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Go go Godzilla
So Godzilla was a monster movie.
I'm not entirely sure where the "no plot" criticisms are coming from, though, since it actually maybe had a little too much plot for a monster movie? Like typically, monster movies answer the questions "What is the monster?," "What does the monster want?," and "How do we stop the monster?" without needing to wade into too much else.
Usually those three questions aren't all that distinct, with the first leading into the second which then leads into the third as organically as possible to form the meat of the plot. If you want something a little more political, you make the whole thing a functional allegory for a social problem or a festering injustice. If you want something with more pathos, you tie it into some relatable B-plot the non-monster characters are going through or a common human flaw.
Some sub-genres are so well-established that most of the run-time will be spent on either the first question (the serial killer is actually a vampire; the 'accidents' plaguing the ship are the work of a rogue AI) or the last (how do we escape the zombies; what do we use to banish the ghost), but Godzilla movies tend to really like spending time with the second question. It probably helps when your monster is a moon-sized fire-breathing crankypants, and every reasonable person's response to figuring out what he wants is "Well for fuck's sake, give it to him."
And I'm certainly not going to complain that Godzilla: King of the Monsters found a way to cram three warring political factions, thirty recognizable supporting characters, and a kitchen-sink family drama into its 130-minute runtime. I mean, they fucking delivered on the monsters; they get to have Kyle Chandler chase Millie Bobby Brown to yet another location, if they really want.
But the thing about monster movies of the kaiju stripe is that there's not really any room for mundane concerns around them. There's a reason old whalers called a sperm whale's tail the hand of god--when that fucker was coming down on you, you suddenly understood very viscerally that you were small and impotent and mortal and most likely going to die.
When something the size of a skyscraper and capable of breathing lightning swims up and glares at you from ten feet away, there's no "my kid is dead" in team. The top ten most important things in a Godzilla movie are, uh, the monsters. Like, if you had a tsunami bearing down on you, only the tsunami could be manipulated and maybe talked into fucking off, suddenly the only thing on anyone's minds is going to be, "How do we get the tsunami to fuck off?" There's pretty much no chance anyone's going to stop and have a long, sad monologue about their kid who drowned in a rip current, which means that it's conspicuous and a little awkward when people stop and have sad exchanges about their dead kids or their failures as a parent and spouse when the question of the moment is "How do we save the world?".
The stuff in King of Monsters where everyone's arguing about how to save the world feels very natural. The military remains, of course, of the strong opinion that the only way to save the world is to bomb the everliving fuck out of it, because the titans can't kill you if you're already dead. The pro-titan contingent has a long list of shit humanity has fucked up and continues to fuck up with no sign of slowing down in spite of knowing that it's going to kill them. Monarch would just like everyone to stop trying to blow up the world for five seconds. There are philosophical discussions that revolve around humanity's place in the world, the titans' place in the world, and humanity's and the titans' relationship to each other--again, perfectly natural. Explaining to someone why you and your wife split up after the loss of one of your children, not so much.
Pacific Rim got around the problem of personal loss and failings taking a back seat to the survival of humanity by making dealing with those losses contingent on being able to fight the monsters effectively. King of Monsters could probably have stood to take a page from that book, but that doesn't mean the plot was absent, just a bit clunky on the delivery in some respects.
But you know what? At the end of the day, the one thing no one can ever take away from them is that they absolutely weren't a Transformers movie.
I'm not entirely sure where the "no plot" criticisms are coming from, though, since it actually maybe had a little too much plot for a monster movie? Like typically, monster movies answer the questions "What is the monster?," "What does the monster want?," and "How do we stop the monster?" without needing to wade into too much else.
Usually those three questions aren't all that distinct, with the first leading into the second which then leads into the third as organically as possible to form the meat of the plot. If you want something a little more political, you make the whole thing a functional allegory for a social problem or a festering injustice. If you want something with more pathos, you tie it into some relatable B-plot the non-monster characters are going through or a common human flaw.
Some sub-genres are so well-established that most of the run-time will be spent on either the first question (the serial killer is actually a vampire; the 'accidents' plaguing the ship are the work of a rogue AI) or the last (how do we escape the zombies; what do we use to banish the ghost), but Godzilla movies tend to really like spending time with the second question. It probably helps when your monster is a moon-sized fire-breathing crankypants, and every reasonable person's response to figuring out what he wants is "Well for fuck's sake, give it to him."
And I'm certainly not going to complain that Godzilla: King of the Monsters found a way to cram three warring political factions, thirty recognizable supporting characters, and a kitchen-sink family drama into its 130-minute runtime. I mean, they fucking delivered on the monsters; they get to have Kyle Chandler chase Millie Bobby Brown to yet another location, if they really want.
But the thing about monster movies of the kaiju stripe is that there's not really any room for mundane concerns around them. There's a reason old whalers called a sperm whale's tail the hand of god--when that fucker was coming down on you, you suddenly understood very viscerally that you were small and impotent and mortal and most likely going to die.
When something the size of a skyscraper and capable of breathing lightning swims up and glares at you from ten feet away, there's no "my kid is dead" in team. The top ten most important things in a Godzilla movie are, uh, the monsters. Like, if you had a tsunami bearing down on you, only the tsunami could be manipulated and maybe talked into fucking off, suddenly the only thing on anyone's minds is going to be, "How do we get the tsunami to fuck off?" There's pretty much no chance anyone's going to stop and have a long, sad monologue about their kid who drowned in a rip current, which means that it's conspicuous and a little awkward when people stop and have sad exchanges about their dead kids or their failures as a parent and spouse when the question of the moment is "How do we save the world?".
The stuff in King of Monsters where everyone's arguing about how to save the world feels very natural. The military remains, of course, of the strong opinion that the only way to save the world is to bomb the everliving fuck out of it, because the titans can't kill you if you're already dead. The pro-titan contingent has a long list of shit humanity has fucked up and continues to fuck up with no sign of slowing down in spite of knowing that it's going to kill them. Monarch would just like everyone to stop trying to blow up the world for five seconds. There are philosophical discussions that revolve around humanity's place in the world, the titans' place in the world, and humanity's and the titans' relationship to each other--again, perfectly natural. Explaining to someone why you and your wife split up after the loss of one of your children, not so much.
Pacific Rim got around the problem of personal loss and failings taking a back seat to the survival of humanity by making dealing with those losses contingent on being able to fight the monsters effectively. King of Monsters could probably have stood to take a page from that book, but that doesn't mean the plot was absent, just a bit clunky on the delivery in some respects.
But you know what? At the end of the day, the one thing no one can ever take away from them is that they absolutely weren't a Transformers movie.
no subject
I mean, I cannot believe any of the humans survived any of that getting close to the monsters and flying debris and fire and Antarctic cold, but *shrug* it's nothing new in movies like this.
I shall draw a discreet veil over the "archaeology," as that was what really made me wince.
no subject
I just *clenches fist* really appreciate all the monsters fighting.