Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The open credits give Godzilla a rather long hit list of defeated monsters, with defeat seeming to imply killed, I’d wager your missing Rodan and others are in there if you look close enough.

Otherwise the characters Are pretty dumb most of the time. I still thought the fights and visuals were entertaining enough to sustain me thru a not quite two hour movie. Surprised at a lack of post credits scene.

 AduroT wrote:
The open credits give Godzilla a rather long hit list of defeated monsters, with defeat seeming to imply killed, I’d wager your missing Rodan and others are in there if you look close enough.

Otherwise the characters Are pretty dumb most of the time. I still thought the fights and visuals were entertaining enough to sustain me thru a not quite two hour movie. Surprised at a lack of post credits scene.

That's silly of them. They could have made those fights into movies and they'd have sold tickets galore with even minimal effort. Of course, if the 'human' story is as weak as reviewers say, then odds are Legendary is running out of ideas and didn't think they could make another movie work.

My issues with the human story are three of the characters are entirely irrelevant and unneeded yet each up a lot of screen time as basically a slow reveal exposition mouthpiece. Also the bad guy isn’t really a bad guy.

 Vulcan wrote:
odds are Legendary is running out of ideas and didn't think they could make another movie work.

They did lose the license in 2020 (it expired). Maybe they'll get it back. I'm not sure I care. They're clearly not even trying in GvK and don't have any real respect for the audience either.

That’s odd. It seems like GvK is getting a lot of positive reviews, even from people who hated KotM.

Most of the reviews I've seen amount to 'It's got monsters hitting monsters and that's what the people want right?" I'm not even sold on that. The first fight in the film is more two monsters flailing angrily than a fight and it only last like 5 minutes. Compared to that, there was 40 minutes of really stupid people and unclear exposition.

It feels, not unusually for Warner Bros movies, that we've only seen something like 60% of the actual movie by the time the credits roll.

But whats on screen is so consistently dumb I don't really care to see another version of the movie. I mean "we built this craft to take the entire gravity of a planet, but not the grip of one oversize monkey?" Come on.

I got the same sense that it's not that we only see 60% of the movie, but that the film is overstuffed with plotlines no one seemed to want to develop but insisted on shoving into the film regardless.

 Azreal13 wrote:
It feels, not unusually for Warner Bros movies, that we've only seen something like 60% of the actual movie by the time the credits roll.

But whats on screen is so consistently dumb I don't really care to see another version of the movie. I mean "we built this craft to take the entire gravity of a planet, but not the grip of one oversize monkey?" Come on.

The entire gravity of 1 planet is what everything on Earth is taking at all times. It's a dumb line all around.

Watched it this morning.

I rather enjoyed it. Yes there’s a lot of waffling going on, but the Kaiju fights are proper satisfying. And I could easily follow the action which is pretty important, as I was fearing a Transformer blurfest.

It’s not exactly genre defining, but it’s not about to bury the genre either. I’d say it’s a comfortable 7/10, possibly squeaking toward an 8.

I really liked it. Probably not as "good" as Skull Island but I think its easily my favorite of the 4. Addressed a lot of the issues I had with KotM:

The human stuff is largely unobtrusive:


The fight at sea felt like it was at sea:


The night fight is well lit and easy to follow:


So yeah, I liked it. Overall, it left me feeling how I had hoped I would feel from KotM. I'll probably watch it again quite a few times honestly.

On the final dust up?

 AduroT wrote:
Also the bad guy isn’t really a bad guy.

I actually kind of like this as he's not really even vilified in the greater context of the movie. Like, yes, we're supposed to see him as the bad guy but they leave a lot for the viewer to interpret for themselves rather than make any real statement on him. In fact, I think its rather clever that:

i'd love to watch it, but it's relegated to HBO Max, which is geo-locked to some very select markets, so I guess I won't.

I think it hits theaters proper at the end of April? I think it said that on HBO.

Cronch wrote:
i'd love to watch it, but it's relegated to HBO Max, which is geo-locked to some very select markets, so I guess I won't.

I watched it on Amazon Prime if that helps any?

 LordofHats wrote:
I think it hits theaters proper at the end of April? I think it said that on HBO.

IN the US its playing in theaters Friday.
The wife just got her second shot so we and the Daughter are celebrating my birfday and rejoining society by seeing it (hopefully) on the 10th.

 Frazzled wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I think it hits theaters proper at the end of April? I think it said that on HBO.

IN the US its playing in theaters Friday.
The wife just got her second shot so we and the Daughter are celebrating my birfday and rejoining society by seeing it (hopefully) on the 10th.

Actually, it's in theaters Wednesday. I was going to go to it last night, but got work-screwed.

Drive In nearby had a double feature of GvK and the 1933 King Kong so I pretty had to go see it that way. I'll have to watch GvK again with better sound and video but on a drive in screen the movie seemed fine. There is definitely some dumb stuff in it but most of it is of the type you get in standard kaiju films. I thought the G and K meet ups were done well enough as was Mecha, who was bigger than I initially thought.

This was more Kong that Godzilla.
I also don't know why but the fights felt like they had less weight to them. The scale of the fights felt constantly off.
Not to mention the weird Hollow earth stuff with kong. Is he a descendant of some ancient race of apes who built the place? What was with the axe, it seemed to be made of a Zilla spinal piece, but why did it light up?

I just watched it earlier today (first movie I've seen in the theater since Sonic the Hedgehog thanks to the pandemic), and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes there was plenty of unrealistic stuff, but I mean...literal giant fething monsters are in it, so reality is out the window.

I'm more wondering where the franchise will go from here, or if it will in fact continue at all.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
This was more Kong that Godzilla.
I also don't know why but the fights felt like they had less weight to them. The scale of the fights felt constantly off.
Not to mention the weird Hollow earth stuff with kong. Is he a descendant of some ancient race of apes who built the place? What was with the axe, it seemed to be made of a Zilla spinal piece, but why did it light up?

There's less "scale" shots than there were in G2014 or KotM and generally speaking the movie is less concerned with momentum than before. To a degree, I miss that (and honestly, few things do it like the original Pacific Rim), but it does come closer to matching how the rubber suit movies felt, and I rather enjoyed it.

The hollow earth nonsense has been a running theme through the entire franchise. That's what they were searching for when they went to Skull Island and it gets mentioned in the other films too. Both Kong films have snippets about his ancestors fighting other monsters, though I think we're largely meant to infer that one of them killed an ancestor of Godzilla and made the axe out of it's bones. It just absorbs radiation the same way Godzilla does when he charges up his atomic breath in the films.

I did find it kind of hilarious that Kong just kind of finds it like some rare dungeon loot. The DM did a good job with the nearby enchantment tutorial too.

I don’t like Godzilla’s super Zilla-Sense. He keys in on Mecha before it’s even finished, likely due to the skull and tests they ran with it. Hunts down Kong even though they made a point of avoid Godzilla’s routes. Senses the energy activation in the center of the planet and promptly drills a hold all the way down with his breath.

In KotM they made a point that Godzilla knew when other big guys where out and about as well as in this film pointing out that the skulls were psychically resonant so it isn't odd that G would sense something going on. Spider-man has spidey sense and Godzilla (in this series) has kaiju fight sense.

I don't recall much psychic stuff in the Showa era but the Heisei and Millennium series both had it in them.


I get the sense that Hollow Earth is to be the modern day equivalent of Monster Island.

It isn't a 1:1 but the HEAVs made me think of the Super X from Godzilla 1985. I think it is just the general shape of them seemed somewhat reminiscent of it.

Godzilla could sense monsters in the first modern godzilla too when he went hunting the mutos.

Also Skull Island is the modern Monster Island.

 Lance845 wrote:
Also Skull Island is the modern Monster Island.

Eh I don't think so as they say Skull Island was essentially wiped outt as well as saying it was a mini Hollow Earth. Hollow Earth has more area and mystery with room to grow and accommodate story lines. Skull Island definitely set up the idea but for it's narrative role Hollow Earth fits much better.

 LunarSol wrote:
I did find it kind of hilarious that Kong just kind of finds it like some rare dungeon loot. The DM did a good job with the nearby enchantment tutorial too.

Thought they were going for something very vaguely Arthurian.

I liked it. I dunno what the griping is about. I thought it was a better response to the gripes about Godzilla 2014 than KotM was. I liked 2014, and had no issues with the focus on the humans, because I've actually watched a lot of Toho films -- including a lot of recent rewatches with my kids -- and know the formula. But for for those wanting MOAR KAIJU MOAR, at least this one wasn't *also* trying to cram in a lot of human stuff like KotM did. I still enjoyed that one well enough though...again, because it's a Godzilla film and not something to be dissected.

 gorgon wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I did find it kind of hilarious that Kong just kind of finds it like some rare dungeon loot. The DM did a good job with the nearby enchantment tutorial too.

Thought they were going for something very vaguely Arthurian.

I liked it. I dunno what the griping is about. I thought it was a better response to the gripes about Godzilla 2014 than KotM was. I liked 2014, and had no issues with the focus on the humans, because I've actually watched a lot of Toho films -- including a lot of recent rewatches with my kids -- and know the formula. But for for those wanting MOAR KAIJU MOAR, at least this one wasn't *also* trying to cram in a lot of human stuff like KotM did. I still enjoyed that one well enough though...again, because it's a Godzilla film and not something to be dissected.

I found it hilarious. It's not really a gripe. This movie knew EXACTLY how serious it wanted to be and had a lot of fun with it.

I went for the monster fights, and I got the monster fights I wanted. More importantly, go team Godzilla.

 LunarSol wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I did find it kind of hilarious that Kong just kind of finds it like some rare dungeon loot. The DM did a good job with the nearby enchantment tutorial too.

Thought they were going for something very vaguely Arthurian.

I liked it. I dunno what the griping is about. I thought it was a better response to the gripes about Godzilla 2014 than KotM was. I liked 2014, and had no issues with the focus on the humans, because I've actually watched a lot of Toho films -- including a lot of recent rewatches with my kids -- and know the formula. But for for those wanting MOAR KAIJU MOAR, at least this one wasn't *also* trying to cram in a lot of human stuff like KotM did. I still enjoyed that one well enough though...again, because it's a Godzilla film and not something to be dissected.

I found it hilarious. It's not really a gripe. This movie knew EXACTLY how serious it wanted to be and had a lot of fun with it.

Oh, I agree with you. It knew what it wanted to be. KotM was probably the monsterverse movie that wasn't quite sure. Otherwise I think that goes for the rest of them too.