When Godzilla is the bad guy, he’s a stand in for nature’s wrath at man for daring to use something as perverse as nukes. When he’s the good guy, it’s usually to protect the Earth from anything from aliens to pollution.
In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, they make ecoterrorists the bad guys and a nuke saves the day. I’m not even joking. They nuke Godzilla to revive him so he can protect them from King Ghidorah. Oh, and the only Japanese character sacrifices himself to the nuke to make it happen. It’s not saying anything important like an allegory Godzilla movie, nor is it goofy and fun enough to be a cheesy slop monster fight movie.
Thank god for Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One.
So yeah, I’ve never watched Godzilla vs Kong or the newest one. Are they any good? They look pretty bad, but I want to know if I’m missing out on good slop.
I don’t expect much about plots in monster movies so as long as it’s not too bad. King of the Monsters is shit when it comes to fight scenes, 3-5s of monter fight, then a human scene cuts in. It’s super annoying for rewatchs.
Godzilla vs Kong is more of a Kong movie ( even more in the sequel). Fight scene is ok, less human interruptions.
The new sequel though, they dumped down the plot too much. There are more fight scenes but way less qualities. Yeah, when audiences feedback about more monster scenes, clearly they want to lower qualities for more quantities.
Godzilla X Kong was just dumb cyborgmonkeypunching fun: “he hurt his arm, luckily we made a punch-gooder-arm and it’s right here, like a hundred metres away”.
And well, I enjoyed the impersonal force of nature that Godzilla was when responding to threats - straight line to target, not even noticing the cities in the way.