On Kom...
Pros...- Tone is just right for a full on monster battle royale, more humor then 2014 but far from 70s Godzilla. Still plenty serious and not cartoony in my book.The monsters and peril are still taken completely seriously when they need to be.
- Humor is fine, never intrudes during the battles thank god. Bradley Whitford's quips are aren't ever cringy or jarringly out of place as some feared from the tv spots. The Gonorrhea line is the worst joke/line in the film and thankfully nothing else comes close.
- Most of the cast does good in my book. Thankfully no one tries to be unflinchingly stoic like Aaron Taylor Johnson did in 2014 and I say that as a defender of him in that film. Farmiga is great, I have heard complaints about her character flip flopping, personally I think it made sense and flowed in the film.
- Opening with Mothra is great.
- Seconding Chuckman's praise of the ground level shots adding to the sense of scale. The shot of Ghidorah rearing back to annihilate Brown at the stadium is awe inducing.
- Film is a still a little dark and overly raining but is VASTLY better lit then 2014, especially 2014's blu-ray.
Cons/Nitpicks/Missed Opportunities...- Charles Dance is underused.
- Brown could have been given a little more to do acting wise.
- Did not like Sally Hawkings being abruptly killed off and especially not in the manner we got where we could not even see who had been killed until we saw Watanabe mourning next to her image.
- Score was kinda unremarkable to me, the Mothra theme that played during the credits was solid.
Exterior issues...- They showed too much in the trailers.
- I am saddened about people not liking the human story, I thought it looked really good in the trailers and felt it would rectify people's complaints about 2014. The people saying they don't ever go to monster films for the humans are grating to me, we can do both, 90s Gamera had great human material. vs Biollante had a good political message/spy plot. What we ended up getting was nothing special but far from a "hot mess" IMO.
Hopes for Godzilla vs Kong...- Praying WB doesn't butcher it in editing/re shoots like they did to Justice League/Bvs's theatrical cut to "fix" whatever they think went wrong with this film.
- Doesn't add anymore humor then this film had.
- Charles Dance gets more to do and maybe backstory (flashbacks showing him encountering a smaller kajiu as a solider before going rogue would be cool)
FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:The comparison to Honda/Sekizawa's
Destroy All Monsters is an apt one, for sure, but my unpopular opinion among Godzilla fans is that it was one of the weaker movies by that creative duo anyway.
Agreed. That said I may be bias as it was one of the last Godzilla films I saw as a kid so it didn't stand out much.
FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:1 - I saw Gareth Edwards Godzilla (2014), and I'm here to tell you it's just as amazing as you think it isn't.
2 - I remember as a kid being introduced to Godzilla through the TV edit of Godzilla vs The Sea Monster on a VHS tape rented at the local Video Village (the name of a mom-and-pop video rental store in Elbridge, NY, a town accurately depicted by Google as being buried under 4 feet of snow). It was made me fall in love with Godzilla, and I single-handedly wore the tape out over the course of several rentals.
1 - I applause your defense of 2014, I like it a great deal as well just not quite as much as 2019.
2 - Nice, Sea Monster was the second Godzilla film I saw after King Kong vs. Today I consider Sea Monster to be one of the most underrated movies of the series.
I really like the tropical setting of Sea Monster & Son of Godzilla.