GODZILLA STOMPS ON MAY 16, 2014

I don't know how to feel about this.  I enjoy monster movies as much as the next guy but do we need Godzilla?  Can't we cook up a new monster that doesn't look like 5 beasts tossed into a blender (Cloverfield)?  I dunno, maybe I'll like it better than the first Matthew Broderick Godzilla also known as "Godzilla Bueller's Day Off"

Yes. We. Need. Godzilla.

Now more than ever.

Am I the only one highly sceptical about Warner Bros. will return the character ... with a gritty, realistic actioner? Especially with that director?

Monsters was interesting, but it focussed on humble human relationship issues with the monsters as animalistic side characters. You could have cut every scene showing a monster and it'd still be a working movie.

All in this sounds like a Cloverfield approach, with the creature raging in the background and some humans seeing him now and then. Is it asked too much to have something like Emmerich's 2012 with Godzilla having a specific personality and being a major, highly entertaining catastrophe causing absurd levels of destruction, then later on fighting a colossal enemy only he can take out?

This is how this news makes me feel.

Hopefully this reboot will give me the fun of a Godzilla movie with top notch special effects that the Tri Star Godzilla didn't. As a life long Godzilla fan, I found that movie to big a bigger let down then The Phantom Menace.

That press release makes me very anxious.  The only name associated with the film that doesn't worry me is Banno, and I think he's only an EP due to some rights issues.

This was never going to come out in 2013.  Given that 2014 will be the Big G's 60th anniversary, that year has always made the most sense for this, especially since Toho is at least somewhat involved.  Giving it a May date gives me some confidence as well.

I can't see in my minds eye how they are going to redesign the classic godzilla to not be cool today.  A brain fart I guess...  I hope they sort it out. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrBananaGrabber 

That press release makes me very anxious.  The only name associated with the film that doesn't worry me is Banno, and I think he's only an EP due to some rights issues.

Gareth Edwards makes you nervous? As opposed to any number of other hack directors they could've hired for this?

I'm undecided on Edwards, but I didn't think Monsters was particularly good.

Edwards seems like a bright guy, but I am curious as to why he was the guy they went with. I would NOT want a "Godzilla" movie anything like "Monsters" and I doubt anyone else would either. And I think there's something fundamentally unimaginative about hiring a guy who made a movie called "Monsters" to direct "Godzilla."

Lots of reasons that I can see. He has an affinity for giant monsters fucking shit up. He can work within a budget. He knows that a strong human interest in amongst the carnage is essential for a Westernized kaiju film to work. And he may well have had a killer pitch. MONSTERS - which I love, although I now feel I'm in the minority on that - is small, but that feels more like a product of the film's limitations than a mission statement on behalf of the director. I'm eager to see what he can do with this property and a larger budget.
 

I dunno, I feel like "Monsters" was made by a guy who likes monsters, but did everything he could to obscure them. I mean, scenes like the last moments in Monsters, when the creature takes over the gas station feel like a guy who gets it. If we get that guy, awesome! But there's so much more in the movie of people longingly looking at photos of dead loved ones, erecting monuments, fighting generic bueracracy, and (unconvincingly*) falling in love. Some of that is budget restraints, and some of that feels like Edwards apologizing for the film's genre leanings. I want a Godzilla movie. I don't want just another "realistic" genre film that also happens to have Godzilla in it.

Or better yet, an approach that's newer than the other two.

*I know the couple actually got married in real life. Didn't buy it in the movie, though.

I kept waiting for the leads in Monsters to be likeable, and they only got worse.  The the pile of contrivances, lots of stuff not making sense, big broad strokes of theme with no payoff, or much to say, and plenty of time to dwell on all the stuff that isn't working.

Some great cinematography, that's undeniable.

The writing team isn't reassuring either. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrBananaGrabber 

I kept waiting for the leads in Monsters to be likeable, and they only got worse.  

This times a million billion. I get the budget, I get the constraints. But I find that film completely underwhelming. I'm planning on revisiting it soon in hopes I can get more positive about GODZILLA. But I ain't there yet.