David Vining's Blog, page 15

Godzilla: Final Wars

The Matrix had one of the most negative influences on popular film…maybe ever. I think I’d rather watch terrible Star Wars clones from the early 80s than the desaturated, arch-cool attempts at stylized action that came to define derivative action cinema for about a decade after The Matrix shook things up. At least, that’s not all that Godzilla: Final Wars has to offer. It also has an endless supply of largely meaningless monster fights to string things along with a plot without mystery or an...

Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.

The second part of what seems to have been intended to result in a trilogy at the end of the Millennium Era of Godzilla films, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. is also a continuation of the thin storytelling leading to grand spectacle that started with Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. It’s generic epic movie elements squeezed into 90 minutes, not enough time to actually make things feel epic despite the best efforts of the special effects team. There’s light stuff about a rivalry and a potential romanc...

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

This represents a lot of the core contradictions at the heart of the Godzilla franchise. Love and hate for Godzilla. Adults and children loving the franchise. An embrace of science and nonsense to find solutions. It’s far from the most compelling entry, but it is interesting as an artifact for the franchise. It has some modest entertainment value on its own, but Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla is more of a hodgepodge of ideas and directions than an actual cohesive adventure.

Resetting once...

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

This is probably my favorite Godzilla film. It’s still got certain, common problems with the franchise, especially around its human characters, but the approach to the multiple kaiju is easily the most interesting since the start, and while I still have problems with the human characters, it’s the best approach to them in probably the entire franchise. Seriously, this surprised me. I really, really liked it.

Retconning everything again (I get it…these Millennium movies are disconnected an...

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus

Another reset to the Godzilla franchise, this time inventing an entire timeline from about the 2/3 mark of the first movie on, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is an interesting continuation of the more grounded ridiculousness that Godzilla 2000 started. It’s actually quite interesting in the first half with a script that has focus on a small set of characters, a set and well-defined goal, and some intertwining subplots that move towards a singular end point. And then…it just kind of turns into a typ...

Godzilla 2000

Both containing some of the same problems and correcting some others of the Heisei Era, the first Godzilla film in the Millenium Era is something I admire a bit more than I actually like. There’s a real effort to move beyond the overstuffed Heisei Era that led to decreasing box office returns while reacting obviously to some fairly recent American blockbusters, most notably Independence Day. I also have to think that this is the best film to address the dual nature of Godzilla, both as monst...

Godzilla vs. Destroyah

I really think that Kazuki Omori was the worst thing to happen to the Godzilla franchise. He started off on a decent foot with Godzilla vs. Biollante, but ever since all of the issues with his first Godzilla script have just grown increasingly prominent with every film he’s been on. And that comes to a nadir here with Godzilla vs. Destroyah. I know that there are a lot of warm feelings towards this out there, but I think this was probably the worst Godzilla movie I’ve seen. Badly built, poor...

Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla

Proof that the Godzilla franchise was Marvel before even Marvel was Marvel, Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla takes a handful of little threads, intentionally left open by some of the previous films, and brings them together for a new monster, smashy-smashy adventure. It’s interesting to note that this is the first Godzilla film since the reboot to use a relatively small ensemble instead of an unwieldy one. However, the melodramatic tone it takes always feels like too much for too little. At least ...

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II

The Heisei Era continues with its effort to take silly monsters stomping on silly miniatures seriously and does the best job of it so far. Takao Okawara takes the script by Wataru Mimura (I’m just thankful that Omori didn’t write again) and delivers the big monster, smashy-smashy action that the franchise needs to sustain itself, but there’s also a surprisingly successful attempt to do…something with Godzilla. The re-introduction of Mechagodzilla also allows space for the humans to actually ...

Godzilla vs. Mothra

What is Godzilla doing in this Mothra movie?

In the continued effort to take Godzilla seriously, Takao Okawara and Kazuki Omori move Godzilla from being a metaphor for nuclear power and throw him into an environmentalist tale of how Japan’s modernization is killing Gaia. That’s a marked contrast from the previous film where Japan was on the guide path to world domination in the 21st century. We also have the returning problem of needing humans to explain things but being unable to actuall...