FRIDAY BOX-OFFICE: Godzilla is King

[faefrost]

I actually had no strong feelings either way about Godzilla, except that it took me the better part of twenty minutes to place where I had seen the male lead before.

I actually Heard a rumor that Del Toro was interested in making that happen if Godzilla was successful. I kind of doubt it is true though.

The continuity gymnastics required to _make_ it work, to force both concepts as they exist currently into the same film, would essentially kill everything that made each film worth seeing.

On the flip side if they just... make a film with Godzilla and a few familiar elements of Pacific Rim and don't bother to really spend too much time forcing both ideas into one... it could work.

Well here's the beauty in it. Godzilla is at heart a Japanese property. They have no concerns regarding continuity gymnastics the way we western types do. In fact their take on continuity is "because", mixed with a healthy dose of "we thought it would be cool". Why is Godzilla fighting Wolverine while dressed as Batman? See above. I think the best example of how insane this sort of thing can get with no one blinking an eye is the last Japanese Godzilla movie, Godzilla Final Wars. If they can justify making that, then shoehorning in Pacific Rims stuff is a no brainer or light weekends work.

 

[Gorrath]

I'm glad Godzilla did well because I love me some Kaiju, but the film itself was pretty bad all things considered. The awesome, awesome monster scenes were buried underneath ten tons of rubble from a plot so nonsensical that I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I was going to throw a chair at the screen if they cut away from the monster fight one more time to show wooden, characterless soldier guy or his wooden, soulless family one more time.

 

[tdylan]

Despite all of the problems I had with this latest 'Godzilla,' I do want it to be successful. That finale was awe-inspiring, and if there's even the smallest glimmer that we can see more of that, I'm all for it.

What worries me about that kind of thinking is that the folks making the calls aren't going to give us more of the finale. Instead they'll look at the movie as a whole and think:

"What the people want is more of THAT. Build up around boring characters, inane dialogue, mind-boggling decision making, and then throw a little bit of something spectacular at the end. Just tease the hell out of it all movie long."

Think about it, if Godzilla as is, is successful, why change the formula? No one will look at it and say "that worked, but let's try going a different route." It's like Call of Duty: "Well that one was successful. So let's just keep making that."

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

People forget the original was more about the people, not the monster. Godzilla in that movie was akin to a Tsunami or Tornado. He was a force of nature. Wasnt till the sequels when he became the star and fought other monsters. So in movie terms, Godzilla 2 will be a fight fest like no other.

 

[tdylan]

Snip

Hollywood filmmaking is not the same as Triple-A game development, period. Comparitively, there's a lot more space and creativity.

Also yes, maybe it's a crapshoot. But, one can reasonably assume that people like Gareth Edwards have a measurable amount of control of this new franchises future. It wasn't a film by committee like 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2.' There's also a lot of room for this series to grow and improve, and who wouldn't want that?

I get you. I'm just worried that people will see any success and say "do that again." For example, isn't Pirates of the Caribbean 5 in the works? And The Lone Ranger was made because someone thought "get Johnny Depp to do his Johnny Depp thing. It'll sell like gangbusters." Isn't here another Alice in Wonderland coming out as well? Tranformers is another example. "Hey! That first one sold, so just keep doing more of that." And like Transformers, Godzilla was more of a background character in its own movie.

 

[Baresark]

I'm not really surprised to be honest. Not much was going on this weekend afterall. That said, while I felt Godzilla could have been better, but also think it was really awesome. The scenes with the monsters were just incredible. It suffers from an average story, Aaron Taylor-Johnson's part was just not written well and managed to be the most boring part of the film. The best actor, in both my opinion and that of my girlfriend (who is getting a Masters in Theatre), was Elizabeth Olson. She did really really well in her part and pulled off some pretty darn tough scenes like a champ. I feel that she was largely ignored because she played second fiddle to a really boring lead character.

That said: I wonder if people were expecting Oscar caliber anything in the film. It was a mistake to not concentrate more on the Muto/Godzilla aspect of the movie, no doubt. But the human aspect of Godzilla movies has always been extremely boring. I feel like they made the same poor decision with human aspect that they did with the Transformers films. IIRC, they thought that no one would want to watch a movie just about Transformers and not have a human character for the audience to associate with. That is, by and large, the main complaint in the transformers films and the complaint here again, even from major film critics. Maybe that will start to change with reviews basically hating the human story while simultaneously applauding everything that involved the monsters.

Also, Neighbors was a damn funny movie. It deserves the spot it currently holds, IMO. I just think it's funny when people are like "it looked like trash". You have little to say of its spot in the box office when you did not even bother seeing it. It wasn't perfect, but as someone who loves comics, it deserved to knock ASM2 out of first place. And Godzilla definitely has earned it's number one spot based on what is currently out there.