10 Takeaways from Godzilla vs Kong

It’s was the mash, it was the monster mash. It was a box office smash. Despite theaters still handling Covid restrictions and wary audiences Godzilla vs Kong was a welcomed decent hit. The film itself was pretty meh, and forgettable. Here’s what I took away from the kaiju fight movie. Spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

1. Black Alex Jones

Everyone’s major complaint is Millie Bobbie Brown’s storyline being completely boring and useless. So I wanted to just…add on to that. It’s so pointless, and irrelevant. It’s just here but it also weirdly decides to paint a Black Alex Jones as a hero. I mean you could just say that he’s a fanatical podcaster but they couldn’t help themselves as they make a bunch of conspiracy theorist jokes.

It’s weird that this guy is pretty much Alex Jones, like you know if Godzilla was a thing Alex Jones would make it into some Anti-corporation conspiracy right. I don’t like that Millie Bobbie idolizes this guy. She’s also weird, she even completes his sentences. Like he’ll say “putting chemicals in the water” and she jumps in excited like “to turn the frogs gay”. Shouldn’t the message be, don’t follow a demagogue blindly. I thought you know at some point maybe Millie Bobbie would realize oh like this guy is just crazy. I didn’t like this plotline at all.

2.Realism?

Some people are championing the realism of this movie and yes, but also what? The level of detail on Godzilla, and Kong are marvelous. They are a technical marvel and the do feel king of real, they don’t seem too much like a computer generated effect. I think the detailing and team effort of the effects team is certainly praise worthy.

A picture of the Hong Kong skyline, beautiful but not exactly completely neon. [credit Wikimedia Commons user Base64, retouched by CarolSpears]

That said realistic? Hong Kong looks like a laser tag area. Interestingly enough, Hong Kong does have a lot of neon lights, and bright colors that in some pictures of it reflecting on the water it does look unbelievable. still think the film took creative liberties with the amount of glowing buildings. Godzilla and King Kong both stand and jump on aircraft carriers. I’m no expert but I believe that carrier should become a submarine, if it had to support that much weight. It’s realistic detailing, the film itself is very absurd. There’s a jungle in the middle of the earth that sometimes you need a magic space wormhole to go through and sometimes you don’t and of course in the center of the earth it is appropriately day time. A nice sun shiny day, you know underground.

3.Kong’s Character Arc

Good on the movie giving Kong sort of an arc. Instead of just being a big monkey, he’s a big monkey that wants to go home. The conclusion of Kong finding his own domain, and accepting Godzilla’s reign over his. Kong is actually a character in a way, he emotes you care about his journey. Unlike Godzilla who is really just an obstacle to Kong’s journey home.

For some reason for Godzilla, it’s just on sight. He’s senses Kong and he’s ready to go beat his ass. Kong actually learns to communicate, and have a weapon and actually goes from one place to another which I find more entertaining than a big lizard out for blood. I know they had some guidelines of what they could and couldn’t do with Godzilla but still he’s kind of barely in the movie. Since everyone who was on Team Godzilla in the film was crazy and unlikeable it was hard to really root for him unless you were a prior Zilla fan.

4.Jia

Easily the best character the film has to offer. Jia the sole survivor of Kong Island, who is a deaf girl who sympathizes with Kong and wants to help him not be sad. The representation of a deaf character was neat, it was nice that it was worked into the plot in a way that enhanced both her and Kong’s character and she was the emotional background of the film. You got that she actual had a friendship with Kong and were hoping to see him find a sense of home or not get laser beamed down.

5.Lazy characters

Okay let me try it. There’s this guy named Ted and his dad died. Do you like Ted, is he a good character? What do you mean I have to do more than give them a name and a sad dead family member backstory. Why would I write personality, or motives or anything when I can just say there cat died, and get some empathy points.

Disney is a terrible offender of this but just in general, stop killing random people we’ve never meet before and asking us to care. Unless it is super relevant to that character, their arc or the theme/message of what you’re trying to write if I hear Uncle Johnny died and now I’m sad, I immediately go, “shitty screenplay. bad writer”. It’s a cheap and lazy tactic which just shows you don’t have any trust in your ability to write engaging or sympathetic character. It doesn’t effect anything, and this movie has the audacity to be shitty enough to do it multiple occasions.

6. 5 out of 5 Scientist Hate This

This movie is just filmed with technobabble nonsense, and you can tell there was no consultant for any of this and they just explain things to the audience that sounds scientific. For better or worse, the movie is written by like an 8 year old, so the science doesn’t make any sense. They stick plastic tubes into a dragon skull and that extracts the DNA, but also somehow uploads the consciousness of a dead dragon into a robot. What?

Nothing in this movie makes any sense. The physics don’t make any sense, Kong and Godzilla jump on ships and sometimes the sink down and sometimes they stay afloat. They fly space crafts into the center of the earth which is like an alien planet instead of like molten iron or whatever it’s supposed to be down there. Honestly, who cares but yeah there’s nothing keeping your belief in suspension so just enjoy the big punches I guess.

7.Bad Guy and His Mecha Godzilla

I couldn’t tell you the antagonist name, I could tell you anyone’s name for that matter. I kept calling them Kyle Chandler, Neil Patrick Harris guy, AOC, and Sandra Bullock turned down this role lady. So evil guy was just kind of the evil guy. Which was kind of a shame because as someone who saw Godzilla as a destructive monster, I was kind of on board with maybe having a Godzilla that is controlled by humans. Let’s be real, the military in these movies are always worthless fodder so I support humanity using technology to strive to be better.

This movie thinks nuance is a female fragrance or something because there is none of that here. He builds his Mecha Godzilla and that’s all he’s really there to do. He dies so I guess he shouldn’t have tried to play God-zilla. He services the plot, and that’s it. I mean at least since he’s one dimensional he kind of just disappears for most of the movie until we need Mecha Godzilla to be complete. At least he didn’t have to have a progress report scene were they tell us at what percent Mecha Godzilla was at. Could you image a movie so awful where it just wasted time repeating the same scene over of a phone call were the villain reports that he’s still working on his evil scheme but he made progress we the audience are already aware of. That would be just plain stupid and redundant.

8. Winner/Outcome

Was this ever really a question? One of them is a very sacred character which I believe is something along the lines of an allegory of conquering destruction, and the resilience of the Japanese people overcoming the devastation that was the atom bomb. Their perseverance becoming their great strength and protector of the nation. Some consider the other to be an allegory fear mongering the mixing of races and the prejudice of a shackled large black figure stealing away the white woman. I think they just wanted to make a big monkey movie, but that interpretation does exist.

Plus if you think of battle tactics, Godzilla’s long range, advantage in the ocean, armor like skin was always going to be more difficult to take down than Kong. Of course I enjoyed the film’s conclusion of both sort of finding their own domain with Kong getting to reign over the underworld and really being the MVP of the Mecha Godzilla fight with more of an assist from Godzilla. It’s of course enough to keep both fandoms satisfied so not much to complain with from either side.

9.Monsterverse?

More Monsterverse movies? No for me, but I think Warner Bros. made a nice case to continue the monster showdowns. The movie is fun, and it does get you excited about the potential of fights against other Kaiju all of which have distinctive designs, and legacies. I just don’t have the personal investment in it, and I would find it hard to up the ante from this film. I think Godzilla and Kong would have to be brought back further down the line, and unfortunately I don’t feel there’s another huge contender to put on the marquee to carry it’s own film.

That’s the thing about the Superhero genre is that each hero has some distinct elements, they’re still fully fleshed out characters, and it’s the brand itself that sort of adds legitimacy to their big screen status. I think they should just say screw it, and give us a giant monster battle royal or tournament. Who cares how logical it is, just give us more monsters and more punching.

Bring in Mothra, bring in maybe the Rampage monkey, bring in Gargantua. Who cares, just make it a total smackdown. Of course you can bring back Kong and Godzilla but put someone new over. Could be cool if you do something unexpected, have like Gamera win and push him as the face of the next movie. Gamera would work as a new protector and then you give Godzilla a new angle as he has to reclaim his title as Alpha, This leads into a Godzilla and Gamera movie where you get a Gamera vs Godzilla first half and an epic team up in the final half with Gamera dying to save some children (apparently an in character thing for him to do) and have Godzilla avenge him by beating this threat and reclaiming the title of alpha.

Have fun with it, just turn it into box office monsters WWE, and I’m sure they’re be an audience fully down for that.

10.Mothra Pregnancy

Black Alex Jones had something about it so we got to get to the bottom of this. How did Mothra get pregnant? Who’s the daddy? How would Black Alex Jones know this? This was like a really weird Easter egg that I’m sure the 6 people who draw Mothra hentai will have a field day with. Maybe I wasn’t aware but I felt like there was overall a lack of Easter Eggs or teases of where future monster movies could go.

At the end of the day, I’m glad Mothra is doing great and I’m sure she’ll be a wonderful mother or moth-er.

That’s all there is to say about the film. I considered just watching the fight scenes, and yeah that is how I would recommend watching this movie. It’s dumb fun when the big boys punch, but everything else is just meandering.