Monsterverse

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Toho’s Monsterverse — one of the oldest screen franchises — has a fediverse home on Lemmy!

Are you a Monsterverse fan? Or, perhaps just Monsterverse curious?

Whatever your degree of love for or interest in kaiju and all things Monsterverse, this community is intended to be a welcoming place in the fediverse for you.

Join us to share news, art or discuss the new television franchise on AppleTV with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and the spinoff Coldwar spy thriller prequel going into production this spring.

Or, share news, your thoughts and creations for the more than 70 years of the movie franchise that started with Godzilla (1954).

Please respect the community rules of the StarTrek.website instance, and leave the drama for the Titans.

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ValueSubtracted@startrek.website

StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website

Assorted thoughts on "Godzilla" (2014) and "Kong: Skull Island" (startrek.website)

submitted 1 day ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to c/monsterverse@startrek.website

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Godzilla

Okay, I watched this several days ago, and honestly didn't have much to say about it. I enjoyed it, but I found it pretty perfunctory. The most interesting aspect to me was the backstory of the 1950s nuclear tests secretly being attempts to kill Godzilla - fun worldbuilding!

The characters are pretty generic, buoyed by good performances from Elizabeth Olsen and Bryan Cranston, in particular. Ken Watanabe gets the instant classic "let them fight." Unfortunately, I didn't care much for Ford, or Aaron Taylor-Johnson's portrayal of him.

It was fine! I enjoyed it! But not a lot to chew on long-term.

Kong: Skull Island

This one, on the other hand, was a hoot. The movie has personality to spare, taking full advantage of its Vietnam-era setting, from the character archetypes in play to the musical choices. That setting also gives it a little more thematic weight, as the Americans showing up and bombing the crap out of Skull Island sets the film's events into motion.

Kudos to the filmmakers for daring to set a number of the action pieces in daylight - a confident move.

Both movies have a good thoroughline of the MUTOs being fairly amoral, not necessarily "good" or "evil." Between the two Hero Monsters, Kong comes off as smarter and more empathetic, while Godzilla is more of a force of nature.

My biggest complaint? It took me about 20 minutes to figure out why the movie looked so weird before I concluded that it must have been filmed with 3D in mind. I really hate that.

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[–] SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Skull Island is one of my favourite movies and I'm utterly baffled by how little esteem it gets. A great concept that it just nails with incredibly tight visual and thematic design, great characters and writing and just cool af stylistic vision. And the special effects are the best in any modern monster movie, Kong is such an evocative presence and conveys so much personality with just body language, and the big fight set pieces with him against other monsters have incredible weight and raw animalistic power to them that most monster movies fail to get right.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 points 1 day ago

just cool af stylistic vision.

Yeah, this can't be emphasized enough. It's just fun.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Interesting.

Skull Island has had a lot of negativity from longtime fans. However, the creators of the continuity of the Legendary Pictures / Monsterverse era clearly had some distinct ideas about the island, its importance and about Kong.

We’re seeing that picked up on in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It doesn’t seem they’re done building that out yet. The presence of an longstanding Apex research station raises sooooo many questions.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago

Skull Island has had a lot of negativity from longtime fans.

I can see that - I'm a big fan of the 1933 film, and enjoyed the 1976 and 2005 versions well enough. But I didn't have any expectations that this movie would bear any resemblance to those. Taken as its own thing, I thought it was fun. And if you have to build a Cinematic Universe, you're going to need some kind of point of origin for all of these monsters.