Death Stomps Again

A sort of review of GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019)

Directed by Michael Dougherty

Written by Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields

Cinematography by Lawrence Sher

Score by Bear McCreary

Staring Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Kyle Chandler, Ken Watanabe, Charles Dance, Ziyi Zhang, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidora, and Godzilla.

(This was mostly written the night of May 31st, going into June 1st. Life got in the way and I shelved this. Now it's out on home video, so I figured it was time to put it out. What follows is about 85% of the review I wrote for this movie. If you want a reaction closer to when I saw it, check out this episode of A Quality Interruption featuring Rafael Hernan Gamboa, he of The Long Take on Youtube and Violet, where among other things we do some fanfictioning on what this movie should have been.) 

ZERO DARK KAIJU

Godzilla (2014) was a reboot that was worthwhile. Instead of mining Godzilla for easy action set pieces, director Gareth Reynolds (Rogue One, Monsters) created a film with a unique tone and perspective that breathed fresh air into a flagging and ancient franchise. It brought terror and dread to the story, quietly resulting in one of the best action movies to come out in the past decade (one of the best monster movies, at least). There’s a reason they gave Edwards a Star Wars movie.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the sequel to that film (and the follow-up to the rather fun Kong: Skull Island) and it trades in majesty for volume. The restraint that made Godzilla (2014) worthwhile is gone, replaced with louder and bigger action scenes. Why inspire awe when you could just be awesome?

"Let them fight," huh? Am I right, guys? Guys?

The opening scene of King of the Monsters is vaguely reminiscent of Zero Dark Thirty (and, like all action blockbusters today, from Avengers to Game of Thrones, it’s a nice reminder that 9/11 drove us all insane*). This exists as both the high point and the low point of the movie. It's a moment that attempts to firmly establish King of the Monsters as a Serious Film about Loss and So Forth. It's also a moment that dispels any sort of tension. It's a movie where the worst has already happened. From there what could have been a serious monster movie, one with a unique point of view, instead sheds all of that in favor of being a bog-standard monster movie. A blockbuster to begin the blockbuster season. The opening of this film is a promise unfulfilled.

If there is something wrong with King of Monsters (and there is so very much wrong with it), you could probably diagnose its troubles by looking at its characters.

THE PROBLEM WITH NEVER SAYING NO

Of course, the frustrating thing is that the film isn’t entirely brain dead. You look at the art design, the special effects, and the attention to detail when it comes to the lore of Godzilla and you can see that all over the film. If not intelligent, King of the Monsters has an enthusiasm that is rare in tentpole entertainment.

This shot is beautiful and should be
taught in any film studies class

That also is at the heart of the movie's problem. It's a lot of good ideas that never form a cohesive whole. There's references to the Mothra twins, Mu, Castle Bravo, (copyright-free) X-1, and a whole underexplored sub-plot about Moby Dick (I think?), but without all of that informing the action (or the characters or their choices), it's like everything else in the movie: It's just stuff.

King of the Monsters doesn't ever rise above its influences. It doesn't ever use its toolkit to do anything other than to show off that it has a lot of nice tools.

Whereas the alleged sin of Godzilla (2014) is that it takes too long to get going and that you don't see the monster enough, King of the Monsters' sin is that the reveals never stop. There are never any moments too breathe or reflect. It's all kaiju all the time. Instead of two monsters fighting, it's four (with more on the way). Instead of one human villain, it's two. And, hey, let's throw in a Spielbergian child protagonist while we're at it. And a McGuffin and and and. . .

It's exhausting.

My friend Victor Perfecto, well-known kaiju nerd and podcast, described it as an “everything but the kitchen sink approach.” This helps temper some of my distaste toward the film in general. It's a failure, but at least it's a big failure. It's one that feels like there will never be another one of these ever again. It wanted to please fans and the average movie goer at the same time and in its attempt, it managed to please nobody.

On the plus side, one can’t complain about King of the Monsters leaving you bored. In a series full of shoddy special effects, bad acting, and poor editing, that's the worst sin there is.

GOOD AND "GOOD" MONSTER MOVIES

To rationalize for a moment—Godzilla movies are almost never good. Even the “good” movies aren’t very good. They’re poorly acted (with even worse dubbing). They’re cheap. They’re deeply silly and the action isn’t even that well choreographed. But—BUT! There’s something there in those films. In the cardboard sets and the fuzz of the VHS tapes. There is a kind of can-do charm that bigger movies just can't replicate. They've got gumption. They may not be good, but they are great.

Godzilla (2014) felt like a confirmation of what kaiju nerds like myself felt, which is that if you just had the budget and the time and you treated this material with respect, not only could you make a fun movie, but you could make and actual "good" movie out of Godzilla. One that you could show other people and you wouldn't have to explain why it's good.

King of the Monsters has the money. It has the power and yet, it’s this cold and unimpressive thing. It isn’t a movie that one can love. You can like it, probably. You can definitely have fun with it, but you can't love it, because for all of the art design and attention to detail, it isn't a film with any sort of heart.

And, again, if you can't make it properly thrilling and you can't make it charming, what do you have?

You have nothing. That's the crying shame of this movie. It isn't just that it misses the mark as a Godzilla movie, it's that it has so much going for it and the only memorable thing about it is that it's really loud.

Just to break up the monotony, here's an interview with mocap actor TJ Storm,
but also here's a ridiculous photo of mocap actor TJ Storm

THE KING THAT WAS PROMISED

King of the Monsters is about as standard of a summer blockbuster as you can get. It is awesome in place of awe-inspiring. It’s more explosions and more CGI creatures and it takes two hours or so and then it ends. There are plenty of these movies and there will be plenty more (not only this year, but in this franchise—Kong V. Godzilla is less than a year away, apparently). As a fan, it is hard for me to be too entirely down on it, though. It is competently made and the fan service does feel earned. Without my affection for the characters, there isn't much there.

Explosions. Sounds. Moving images. We have those aplenty. We only have one King of the Monsters and it would have been nice to see another movie live up to that name.

Personally, it makes me want to get out and see more movies. Not only ones in the theater like Booksmart or The Last Black Man in San Francisco, but dumber, even more far-out nonsense like Matango and The Mysterians. Because a movie doesn't have to be one or the other to be good. It can be both. It can be neither. It just has to be something and I love finding movies and I love finding things in those movies that are worthwhile and worth talking about. There is value in even bad art and, if nothing else, King of the Monsters is a reminder of that.

RELATED:

• My review of Godzilla (2014)
• My review of Shin Godzilla/Godzilla Resurgence (2016)
• My review of Pacific Rim, which I am only linking because I couldn't figure out a natural way to wedge it into the review
• The episode of AQI detailing this movie featuring Rafael Hernan Gamboa
• An AQI episode on The War of the Gargantuas
• An AQI episode on a lesser-known Toho monster movie Matango (AKA The Attack of the Mushroom People)

FOOTNOTES:

* Actually, I would really like to watch a procedural kaiju movie about a Driven Female Character trying to forensically determine how to kill a god.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and a big fan of big monsters. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him on kofi and Paypal. You can also support his podcasts on Patreon. It is suggested that you do all of the above. He deserves it.

KONG, VIET KONG

KONG, VIET KONG
Or "I Lost a Lot of Friends in That Ape Movie"

I’ve been thinking about Vietnam lately.

Not that it’s ever far from my mind, but I’ve really been thinking about it recently. I put my iPod on shuffle and Johnny Cash’s “Drive On” came on and all of the sudden, a well-spring of memories popped back up for me. I remembered Platoon. I remembered that Ken Burns has a documentary coming out this year. I remembered the first two years of college where everything seemed to somehow point back to the 1960's (even though most of our heroes from that era seemed hell-bent on escaping their current time frame). And I remembered Kong: Skull Island. And I remembered that Kong is an opportunity to talk about war, art, and movies. In short, Johnny Cash reminded me of something that was never far beneath the surface.

It’s been a long while since a Vietnam War movie has been in the theaters. The last movie I can even remember mentioning Nam by name was No Country For Old Men and that was only in passing and ten years ago (and even then I might be confusing that with the book). We’re overdue for a Vietnam War movie. We’re also overdue to talk about the damn thing. I’m glad Skull Island came along. It’s a reason for me to talk about Nam and it’s also a reason for Nam to surface in the culture, again.

Jordan Vogt-Robers wears his movie nerd credentials on his sleeves. Mark Kermode mentions it in his review of the film. Hell, Vogt-Roberts says as much in this interview (which I highly recommend that everybody read, because, man, that boy is a nerd). Even a cursory view of the trailer and its Huey choppers choppers silhoutted by the sun summon up memories of Apocalypse Now (or at least its poster). Beyond film allusions (beyond it just being a reboot of a remake of a remake), the film directly quotes from the Vietnam War. Brie Larson's character is an amalgamation of Catherine Leroy and Dickey Chapelle. If Vogt-Roberts is willing to bring Pokemon into the text of his film, then I believe he is also willing to put the work into discussions about the actual war he's making a movie about.

  

The director chose Nam for a reason. He had something to say. Yes, Skull Island is a monster movie, but even the loweliest genre film can say something about our society at large (example: Godzilla, Monsters, every single really bad and really good zombie movie). It matters because it speaks to our wider culture, our wider society. 

Giant Monster Movies have always existed to speak to something larger and more important that the existential threat of giant monsters. The original Godzilla spoke to the trauma of nuclear war and the two most recent Godzilla's spoke to environmental disasters and government inaction (or both).

Skull Island is mostly about a giant ape wrecking shit, but it also isn't a coincidence that it is centered around one of the great clusterfucks in American history-- one that we still haven't learned the right lessons from. I mean, look around you. Look at the news. You think we've learned a goddamn thing about dropping bombs on places that we don't understand in the past sixty years?

It also indicates that we’re officially at the point where we can just throw giant apes and space people at this tragedy and nobody is going to cry foul. Kong goes a step further in that it isn’t Vietnam War imagery, it is literally the Vietnam War (or, you know, a film version of it. Let’s not split hairs here, Borges). More than that, as rich as the art design of Rogue One (another film that took cues from 'Nam), it doesn't quite work. There is a dissonance there. Kong: Skull Island succeeds where Rogue One misfires, because Vietnam War imagery and symbolism is succinct, meaningful, and perfectly applied to the story that it is trying to tell.

  

It’s not only a morally grey war (with a morally grey conclusion), it means everything. Kong does a good job reminding us of the fact that Vietnam War comes with a lot of cultural baggage above and beyond the actual war itself. It literally blares the subtext out of loudspeakers at the audience.* It blares "THIS IS A FILM ABOUT FILMS ABOUT VIETNAM. ALSO IT IS ABOUT VIETNAM. KIND OF A HEADFUCK, ISN'T IT? BUT YOU'RE JUST LISTENING TO BLACK SABBATH, SO FUCK IT."

Vietnam isn’t Vietnam. It’s The Beatles. It’s Bob Dylan. It’s Richard Nixon. It’s Hunter S. Thompson. It’s MLK. It’s RFK. It’s Indian’s Rights and Women’s Rights and Jane Fonda posing on an AA gun. It’s John McCain being captured (and coming back and running for president). It’s Donald Trump dodging the draft. It’s The Wonder Years. It’s Jimmy Carter forgiving our draft dodgers. It's the Things They Carried. It's the things they carried. It’s my alcoholic uncle that didn’t see 60 because of what he saw over there.  It's forgetting and remembering and rediscovering these things. And it's a metaphor. And it's in our bones whether we know it or not.

Vietnam is a choice and it’s a choice that is reflected in the substance Kong: Skull Island. In that film, as in Vietnam, there are very few actual good guys. There are bad guys with problems, problems that might be good guys, a bad guy that becomes a good guy (off screen), and people that have bad things happen to them. There are also natives that, thankfully, aren’t bizarre caricatures. Like Vietnam, there are no winners, only survivors.

It’s why seeing Vietnam War imagery in Rogue One struck me as being so dissonant. Star Wars has always been a tale of black and white morality, with big, clear lessons to be learned. Good Versus Evil. A fantasy. Vietnam is about nobody being the good guy. Nobody being the winner. It’s a signifier that is at odds with the foundations of Star Wars.

Kong has no such baggage. It’s a property that exists in a genre that was specifically created to serve as a metaphor. It would be more uncharacteristic to be about how awesome giant monsters are than it would be for it to be about Vietnam. Metaphors and metatext and all of that jazz are what these movies were meant to be. They’re the pill wrapped in a piece of cheese. The message is hidden in the medium, but also the medium is the message.

I saw a Marx quote from one of my good commie friends on twitter. Marx says:

And by the same token the whole principle of socialism is concerned only with one side, namely the reality of the true existence of man. We also have a concern with the other wise, i.e. with man's theoretical existence, and make his religion and science, etc, into the object of our criticism.

What Marx is saying is that when you look at society, when you try to work on what it is and how it works, it isn’t enough to just change the economy or the politics. It’s important to talk about the underlying factors. In this case, art. More specifically: Monster movies. All of these things are there. It's the movies that help us remember. They're our myths. They're what sparks old memories inside of our heads and helps us remember. Sometimes a giant ape is what it takes for us to talk about something that we haven't ever bothered putting into words.

 * With the added bonus of allowing some really good diabetic music to entertain us. Because, I don’t care if it’s cliché at this point, hearing CCR blast out of a Huey gunship is always going to get my heart pumping, and, as Bruce Dern said to me recently, “I’d call that rock n’ roll”).

James Kislingbury is a writer and a podcaster. He does a movie show called "A Quality Interruption." He does a "news" show called "World's a Mess." Both require funding, which you can help out with. He also has a series of stupid tumblrs, which are all linked on the right hand side of this page. So that's fun.

Stomping His Way Back Into Your Heart

It's nice to see that Godzilla is back. Besides the 2014 Legendary Pictures version of Godzilla (which apparently exists in the same universe as their new King Kong movie, because shared universes is what films have been missing these past one-hundred years. . .), we have a new Godzilla from Toho Studios in the form of Shin Godzilla. It's about damn time. In this world stacked to the brim with dystopian fiction and escapist superhero movies, it's nice to see the grandfather of all anxiety pictures back.

It's also nice to see Godzilla back to his original form: A mix of existentially terrifying and sublimely ridiculous.

Shin Godzilla plays out as a healthy mix of Dr. Strangelove and United 93 if they were both about an atomic war-god raised from the sea. It's as much a political satire as it is a drama of procedure. . .It's also about a giant lizard fucking shit up. These three themes bounce back and forth off of each other, making big laughs in dramatic scenes and ratcheting up tension in what amounts to an impenetrable board meeting.

But also, man are those board room scenes good.

Shin Godzilla is a lot of fun and you get the sense that the people making it had a lot of fun as well, which is how it should be, because why should being involved with Godzilla ever be boring? It should be joyful, damnit.

One of the ways that the film manages to have fun, but also convey the byzantine inanity of the Japanese government is with the amount of super-imposed job titles it throws at you. Every character in the film is introduced (in very large typography), who they are and why they are there. This happens again and again and, considering that they're on screen at the same time as the subtitles, it's a decision that is clearly meant to baffle more than it is meant to elucidate. This distinct sense of confusion adds to the drama, as we have about as much idea about who these people are as they have about what Godzilla is (we, of course, know exactly what Godzilla is). Fighting Godzillas, as it turns out, is a confusing and terrifying existence.

What's more interesting is that the film feels like a live action anime (which makes sense considering Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi made their name working on Neon Genesis Evangelion). It's a film cut through with rapid insert shots that energize its scenes and B-roll that give it a sense of place, which comes in handy when those places start blowing up and catching fire. 

Yes, it has scenes where tanks impotently fire at Godzilla for 10 minutes

It even seems to use the same font as Neon Genesis Evangelion. Say what you want about that series, it had a bomb-ass font.

Shin Godzilla is a film that manages to be funny in the way that you want a kaiju film to be, but doesn't ever tip over into camp. While a lot of fun is had at the expense of old Japanese politicians shouting "Way to go, USA!" as American B2 bombers flatten entire sections of Tokyo, you still actually manage to care about the action going on on screen. You want people to get out okay. You want Godzilla to be destroyed. You want your POV characters to do the right thing. And in all that you also get a lot of good laughs at the expense of everything but the film itself.

It's a complex move to pull off and a lot of Godzilla movies don't pull that off. Even as a fan, a lot of Godzilla and kaiju movies are movies you laugh at. They're schlocky, silly B-movies that seem to have been primarily built with psychotropic users in mind. They're rarely ever good films. What makes Shin Godzilla stand out, though, is that you can watch it and laugh at how ridiculous this situation is without actually laughing at the film. Instead, you feel for these characters and this world and you want to see more of it, because nobody should have to live through anything as surreal as a Godzilla attack-- Nor should they have to suffer through a Japanese ministerial meeting. It's a testament to the film's direction that it can play both of these cards at the same time. I mean, that's what movies are supposed to be, right?

I mean, as much as I love War of the Gargantuas, sometimes I want to watch a good movie about giant monsters fucking shit up. I'm sure everyone can agree with me on this one.

Ultimately, if Shin Godzilla is about anything, it's about grace under pressure and not buckling to perceived wisdom. It's an argument against doing the easy or the obvious thing. It's about how heroics is less about who hits the hardest or the fastest and more about who has the resolve to stick around and make the hard decisions. It's a pragmatic lesson that I would cast as being a very Japanese solution if I didn't think that we could use more of that in America right now. . .

Speaking to my friend (who lives in Japan), it's become clear to me that there's a much more literal connection of Godzilla to the real world. Namely, Shin Godzilla is a satire write large of the Japanese government's reaction to the Fukushima Meltdown. While that seems obvious in hindsight, it is a testament of the quality of the film that you don't need to know the specifics to get something out of the picture. Like the original Godzilla, there is something strangely universal about seeing a giant lizard blow up Tokyo.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and giant monster enthusiast. You can listen to his movie podcast here. You can listen to his "news" podcast here. He's still looking for a working Marklin Rifle. Anyways, enjoy.

And Death Stomped With Him

I AM BECOME DINOSAUR

Some Thoughts, Feelings , and Pained Metaphors on Godzilla (2014)

GO GO GOJIRA

If you asked me a year ago about how much we need a Godzilla reboot, I'd say that we need one about as bad we need teeth in our asshole.

Ignoring the brain-dead fiasco that is Roland Emmerich's 1998 fiasco, even the original Godzilla movies are silly, if charming, balls of cheese. At worst, they're Final Wars. They're the kinds of film that you watch because you've either got a real yen for camp, you're eleven years old, or you're very, very high.

That is to say, overall, with the exception of the very first film, Godzilla movies are not high art that has changed the way we watch movies. So, yeah, the idea of a remake, even one helmed by the director of Monsters made me feel like I ate too much burrito: Tired and a bit queasy.

And I'm not alone. In 2004 Toho, the "Owners and Creators" of Godzilla, pulled the plug on Godzilla. Or, at least they saw fit to have him hibernate until there was a worthy reason to bring him back. And that's how I thought it would be until the end of time.

Then the teaser came out.

And then I realized that a new Godzilla is exactly what we needed.

THE MONSTERS ARE COMING. . . EVENTUALLY

Gareth Edwards' first big foray into Hollywood is exactly what you want out of a Godzilla film: It's a B-movie told with the seriousness and professionalism. It also does so without losing any of the energy or charm that made you fall in love with those old rubber suit movies. It's an actual film about giant monsters and it isn't embarrassed about it. If Pacific Rim hadn't come out last year Godzilla would have been the giant monster movie we've been waiting for.

One of the biggest complaints about the movie-- that Godzilla is held back for so long-- is proof of how well it has been made. Holding back the monster is what you're supposed to do. That's how these things work. Alien does it. Jaws does it. The Thing does it. Pacific Rim didn't do it, but Guillermo del Toro can do whatever he damn well pleases. Godzilla (1998) didn't do it either and look how that turned out. By holding Godzilla back, Edwards firmly places this movie alongside some of the best monster movies of all time. It shows that he knows what he's doing.

By building up the anticipation, it make Godzilla that much more of a mythical figure. It somehow tricks us into thinking that we've never seen something like this before. It makes us wonder when will he show up? What will he do? What exactly is this behemoth capable of? It makes that initial Godzilla scream that much more impactful. To take a sixty year old property, one that even its owners aren't too fond of, and gives it back its mystique.

But, of course, I'm burying the lead: Godzilla clocks in at a mere two hours. That gives the director plenty of time to establish a world before it starts blowing it up. It has a human length. If only for that Godzilla might be the best blockbuster this year.

THOSE PINK WALKING BITS THAT AREN'T GODZILLA. . . YOU KNOW, PEOPLE

As much as Godzilla is about watching cities that didn't do anything wrong in their life getting smashed like your drunk grandpa's vase, it's a movie about people. . . and whether or not these people are going to get smashed. For the most part, the characters that aren't giant monsters are perfectly capable of moving things along.

As far as square-jawed leading men are concerned Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a perfectly acceptable collection of right-angles. While I loathed Savages, he was one of the less loathsome things in the movie. I mean, beyond his hair. But in this movie he has a crew cut, so it's fine. He actually reminds me of Orlando Bloom's performance in Kingdom of Heaven, which is to say neither of them are very good, but at least they've got the good taste not to get in the movie's way.

Elizabeth Olsen also delivers a perfectly fine performance, giving scene an emotional grounding when they need it or accentuating the drama where needed. While I don't buy her as a mother of a five year old for one single second, at least she doesn't look entirely ridiculous.

Where the film's strength lies is in its supporting cast-- a collection of actors either too old, too talented, or too expensive to give the lead to. They elevate every scene. It's a thankless task, but it serves the movie's purposes. It's a better drama for them being wasted.

Right off the top, we have Juliette Binoche who even when collecting a paycheck delivers a performance that is far greater than the length of time she is on screen. Then there is Sally Fields also shows up if only to remind us that Happy Go Lucky has been on our Instant Queue for two years now and that we still haven't watch it.

We also have Bryan Cranston. He's great. We all know this. He's about as underused as the rest of the cast that doesn't have a military haircut. Fortunately, in the few scenes that he has, he acts his ass off. Like Binoche, he isn't on for long, but he makes those moments count.

Then, of course, there is Ken Watanabe (who, like Morgan Freeman, is the kind of actor you patch into a movie if you need a scene to have gravitas). Even in sillier films like The Last Samurai, he's a man who commands your attention and Godzilla is no exception. Even in a room full of military goons, he's the man you're waiting to speak. Every film he appears in, he seems like the perfect choice. Godzilla is no exception.

The best moment in the movie-- that doesn't involve monsters duking it out-- focuses on Watanabe. In it, he and David Strathairn are looking over a seemingly doomed San Francisco, wondering what the hell to do.

There's something beautiful about that little moment. It's about monsters fighting as much as it is about everything but monster fighting. It's one of the few scenes that match up to the promised metaphorical heights that Edwards mentions in interviews and that the original film was built around. It also doesn't make me think about weird 9/11 allegories and that's always a good thing.

EL MONSTRE ES MUYO GORDO

I like the new Godzilla. He looks like Godzilla. That's always a good start for a Godzilla movie.

Keeping in the tradition of other recent franchise reboots, this incarnation of Godzilla is meant to be  realistic take on the the King of Monsters. Or as realistic as a 300+ foot tall lizard is ever going to get.

But the Weta-assisted design actually works. Unlike a lot of CGI, eveven recent CGI, this is a monster that has real weight and impact. As easy as it might be to poke fun at Godzilla's bulk, everything suddenly makes sense when the first move he makes in a fight is a two-handed sumo wrestler slam. Even the sillier bits of the design have a well thought out function. That's always nice to see.

As important as Godzilla is, the mark of a good Godzilla movie is a good villain. King Ghidorah, Biollante, and Mechagodzilla and Charles Barkley are just as significant as the King of the Monsters himself. Fortunately, this time around the film makers got it right. The baddies are smartly designed and have the same kind of heft that Godzilla does.

What's interesting is that they don't just look like bugs that have been scaled up. Instead, they look like living fossils. They look like they are of earth, but that they don't quite belong. They look like they fall somewhere between something at the Natural History Museum and a Pokemon. They're anchored in this world, yet there's something fantastic going on. That's a good place for a kaiju to be.

 

WHAT REMAINS

A lot of the flack being hurled at Godzilla centers around what polite people would call “pacing problems” and what others would call “boring.” Over the years I've backed away from spitting venom at people with whom I disagree,* but it needs to be said: These people are idiots. Godzilla, for all of its smashing, is not a movie made for or by idiots. For all of its special effects Godzilla is a movie about the human beings. Apparently that makes things "boring" now instead of "dramatic."

While I'll agree that the human aspect of the film leaves something to be desired, Gareth Edwards still delivers a rock solid action film. It looks great, it moves along nicely, and it delivers exactly the kind of thrills that you want out of a giant monster movie. It doesn't quite have the depth that some other action movies might have that doesn't mean that it still isn't worth your time and money.

The original Godzilla practically invented a genre. This film does not do that. What it does do is deliver an exciting action film that belongs in the pantheon of monster movies. It's the kind of movie you would love as a kid and unlike a lot of crap that you watch as a kid this movie might actually deserve it. A lot of people are mentioning Steven Speilberg in the same breath as this film. While Godzilla does not hit the highs of those great blockbusters, it is a fun film and a fine start to the blockbuster season. If only more blockbusters could be as insubstantial as this one.

 

ALTERNATIVE OPINIONS:

I'm a fan of Vice and this article is no different. With a headline like that, I can't resist it.

Here's a more coherent review of the film from Rafael Gamboa. Even though I don't agree with it, I went to high school with this guy and he wasn't terrible, so I'm going to be nice. Also, it's really well written.

As always: Kermode is also available.

Since we're at it, why don't we all relive Roger Ebert's amazing review of the 1998 Godzilla.

SIDE NOTE:

My current feeling on the movie is that I think it'll slide into obscurity and only be viewed by the odd Godzilla nerd or kid who is getting into scary movies, but can't quite handle actual scary movies. That is until the sequel, which has already been green lit. As cynical as I sound, I'm kind of excited for what that movie will look like. I'm excited by the idea of Gareth Edwards (or whoever) trying to square Mu or King Ghidorah into this semi-realistic world that they've built. I want to know how they're going to meld Battle of Algiers with Cloverfield.

Someday.

FOOT NOTES:

*Yes, I realize that I complained that Only Lovers Left Alive left me a bit bored, but that also didn't have giant bugs and reptiles smashing things for an hour. Being a bit boring is also a part of that movie's charm.  And, yes, I know that I also complained that The Wind Rises was boring, but fuck The Wind Rises. And another thing, Only Lover Left Alive was two hours of people talking in rooms and that was boring. Godzilla is maybe an hour of people talking in rooms and then it has another hour of monsters smashing shit. What the fuck do you morons want?

"START WITH AN EARTHQUAKE AND END WITH A CLIMAX"

THEY MADE A MOVIE FOR ALL OF THE 12 YEAR OLDS IN THE WORLD
A review of Pacific Rim (2013)

Back in the day, around about 1940-something the term “blockbuster” was invented. As the Royal Air Force wasn't super concerned with film at the time, the word was attached to the biggest bombs they had. These things weighed at least two tons and, as you can imagine, were believed to be powerful enough to destroy an entire city block. Bad news for Jerry, but what a turn of phrase!

Pacific Rim is a blockbuster in the best way possible. It's a loud, monstrous thing that does exactly what it is intended to do and does exactly what we want it to. In a summer loaded with stillborn star vehicles and limp re-boots and a sequel that I guess only I liked, it's good to see that a blockbuster doesn't have to choose between being big and being good.

Pacific Rim works because it launches into its ideas with such sincerity that you never for a second pause to laugh at it or wonder about the feasibility of an intergalactic robot war. It isn't cynical or ironic in a way that you don't see in special effects movies very often any more. It doesn't apologize for being a movie about pretty people in giant robots duking it out with intergalactic monsters. You're worried about other things than how realistic this all is by the time the narrator finishes his first sentence.

It's Robot Jox* mashed up with Neon Genesis Evangelion through the lens a man who has clearly watched way too many WWII movies. In short, it's everything a twelve year old ever wanted to see in a movie It isn't what people think a 12 year old wants to see. It isn't what they are told that they want to see. It isn't what they end up seeing because nothing else looks good. This is the movie that every 12 year old ever wanted.

It's a film wrapped in a love and a care of a subject matter, but it also wants to make a good movie. It moves beyond tribute and pastiche and actually manages to become a movie that is fantastic on its own merits. It makes me want to go watch more movies, because it's a film that reminds you just how wonderful this medium can be. I think I should feel very silly saying this about a giant monster movie and yet I still feel like an idiot. I realize this is a problem with me. This clearly isn't a problem with Guillermo Del Toro, who seems to be about a confident of a hand behind the camera as there ever could be.

This is a movie that is as good as you remember Godzilla versus Biollante being.

OH WAIT, GROSS

Ugh. I just remembered that Jobs was one of the trailers before the movie. Jeezus does that looks like it's going to be a shit show.

The trailer contains the whole arc of the movie. The reveal of the iPad is meant to look like this epic, spellbinding moment, an event of human triumph over conformity expect that it's a multi-millionaire revealing a fucking gadget.

I blame The Social Network for this.

Not pictured: The dog's name.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BLITZ

On the very same flagship film program that Del Toro was interviewed in Simon Mayo mentioned that this film gave him the vibe of an old WWII flight movie and in a general sense it reminded him of the feeling the people of England had during the Blitz. Del Toro copped to as much. He said that he was obsessed with that era, but you don't need his quote on this, all you have to do is look at his filmography.

This idea is embedded in the very design of the movie.When describing the jaegars, he said that Cherno-Alpha was a walking T-Series tank. Now, that's like saying that he's a walking Sherman tank or a walking Spitfire or, I don't know, a walking M1 helmet. For those who don't know what any of that means, it means that Cherno Alpha is a kinetic icon. It's a walking monument.

The T-series tanks are one of the biggest factors leading to the USSR winning against the Nazis. While the German were busy having guys like Porsche mold and design their tanks, the Soviets were busy slapping together tanks in converted tractor factories. Besides the fact that the USSR had an unparalleled labor pool and a ruthless despot that was willing to smash them against whatever obstacle necessary, it was pieces of engineering like the T-34 that turned the tide against the Germans. Plus, a tank makes a much better icon than a commissar shooting deserters and their family because they fled the Hun.

The other big Soviet icon that stands out to me is the “Wall of Life” mentioned in the beginning of the film. This is a direct reference to the “Road of Life” that ran over Lake Ladoga during the Siege of Leningrad.

Truckers (and sailors and pilots) ran all day and night, braving thin ice and German defenses to relieve the besieged people of Leningrad during their nine-hundred days of Nazi encirclement.

In one scene, in our hero (I just realized that I don't know his name. You know the one, he was in Undeclared), has a wall of photos in his room. There is his brother and kaiju and whatever else that makes up his past but, my eye went to the one I know, the one I knew was the point of the scene: The Motherland Calls. The statue was built as a memorial to the defense of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest, longest battles in history. It's an icon to the spirit of the USSR and to anyone else who had their back up against the wall because of an incredible evil.

These seemingly little touches are what makes the film greater than the sum of its parts. It's the little references like this that show that Del Toro knows what he's doing and that he has an affection for it, and that he doesn't need to cram it down your throat. It's all there on film, all you need to do is look for it. But you can also just look at the alien dinosaurs gets punched and that's cool too.

Oh, also it's probably named after a nuclear disaster and has a cooling tower for a head. So, you know, subtext.

I WISH EBERT WAS ALIVE

Part of me has come to accept genre movies, to legitimately accept stupid, silly things. As much as I love “serious” movies, that doesn't mean that I have to then dislike something else. This is not a zero sum game and Roger Ebert was the expert balancing fine art with fine froth.

I watched the Seventh Seal probably because of him. I love The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as much as I do now because he loved it so much. I watched The Proposition and read Blood Meridian because of him. And I love explosions because he said that's okay. And I also hate explosions in equal measure because he said that's okay, too. It's all okay. I don't have to choose.

He has a list on Criterion of some of his Great Movie and on the other hand he actually enjoyed Speed 2: Cruise Control. He wasn't ever a rube, though. Some of his most enjoyable work was when he used his Pulitzer as a blugeon to shame sod-bustingly stupid films like they were paying for it. Quietly, though, Ebert's strength to me was how well he could sell you on his opinion, no matter how much you actually disagreed with it, you'd read his review and go "Well, I can see that."

Mark Kermode, my favorite living film critic, is your excitable friend at a party talking to you about HOW HAVE YOU NEVER LISTENED TO JESUS OF COOL, whereas Ebert was a guy just talking to you across two cups of coffee at a diner. By the end of the conversation, which he would be leading the whole time, despite your best efforts, you'd walk out either agreeing with him or having been coached into knowing better than you once did. He had an underlying decency in him that a lot of people just cannot muster. That goes for everyone, not just film critics.

I honestly wish he could have seen this movie. I honestly wish I could have read what he said about this. Whether I agreed with him or not, I know he would have been right in his own way. Really, though, as much as I used him as a recommendation guide or a taste maker or anything else, I really want to hear that I am right. I love this movie. And I wish that he could have loved this movie too.

I don't know if that's incredibly sappy or incredibly self-centered or just plain dumb. All I know is that considering how so much of this week has gone, I think we could use more of the good people and Roger Ebert was most certainly one of them.

I MADE THIS ROBOT WAR FOR YOU

Pacific Rim works on its own as a film and one of the main reasons it does so is that it is pulling from a much larger body of works than the mere monster movie. World War II as a genre and as a moment in history obviously weighs heavy in this movie's influences, but so does Japanese anime and the Japanese monster movie (I mean, it takes the word "kaiju" from the eponymous genre. So,yeah, duh).

There's something slightly odd about that because the original animes and giant robot movies that this movie is inspired by comes out of the consequences of World War II.

The Japanese were living in the shadow of some existential terror that they couldn't exactly put a name to. Nobody wanted to make a movie about how their new friends the Americans bombed the shit out of them. I'm also sure that nobody wanted to watch that sort of movie. I mean, we did the same thing, but we had the pleasure of having won, at least.

So what did they do? Atomic monsters. Giant robots. These things were meant to be entertainment, first and foremost, but they were also a way to tell a story about a time that no one really wanted to talk about, at least not directly. And they're not alone. We made The Day the Earth Stood still. Jack Finney made Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In that way Pacific Rim carries on the allegorical energy of those works, as well as the aesthetic energy. It carries on in the tradition not only of Japanese science fiction, but big idea science fiction in general. In that way, it's more of a traditional science fiction film than is Star Trek No Colon Into Darkness.

Beyond Gigantor, the particular anime that I am reminded of is "Cannon Fodder," one of the shorts in the film Memories.The world of "Cannon Fodder" is very basic: The life of every citizen is geared towards producing, servicing, and firing shells. That is it. Go to sleep. Wake up. Work on the cannons. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. There is nothing else. There isn't even an enemy that we know of, there's just this Gormanghast/Airstrip-One-like city-state that solely exists to maintain a tradition for the sake of itself.

When I saw a bunch of dudes in jumpsuits flying down ladders I figured out that I was watching Cannon Town realized in live action. And I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. I'm sure it is intentional. Guillermo Del Toro is a pretty sharp guy, I'll give him at least partial credit.

Pacific Rim, notably, is not a dystopia and it's not an allegory. It's a messed up world with a lot of serious, horrible problems, but it isn't a world that has given up on itself. It isn't a place that hates its people. It is still a place worth fighting for and a place in which you can invest your emotions. The world of Pacific Rim, its Wall of Life and its high death toll and all is a place worth calling home. It's a place that is worth fighting for.

SPOILER: THE REAL MONSTER IS MAN

The title of this entry is taken from something I heard listening to Mark Kermode. He was quoting Mark Robinson speaking on his movie Earthquake. I can't think of a better way to describe the pacing and tone of Pacific Rim than that.So, good work, Dr. Kermode. Thanks for taking that away from me.

For whatever flaws Pacific Rim may have, you can't fault it for its ambitions. It is an attempt to do something new, even if it is heavily based on the works of the past and as far as world building goes, Del Toro might be on par with Ridley Scott. Besides all of the set dressing and the references directed at a time and place that only jerks like me are that interested, what remains is what a blockbuster should be (besides, of course, the massive financial success. You know. That ol' thing).

If I had written this a few months ago, I think I would have tried to position this film as a genre movie that delivered. And it is that. Saying that "I got what I wanted out of it" makes it sound like it's a whore or something. It makes it sound like it is a trifle. It's more than that, though, because the more I think about it and the more I look around, I realize that making a good genre film is fucking hard. It takes a lot of time, talent, and energy to spin something like robots and monsters into a worthwhile feature and Del Toro certainly has that.

Top to bottom, from stratosphere to oceanic trench, Pacific Rim is a delight. Go see it in the theaters. Go see it now. This is the kind of city destroying spectacle that should be encouraged.
 

*I watched Robot Jox on TV way back in 1994 and again on a rented video, so I'm not mentioning it solely because Red Letter Media had a go at it, but I am definitely mentioning it because Red Letter Media had a go at it and that's what I like to do. I was into Robo Jox before it was uncool.

SIDE NOTE: Here's another perspective worth reading on. As much as criticism is about rolling around in your own words and feeling satisfied, I think this bit of writing gets to something we (I) forget about sometimes, which is that movies are meant to be watched. Film is a visual medium and as much as I think I could wax on about that for a really long time, I'd be missing the point. What the above article points out is that Pacific Rim, and film in a broader sense, is as much about conveying story and information on a visual and kinetic level as it is about telling you things through language. The best example of this that I can think of (especially when it comes to sci-fi) is 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is as primal of film story telling as you can get, as well as probably being one of the most sophisticated pieces of art in this particular visual medium. Go read that thing.

  James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and an enemy pilot. You can follow him on twitter.