Topic: The Movie Thread

@RR529 Black Panther was OK, mostly hype though.

@Ralizah I saw MIF at the weekend too, really enjoyed it. The rest of the series are also really good, apart from MI2 - which is a horrible John Woo mess. I re-watched the first one last week and it really has dated extremely well.

I am looking forward to Godzilla. Hopefully they don't present it like the last one though. There's always a human element to the Godzilla films, but to use the perspectives that they did and cut us off from so much of the actual kaiju action was infuriating!

But yeah - all the best kaiju are due so it should be a blast. Rodan!!

@RogerRoger That's a shame - it really is an action spectacle. Not sure if you've watched any of the behind the scenes stuff - but as usual, the stunt work is ridiculous! Tom Cruise really is my favourite mental Scientologist!

@KALofKRYPTON They tried the Jaws approach of slowly building up to the climactic scenes with Godzilla, but that doesn't really play well with kaiju films. As I've told people before, Kong: Skull Island is MUCH more like what I expect from a modern, American take on the kaiju film.

I also wanted a better protagonist. They led the advertising with Bryan Cranston, but the real protagonist was some plain-jane military guy who I barely even remember any details about.

And the monsters Godzilla fought were pretty generic design-wise.

With that said, if this turns out great, then the gradual evolution of American Godzilla from trash (Zilla 98) to a mix of disappointment and awesomeness (Godzilla 2014) to a legitimately awesome monster movie (King of the Monsters) will have been more than worth it. I'm SUPER excited to see these iconic monsters being given a huge budget Hollywood treatment.

@RogerRoger I don't enjoy Tom Cruise as an actor, but I do appreciate how engaged he is with his own stunts.

Now if someone could just convince him to leave that criminal cult he's in...

@RogerRoger Honestly, even if you are planning to see the film, have a look for the behind the scenes helicopter stuff. Actually bonkers!

@Ralizah Yeah it was Kick Ass, forget his name, Aron something?
I really would have been fine with it but for the forced 'human perspective'. From the early promo stuff, I thought the other Kaiju was going to be Rodan, but I'm glad he wasn't wasted for it. I'm glad they used generic ones to start off now.

I still quite like GINO (Godzilla In Name Only, the popular Japanese term for '98) as a film. But it's not proper Godzilla.

Have you seen Godzilla Final Wars? Highly recommended if not. I'm yet to see Shin Godzilla, but it very much on the list.

Also, as if The Dark Knight is ten years old!

@KALofKRYPTON I had the opportunity to see Shin Godzilla in theaters but didn't. I'm regretting that decision now.

Final Wars is actually one of the few I haven't seen before, although I do of course know about wonderful little scene where Zilla shows up and gets wrecked in less than a minute by the true King of the Monsters.

Regarding Godzilla 98... everything about it was generic and forgettable. They even cribbed material from Jurassic Park. It's a part of the 90's I never want to revisit. Not that it's the worst movie with the name "Godzilla" (not by a long shot... Godzilla's Revenge, Son of Godzilla, I'm looking at you guys: thanks for introducing and establishing a worse kaiju than Godzooky )

A lot of the old Godzilla films struggled to balance human drama with monster drama, so I can't really blame Gareth Edwards too much for falling into the same trap as so many Japanese directors. It takes major skill to make a proper Godzilla film.

I need to revisit the classics, as I've not watched them for... more than 10 years? It has been a long time.

I distinctly remember my favorite movies in the franchise, though, and how I would rank them:

1) Godzilla (OG, because c'mon! Powerful metaphor, haunting imagery... a true classic of cinema)
2) Godzilla vs. Biollante (This film is BRUTAL, or at least I remember it being that way; darkest Godzilla film I've ever seen, and with one of the coolest villains. I remember it having a good balance of human and monster stuff in it)
3) Godzilla vs. Destroyah (One of the only movies that has brought be to tears over the death of a monster; this one was emotional, epic, and climactic, and Godzilla looks really, really neat in his final hours, with his steaming, radioactive body. Also some cool thematic callbacks to the original)

@KALofKRYPTON @Ralizah Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the dudes name in Godzilla and Kick Ass.

@Ralizah I tend to tie GINO to Deeper Underground, I'm pretty biased towards Jamiroqaui to be fair 😂

Do check out Final Wars. It really is a blast, and somehow manages to fit in one of the best motorbike chases on film! It also has a really terrible, but entertaining English dub.

Totally agree on vs. Destroyah!

@JohnnyShoulder That's the one!

@Kidfried I mean, at least Beck kinda had no choice - he was born in to it 😂

If I remembered correctly, I think the director already said that unlike Godzilla (2014) the monsters will get more screen time in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Personally, I liked Godzilla (2014) way more than Kong: Skull Island. The story was okay I guess, but I honestly didn't like the human characters in the latter.

I also found Shin Godzilla to be quite boring.:/

Regarding Tom Cruise, that scene where he broke his ankle and continued to stay in character to complete the take...O_O A lot of other actors would've probably yelled, "Cut!".

Just finished watching Upgrade. Thoroughly enjoyable film. Recommended!

A Blade movie might be coming to MCU's Phase 4.

Also Men in Black 4 is also slated for a 2019 with both Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson starring.

@WanderingBullet Hmmm - I'm not sure I can get on board with a kid-friendly Blade film. The first two are really great films.

I can get on board with MIB though - certainly with Tessa Thompson. Her and Hemsworth were great together in Thor, and while MIB 2 is best left unmentioned 1st and 3rd still hold up.

@KALofKRYPTON Loved the first MIB movie but the other two weren't so good. That being said, I do like Brolin's impersonation/impression of Tommy Lee Jones, though. Haha, only thing missing is Taika Waititi but the 4th instalment already has a director.

@RogerRoger Yeah, the third one was my least favourite as well.

@RogerRoger Yeah, the third one was my least favourite as well.

@RogerRoger Yeah, the third one was my least favourite as well.

@WanderingBullet Ugh. Pass. Will Smith made those movies for me.

All three were fun, although the first was certainly the best.

@Ralizah I too would love for Will Smith to reprised his role but I think he's currently working on four other movies. I hope they're good though since he hasn't been in good movie for quite some time now.

MIB 2 is pretty awful. Feels like it has an actual cast of 5 people and never really does anything other than a producer mandate of 'like the first one, but more!'.

MIB 3 on the other hand was a thoroughly nice surprise.

The Giver (TNT) - Caught this yesterday afternoon. It had an interesting premise (a story of people fighting to regain human emotion & free will, even though it may weaken the safety of their "utopian" society), but too much was left unexplained, such as there not being enough back story, and the ending didn't make much sense.there's a barrier around the city that dulls it's citizens' humanity, but for some reason it just shuts down if the main character, who is one of the few characters who is allowed his humanity, walks beyond it's border.

Ex Machina (Netflix) - Very interesting watch. A coder for the world's largest search engine company wins a chance of a lifetime to live with a week with the company's reclusive founder. When he arrives he learns that the founder is working on groundbreaking AI technology, but in a very suspenseful film, neither the founder or the AI are quite what they seem.