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Godzilla 14, on a subtextual level, features Cranston's character dying and being 'reborn' as a giant, radioactive father that hates families. Kong doesn't have that metaphor on a broader level, but there was one neat cut I liked along the same lines - after the dude with the grenades tries to blow up the Big One and it just hits him away, causing an explosion, Kong reappears from the same side of the screen with a dislodged rock in his hands.
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Mar 22, 2017 07:02
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CelticPredator posted:Ford was good nice dude. I liked him. I like Ford as well. He's a well meaning schmuck.
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Mar 22, 2017 14:15
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Yeah, I thought AJT was great and did a good job.
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Mar 22, 2017 14:21
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Vintersorg posted:Yeah, I thought AJT was great and did a good job. He doesn't have the effortless cool factor that a typical action hero might have, but in Godzilla he has an air of competence that really goes a long way towards legitimizing his character. For all the insane poo poo he was doing throughout the movie, he always felt kinda like a real soldier to me. I've met a lot of military guys who have that same quiet confidence.
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Mar 22, 2017 14:31
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Basebf555 posted:I think it was a fine performance, but the problem was there wasn't a Jackson or Reilly to balance him out. Cranston was maybe going to fill that role but then got taken out too early in the story. I really believe they would change that if they could go back and do it again, having Cranston's manic quality to balance out Taylor-Johnson would have helped a lot. The part with the kid on the monorail is when he won me over. I never understood the "boring" protag thing. He just discovered that monsters are real, his dad is dead, and his wife and child are in a city that's going to be nuked and his response is to throw himself into his work and do everything he can to help. I guess people expected him to pull a Hudson but he kept it together.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:30
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I like Ford as well. He's a well meaning schmuck. Yeah,I didn't mind him. Sure, I wish he had less screentime,but he's not Hayden Christensen bad. Although the whole "dude with barely any EOD training can defuse a NUCLEAR loving BOMB" thing did kinda annoy me.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:38
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It's actually not really hard to defuse a nuclear bomb as long as you don't care about radiation sickness.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:43
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VolticSurge posted:Yeah,I didn't mind him. Sure, I wish he had less screentime,but he's not Hayden Christensen bad. Although the whole "dude with barely any EOD training can defuse a NUCLEAR loving BOMB" thing did kinda annoy me. I could definitely be remembering this wrong but wasn't his whole thing that he specialized in EOD or had some sort of extensive knowledge about the particular bomb they were using?
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Mar 22, 2017 23:48
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I actually thought he was a ordinance mechanic not a EOD.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:53
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Basebf555 posted:I could definitely be remembering this wrong but wasn't his whole thing that he specialized in EOD or had some sort of extensive knowledge about the particular bomb they were using? It was an analog vs. digital thing, yeah.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:55
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Hollismason posted:It's actually not really hard to defuse a nuclear bomb as long as you don't care about radiation sickness. They aren't designed to be hard to "defuse" (there are no fuses) because they aren't planted in a location and left to explode under certain conditions. Also the equipment is as I understand it so delicate you can generally render them inoperable by just banging on poo poo with a hammer
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Mar 23, 2017 00:39
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Basebf555 posted:I could definitely be remembering this wrong but wasn't his whole thing that he specialized in EOD or had some sort of extensive knowledge about the particular bomb they were using? It's the second: Ford was one of the few people specifically trained in how to use this uniquely monster-proof analog bomb. After all the others were killed, he was the only one who could quickly disarm it. Also, despite all this, he still failed to disarm the bomb at the end.
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Mar 23, 2017 00:59
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Persistence even when failure is guaranteed is one of the cool motifs in G14.
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Mar 23, 2017 01:54
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I like Ford as well. He's a well meaning schmuck. How much does it own that the casually racist Bryan Cranston character named his kid Ford while living as an American expat in Japan in the 90's
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Mar 23, 2017 02:09
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Never been so intimidated by the sound of a camera flash, hoo-boy.
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Mar 23, 2017 09:58
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Sustained shock, quiet withdrawal into oneself and a determination to do whatever one can to help others is a completely feasible reaction to discovering that something like Godzilla exists. Ford was forced to make a massive existential adjustment at the same time as he was reacting to a physical real world threat, it's totally understandable that he didn't act like a typical wisecracking action hero. On the other hand I didn't think that was an interesting or entertaining directorial choice for a focal character. 
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Mar 23, 2017 14:12
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:On the other hand I didn't think that was an interesting or entertaining directorial choice for a focal character. That's why I think you need a John C. Reilly type in there to cover that part of things. Sure, ideally every action hero would be played by someone like Bruce Willis who can make all the wise-cracks and still come off as deadly serious in the proper moments, but there are very few actors who can pull that off. I think force-feeding stupid one liners to someone like Taylor-Johnson would have been a mistake and probably made things even worse.
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Mar 23, 2017 14:16
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Godzilla (2014) did not need someone undercutting the awe and majesty of the creatures, or the enormity of the destruction, with a wisecrack. That sort of thing relieves tension, and that wisely didn't let that happen until the very end, when all of it comes roaring out of Godzilla's throat.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:40
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poptart_fairy posted:Never been so intimidated by the sound of a camera flash, hoo-boy. I feel like there's a connection between that and the line about a camera being more dangerous than a gun.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:12
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wdarkk posted:I feel like there's a connection between that and the line about a camera being more dangerous than a gun. It's actually the throughline of the entire film: the silent conflict between Goodman's character, who is driven to use his various cameras and sensors in an effort to expose Kong to the world, and Larson who quietly - but significantly - makes the decision to never publish her photos. (A key detail at the end: when Larson views an entire epic battle through her viewfinder, she can't bring herself to actually press the button...) This is precisely why Goodman's camera is ultimately consumed and made a part of the reptilian 'war machine.' The keyword is empathy; the constant focus on Kong's emotive eyes are a contrast to the subhuman Crawlers, that are 'beyond empathy': "When the Jaws die, nobody cry. When my Kong die, everybody cry. Everybody love my Kong: kids, women, intellectuals, all love my Kong." -Dino DeLaurientis "Y'know, the thing about a shark: he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes." -Quint This, again, predicts the future conflict between Kong and Godzilla. Traumatized Goodman is a precursor to Brian Cranston's character in Godzilla 2014 - and therefore a precursor to Godzilla himself. He stands for the scientific drive, without empathy, the violent disruption of the island's 'natural balance', the repressed truth straining to come to the surface.... Goodman only fails, perhaps, because he is still too human. Despite being the 'mad scientist' character, he still feels bad when he sees Kong's hand.
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Mar 24, 2017 20:18
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Sir Kodiak posted:Godzilla (2014) did not need someone undercutting the awe and majesty of the creatures, or the enormity of the destruction, with a wisecrack. That sort of thing relieves tension, and that wisely didn't let that happen until the very end, when all of it comes roaring out of Godzilla's throat. The skill is in inserting some tension relief without undercutting any of the awe and majesty. That's why you hire a John C. Reilly, because he can do that and also portray a well-rounded character at the same time.
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Mar 24, 2017 20:26
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Basebf555 posted:The skill is in inserting some tension relief without undercutting any of the awe and majesty. That's why you hire a John C. Reilly, because he can do that and also portray a well-rounded character at the same time. If you came out of Skull Island with the same sort of awe for Kong that you did for Godzilla in Godzilla, I guess it worked for you, but it didn't for me. Not that that was necessarily what Skull Island was going for, but it not going for that would be why it would make sense to include the John C. Reilly character.
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Mar 24, 2017 20:30
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Sir Kodiak posted:what Skull Island was going for Skull Island is an overtly farcical film - a plague of fantasies that, according to its own logic, should not be viewed by anyone. It doesn't need a 'New York' sequence because it's already the exploitation movie Carl Denham tried to make. That's why good critic Armond White unfortunately dismisses Kong as bread-and-circus spectacle, while bad critic Walter Chaw predictably derides it as 'pornographic'. But Kong is a slippery film that correctly points out that the only Vietnam War Kaiju (before now) was Doctor Manhattan - and that the best we got after that were, very much post-Vietnam, the Alien Queen and The Host. (The Skullcrawlers are a blatant reference to/ripoff of the latter, which was fought with 'Agent Yellow'.) The basic point of the film is less that the war never ended and more that it ended without resolution - endlessly danced around in art films, blockbusters and b-trash alike because no-one could conceive of a proper solution. There's unspoken but vital points about satellite communication as the birth of 'the global village', and Vietnam as the first televised war, that pin it as the point where the world just ended and alternatives became impossible. The years between the end of Vietnam and Godzilla's emergence in 'the present day' are glossed over altogether, irrelevant. So, in the meantime, the film uses its status as pure fantasy to toy around with various strategies, both their appeal and the failure: the power of empathy, camouflage as a survival strategy, etc.
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Mar 25, 2017 15:26
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I liked the bit where a giant monkey smashed a helicopter.
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Mar 25, 2017 16:28
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Personally I thought this movie was shallow. It uses plenty of ideas but doesn't explore any of them. The Vietnam stuff came across as cheap set dressing that occasionally veered into bad taste. (It's a spider that punji sticks you! Like Vietnam! Get it?) The visual references, from Apocalypse Now to Platoon to Evangelion, were all completely obvious and without any subtlety. The Nixon bobblehead was a cool shot, but in the context of the rest of the movie constantly screaming "This is the 70s!!!" at you it just becomes one more thing. The music did remind me of Suicide Squad. There's a lot of repetitive filler that follows these two formats: 1. Montage of people having a good time set to popular 70s music 2. Kong finds someone > he considers squishing them but does not > the person is clearly in awe but does not bring it up to anyone ever again I think a reduction of characters could have improved it immensely. The Sam Jackson character was great, and I ended up wanting him to succeed because he was the only one who showed any real agency. I think a full Moby Dick story could have carried the movie by itself and been amazing. The John C Reilly character was also interesting but a little too diffuse or busy; he has a Japanese enemy-turned-friend subplot that I wanted to happen onscreen, he has a crazed white man gone native subplot, and he has a reunite with his family subplot, all the while being the exposition and comic relief for the thinly sketched other characters. Again, if the movie were just about him, he could have carried it. A Reilly vs. Jackson paralleling Kong vs. Monsters could have also been cool. But there was no reason to make Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson the leads. I'm generally pretty right wing but even I thought that the portrayal of the natives was problematic - they're noble savages (no crime or property! they're past that) that barely move and aren't even allowed to speak, turning them almost into literal objects. They're scenery and nothing more. The end fight and the burial ground fight were both cool though, and I enjoyed the giant monsters when they appeared. The bugs and dinosaurs were my favorite parts of 2005 Kong and I expected a little bit more than we got in this one. I was disappointed that there weren't actual giant ants 
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Mar 27, 2017 01:38
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Soggy Cereal posted:Personally I thought this movie was shallow. It uses plenty of ideas but doesn't explore any of them. The Vietnam stuff came across as cheap set dressing that occasionally veered into bad taste. (It's a spider that punji sticks you! Like Vietnam! Get it?) The visual references, from Apocalypse Now to Platoon to Evangelion, were all completely obvious and without any subtlety. The Nixon bobblehead was a cool shot, but in the context of the rest of the movie constantly screaming "This is the 70s!!!" at you it just becomes one more thing. The music did remind me of Suicide Squad. There's a lot of repetitive filler that follows these two formats: What kind of normal person would find an Evangelion reference obvious?
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Mar 27, 2017 02:01
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They talked about this and the original King Kong on the most recent episodes of The Next Picture Show podcast that's run by old Dissolve and AV Club editors when those sites existed and were good, respectively. None of them really liked this movie, though. I agreed with most of their takes and it was cool hearing them talk about connections with the original that I wouldn't have made on my own. They mentioned the Skullcrawlers were like the lizard monsters from the original, like someone earlier in the thread pointed out. Might be worth a listen.
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Mar 27, 2017 02:10
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There's been a bunch of films where characters are thrown into a lost/alien world only to later discover a human survivor who has been living there for ages who becomes their guide - Laurence Fishburne in Predators, Eric the lost kid in Jurassic Park 3 and now JCR in Kong. I'm sure there's more, I just can't think of them off the top of my head right now. Soggy Cereal posted:I think a reduction of characters could have improved it immensely. The Sam Jackson character was great, and I ended up wanting him to succeed because he was the only one who showed any real agency. I think a full Moby Dick story could have carried the movie by itself and been amazing. Merging the two characters and making a movie about a man's 30 year war against a 100 foot tall ape using makeshift boobytraps made out of old WW2 fighter plane parts would have been amazing. Also I swear one of the trailers had a shot of Gunpei (the Japanese fighter pilot) that I didn't see in the film so maybe they did shoot extra scenes but they got left on the editing room floor? I went back and watched a bunch of the trailers but couldn't find the shot I remember, it might have been in a TV spot.
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Mar 27, 2017 04:44
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I loved that this made it into the movie- that dorky-rear end grin she has is such a nice touch.
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Mar 27, 2017 05:15
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So the abandoned ship the tribals turned into a shrine is a blatant callback to the 33 film, right? John C Reilly claimed it washed up about a decade before he did. Does this imply that by killing Kong when he was small the original film's characters doomed their world to death by Skullcrawler?
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Mar 27, 2017 07:48
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Yeah. (something something the skullcrawlers are capitalism) That's also the reasoning behind the homage where Kong gets caught in the ship's chains.
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Mar 27, 2017 08:00
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Maxwell Lord posted:I loved that this made it into the movie- that dorky-rear end grin she has is such a nice touch. Agreed, it's a pretty and natural shot
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Mar 27, 2017 16:24
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I thought this was neat once I realized it was literally a film about people stumbling across God Island, it's like a jingoistic, violent Tarkovsky film. It could've been more brutal and surreal, though, they pulled a lot of punches but that should make it appealing for the church crowd, if they grok to the biblical aspects. Also, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was a lovely protagonist but Tom Hiddleston wasn't much better (co-protagonist, at best, though).
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Mar 30, 2017 01:01
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Joseph-Gordon Levitt was the first choice for Ford in G'14. Gareth Edwards said they needed someone who could "carry the role", with natural, interesting charisma and screen presence I guess. You can't help but wonder if Levitt turned down a (presumably) big sum of money because he felt he couldn't do much with the part that was written. On the flip side of things, where there is a written part that has a decent amount of material, you can still be stuck with boring by casting a boring actor. Imagine if someone like Sam Worthington played Samuel L. Jackson's character. Boring! Mokelumne Trekka fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 02:00
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Aaron Taylor-Johnson is like a big peeled potato in Godzilla, it's horrible.
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Mar 30, 2017 02:02
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I feel like it would'e been more interesting if they'd made him a half-Japanese character.
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Mar 30, 2017 10:24
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I left before after credit scene. Anyone have a link?
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Mar 30, 2017 22:59
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poly and open-minded posted:I left before after credit scene. Anyone have a link? I stayed and it's really not worth getting excited/peeved about. It's cave paintings of Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah.
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Mar 30, 2017 23:14
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It's cute how it starts with voiceover on a black screen that says "are you having fun in there, sitting in the dark?"
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Mar 30, 2017 23:47
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Magic Hate Ball posted:It's cute how it starts with voiceover on a black screen that says "are you having fun in there, sitting in the dark?" I wish. Theatre staff here all turn the lights on pretty early into the credits and wait there with their garbage bags for the stragglers to leave.
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Mar 31, 2017 00:04
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