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Godzilla 2014
Hollywood has redeemed itself for the 90’s abomination of a Godzilla movie starring Matthew Broderick. I doubt the new Godzilla movie will change the minds of anyone not already a fan of the franchise, but even after digesting it for a while, I think Godzilla 2014 is one of my favorite Godzilla movies.
The movie starts out with a mining company accidentally awakening something underground in the Phillipines. The unknown thing makes a beeline for and destroys the nearest source of radiation, a nuclear plant in Japan staffed by Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra. The wife dies in the ensuing breach, and Joe becomes increasingly obsessed with finding the truth about what killed his wife, not believing the official story. Said obsession estranges him from son Ford, who, 15 years later, is a soldier with a family of his own. All Godzilla movies try to insert some manner of human drama. I wasn’t terribly invested in the the Brody side of the story, but as human-centered subplots in Godzilla movies go, it was one of the less annoying ones. Not great, but not particularly bad and even interesting in places. Ken Watanabe acts circles around everyone else in the movie as a professor who studies creatures such as the one found in the Philippines. I wish his role had been more prominent, but as a research scientist it would have been hard to justify keeping him too close to the action.
I like Godzilla’s new appearance. He now looks like a bulked up version of one of the old rubber suit Godzillas, which ended up looking surprisingly good in motion. I wish the movie had spent more time on giant monsters wrecking the place, but the action bits I got were so good I didn’t mind the lack so much. I do think the movie was about 30 minutes too long. A few sequences seemed like completely unnecessary padding or maybe part of subplots that got mostly cut out, but they don’t drag the final product down too much. I’d say they make a potentially great movie just slightly less than great. All in all, I liked it a lot and have every intention of buying it on Blu-Ray. Between Godzilla 2014 and Pacific Rim, it is a good time to be a kaiju fan again; the long drought is over.
Random Frozen thoughts
Brought to you by shopping for Disney Infinity figures and determining out which ones I still want but don’t yet have. While looking over some store’s stock of Infinity figures, I realized Elsa was the only remaining one out that I still want, but I have zero interest in Anna, the other representative from Frozen. It got me thinking about the movie and why an Infinity figure of Anna did not particularly appeal to me.
To start, I will say Frozen has the Prometheus Problem (as in the movie by Ridley Scott). I loved it at first, but my opinion slid towards the negative the more I though about it and its flaws. Now, unlike Prometheus, I still like Frozen overall, but I have major issues with parts of it, mostly pertaining to Anna and Kristoff. I’ve talked with friends about how Kristoff never really belonged in the movie. He seemed shoehorned in to provide true love for Anna to appeal to girls and a manly man (with comedic animal sidekick) to appeal to boys. What ends up happening is he diverts focus that should be on Anna the whole time. Anna’s role is important where Elsa is concerned, but for long stretches in the middle of the movie, she doesn’t have much to do while Kristoff helps her on her journey. Towards the end, when Anna leaps to prominence again, Kristoff has no particular reason to hang around, but he’s still in the movie for some reason. Disney could have left him out entirely, and I don’t think anyone would have felt anything was missing. By having him in the movie, they effectively turned what could have been one very interesting character (Anna) into two kind of dull characters. Which jives with the stories about the creation of Frozen. It was in development for so long and went through so many different iterations that the final product is a sometimes disappointing, disjointed mix of elements from the various pre-release visions.
Don’t get me started on the trolls. They just seemed grossly out of place.
As terrible as it looks…
I will give the first trailer for the new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie credit for a couple of things. For one, the TCRI logo on the ooze canister leads me to believe maybe the makers haven’t completely ignored prior, successful incarnations of the franchise. Some of the early pieces of news made it seem like they intended to go their own weird way entirely with little to no acknowledgement of the past. Two, the bit with Michelangelo is consistent with the way Mikey is usually characterized. Someone involved with the process has at least some minimal understanding of one of the characters.
Otherwise, it is a teaser and doesn’t give us much to go on. The new designs for the turtles themselves still look awful. Like, the ridiculous costumes from the original live-action movies looked better. The new designs look like some kind of bizarre reptile/ape hybrid. Says the man currently roleplaying a Saurian Simian in Gamma World. My prediction thus far: I will see a cheep matinee and laugh at a so-terrible-it’s-hilarious movie. Which is one of my favorite pastimes, though I’d prefer it not involve a franchise I love.
Well, color me pleasantly surprised.
I went to see Catching Fire with the roommate over the weekend. Full disclosure: I have never touched the books. I did not not particularly like The Hunger Games for this reason. Several important parts of the first movie don’t entirely make sense if you haven’t read the books. If my roommate hadn’t been on hand to explain those bits, I would have outright hated it despite loving the performances of some of the actors (Woody Harrelson and Jennifer Lawrence in particular).
Catching Fire fixed so many of the problems I had with The Hunger Games. The pacing felt more even/consistent, and I never felt lost. The movie never beat me over the head with any of the symbolism and didn’t engage in excessive exposition, but information still got presented in a way non-book-reading people like me could follow. Needless to say, the announcement that the same director will handle the two Mockingjay movies makes me very happy.
Quick Frozen impressions
I got back from seeing it about an hour ago. I enjoyed it. I like the story, I like the characters. It keeps you in the dark regarding the actual villain/antagonist until near the end. It managed to throw me a few curves, which I always appreciate as the type who often figures movies out twenty minutes in. If I have any complaints, most pertain to the music. Frozen has a few too many musical numbers, and a two or three seem wildly out of place in the movie or completely inappropriate to a given scene. I still like more of the songs than I disliked though.
This is yet another overly brief post brought to you by me underestimating the holiday weekend. I see this being an ongoing problem until after the new year.
Even I’m disappointed by this news
Paramount making a Friday the 13th reboot to release in 2015.
Now, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the 2009 reboot, but I didn’t outright hate it. Overall, it was potentially a good (re)start to the franchise. Unfortunately, not even a single sequel and the franchise is getting yet another reboot. A completely unnecessary reboot. An advantage of slashers with semi-mystical killers is filmmakers can and often do play fast and loose with the continuity. They could have just dropped the undesirable elements and effectively soft-booted while still treating the new movie as a sequel. No one would have cared and the outrage over Hollywood making yet another reboot/remake could have been avoided. Though I have to admit a found-footage-style slasher flick could be interesting.
I’m so glad this movie exists
I finally got around to checking out Sharknado for myself. Short version, of all the “so bad it’s good” movies I’ve ever seen, it is by far the best. It never attempts to take itself seriously at any point, which is actually why I’m surprised I liked it so much. Once upon a time, B movies were a big part of the industry, but something often gets lost when modern filmmakers set out to create a B movie. Certain elements will be crafted with just a little too much care/quality thanks to advances in filmmaking, breaking the desired effect. Sharknado did everything right, down to making cheap-looking computer graphics that would make even the Super Sentai/Power Rangers FX people cringe. They even used numerous washed-up actors with just enough relevance to act as a draw to the target audience.
Big Money Rustlas has been replaced in my heart. For folks who haven’t seen it, Big Money Rustlas is basically an Insane Clown Posse western. As delightfully horrible as it is though, it has nothing on Sharknado.
Here’s all you need to know about Riddick
Riddick is a straight rehash of Pitch Black‘s story with Chronicles of Riddick‘s utter lack of subtlety. The movie even has a Johns (the father of the junkie from Pitch Black) as one of the mercenary captains. I started out liking the movie. Riddick adopts a dog-like animal who is his best pal for much of the movie. The scenes with just Riddick and the dog are fantastic. They should have made the whole movie Riddick and Hooch; I would have loved it. The point at which the movie breaks entirely for me is a scene involving a machete and Riddick in shackles. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the scene. Shortly thereafter, Riddick performs a Superman (as in the Motorcross trick) on a hover-Harley over a pit of monsters. Around that time, I lost it and giggled until involuntary tears came out.
Santana, the other merc captain, was a pretty awful villain to boot. Twohy managed to make him less interesting than characters with five minutes of screen. He had a woman chained up in his ship, and the movie implies she was a sexual plaything for Santana and his crew. Until Santana shoots her after making a show of letting her go to make room in the ship for Riddick. Twohy had plenty of better options to show the audience Santana was worse than criminal protagonist Riddick. Instead, he took the laziest path possible. Santana even tries to rape Dahl, the tough space lesbian character on Johns’ crew. Dahl eventually falls for Riddick’s Furyan dick anyway despite frequently telling everyone how she doesn’t fuck men. Very loudly and occasionally in odd situations. In case people didn’t already realize she was a lesbian. Everything about Santana and Dahl was thoroughly cringe-worthy, and the movie would have been better off without them.
For some reason, they cast Dave Bautista, the former wrestler, as a member of Santana’s crew. Normally, you put Bautista in an action movie to have a huge brawl with the protagonist. In this case, when the fight finally happens, it ends after a mere half minute in a pretty dull and uninteresting way.
In short, if you ever feel the urge to see this movie, just watch Pitch Black or play Escape from Butcher Bay instead. Riddick was an okay movie, but it didn’t do much of anything that the franchise hasn’t already done better.
Current Media: August 2013 Edition
Watching
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – I decided to start re-watching it to tide me over until Arise. Funny how you pick up on all kinds of little details missed or not appreciated when watching some shows a second time. Like I didn’t realize back in 2005 that the year the series is set in (2030) wasn’t arbitrarily chosen. That year also happened to be one of the common predictions for when humanity would hit the technology singularity (at the time; I believe it has slid another decade or so into the future at this point). I still kind of dislike how the Tachikomas mostly get pushed into the background during the second season. Their development into true, self-aware AIs is one of the major arcs of the first season, and their return in the second season is such a wonderful moment. And then they’re just kind of around for the rest of the show.
The Hunger Games – The new roommate made me watch it shortly after moving in. Maybe I need to read the books to appreciate it more, but it struck me as merely okay. It had some cool moments and a couple of great performances (Jennifer Lawrence and Woody Harrelson), but a lot of stuff made little sense based on only the information presented in the movie. And the roommate even commented on the emphasis placed on certain events in the book that the movie thoroughly glosses over.
Ratatouille – Another one the roommate made me watch. Though I appreciated Ratatouille a lot more than The Hunger Games. Not my favorite Pixar movie by a long shot, but I can appreciate that it is probably one of the most well-made of the bunch.
Listening
New Constellation – The new album Toad the Wet Sprocket just Kickstarted. I really like it. It’s a lot like their pre-fame albums (Pale, Bread & Circus) in that all the songs tie together into this wonderful whole, but no particular song stands out on its own.
Playing
Persona 3 Portable – As a big fan of Persona 3, I had to grab the portable version the second I got my Vita. So far, I’m enjoying it. I like how the new protagonist option changes things just enough to make the experience fresh again. I especially like that they tried to give her a personality. Silent protagonists are usually written as reserved so the player can make of them what they will, but the dialogue choices for the new protagonist and NPC reactions to them make her seem more open and cheerful. Well, as much as such things can be conveyed via silent protagonist. And making a lot of the non-combat elements menu-driven cuts way down on the amount of time eaten up by the after school/sim-like portions of the game. Those segments are no less important or robust than before; you just spend less time running around mostly empty areas while you figure out what to do. It cuts the game time down by a third or better, but in a way that ensures nothing of value is lost.
Clockwork Colossus 