"don" in the poll is supposed to say "don't want to see it"
SPOILERS: I'll not be intentionally giving away any specific plot points, but you may glean more about the film from my general grievances than you'd rather know right now. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Having just watched the new flick from the (usually stellar) guillermo del toro, I have to say that it did not live up to its potential in my eyes. After having watched the trailers, I didn't feel the movie really grabbed me, and, unfortunately, that impression seemed to extend to the overall film itself.
The characters, which I considered the most important part, mostly fell flat. Partially due to the way they were incorporated into the plot and partially because the majority of the characters felt like derivative anime archetypes. Now, normally I would have no qualms with this, as anime archetypes happen to be my biggest guilty pleasures. The problem here is that the characters were so one-note and understated that the archetype they embodied never got to really shine. It was like watching white bread with anime hair. When they did start to come out of their shells, it was usually in the form of dialogue so stilted and empty that it made the fucking Kaiju look comparatively more well developed. Characters that should have been goldmines of entertainment ended up being introduced and killed off shortly after you forgot they existed. The actually entertaining bits were few and far between and mostly focused on a couple of specific individuals.
The plot itself felt overstuffed and yet also underdeveloped. A lot of time was dedicated to characters that you knew were only shoehorned into the movie because they actually happened to be entertaining. Important plot points were delivered in footnote exposition (mostly by one character), and ended up feeling very detached from what was actually happening on screen. The movie would take time to establish elements or world build, but then rush through things or nearly forget about them altogether. Yet other scenes were painfully slow. They intended to be evocative, but the whole thing was so disjointed and poorly paced that they ended up feeling hollow. It's like they were crossing off a checklist of anime conventions that NEEDED to be included in the film, rather than writing a cohesive plot. It also didn't help that the film ended up playing out like a video game.
Speaking of video games, that was the majority of the action. It looked like a video game. The actual scenes of creative action set pieces and interesting visual effects were diluted by repetitious punching and throwing (why did they keep throwing them? Stop throwing them! Just fucking stab them! JESUS!) *cough* sorry. I remember a few of the Kaiju standing out as being pretty cool in their designs, and one in particular genuinely impressed me. The rest were very meh.
Lastly, the entire thing was extremely predictable despite being so disjointed. Every time a scene started, you wanted it to end so you could get to the next scene in hopes that you might actually be pleasantly unaware of what general plot points were going to get checked off in that particular scene. I could have accepted the predictability much more easily if the movie was actually fun to watch.
This movie was clearly a love letter to farcical 80's anime, but the problem was it never embodied all the best parts of those anime, and ended up just being boring.
sorry if this isn't particularly well written, it's more of a rant really.
anyway, I'm curious about other people's general sentiment towards the film so I threw in a poll
Captcha: ticked off. Oh man, this fucking captcha.
SPOILERS: I'll not be intentionally giving away any specific plot points, but you may glean more about the film from my general grievances than you'd rather know right now. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Having just watched the new flick from the (usually stellar) guillermo del toro, I have to say that it did not live up to its potential in my eyes. After having watched the trailers, I didn't feel the movie really grabbed me, and, unfortunately, that impression seemed to extend to the overall film itself.
The characters, which I considered the most important part, mostly fell flat. Partially due to the way they were incorporated into the plot and partially because the majority of the characters felt like derivative anime archetypes. Now, normally I would have no qualms with this, as anime archetypes happen to be my biggest guilty pleasures. The problem here is that the characters were so one-note and understated that the archetype they embodied never got to really shine. It was like watching white bread with anime hair. When they did start to come out of their shells, it was usually in the form of dialogue so stilted and empty that it made the fucking Kaiju look comparatively more well developed. Characters that should have been goldmines of entertainment ended up being introduced and killed off shortly after you forgot they existed. The actually entertaining bits were few and far between and mostly focused on a couple of specific individuals.
The plot itself felt overstuffed and yet also underdeveloped. A lot of time was dedicated to characters that you knew were only shoehorned into the movie because they actually happened to be entertaining. Important plot points were delivered in footnote exposition (mostly by one character), and ended up feeling very detached from what was actually happening on screen. The movie would take time to establish elements or world build, but then rush through things or nearly forget about them altogether. Yet other scenes were painfully slow. They intended to be evocative, but the whole thing was so disjointed and poorly paced that they ended up feeling hollow. It's like they were crossing off a checklist of anime conventions that NEEDED to be included in the film, rather than writing a cohesive plot. It also didn't help that the film ended up playing out like a video game.
Speaking of video games, that was the majority of the action. It looked like a video game. The actual scenes of creative action set pieces and interesting visual effects were diluted by repetitious punching and throwing (why did they keep throwing them? Stop throwing them! Just fucking stab them! JESUS!) *cough* sorry. I remember a few of the Kaiju standing out as being pretty cool in their designs, and one in particular genuinely impressed me. The rest were very meh.
Lastly, the entire thing was extremely predictable despite being so disjointed. Every time a scene started, you wanted it to end so you could get to the next scene in hopes that you might actually be pleasantly unaware of what general plot points were going to get checked off in that particular scene. I could have accepted the predictability much more easily if the movie was actually fun to watch.
This movie was clearly a love letter to farcical 80's anime, but the problem was it never embodied all the best parts of those anime, and ended up just being boring.
sorry if this isn't particularly well written, it's more of a rant really.
anyway, I'm curious about other people's general sentiment towards the film so I threw in a poll
Captcha: ticked off. Oh man, this fucking captcha.
