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That last part is especially striking.
These are tragic epics, and thats the source of their awesomeness.
We knew long ago that it would come to this and here we are, watching cities burn.
The MonsterVerse is the Fuck around and find out of blockbuster film series.
Theyre Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns, interpreting Godzillas atomic soliloquies as he struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
The first MonsterVerse entry is 2014sGodzilla.
drove them back up.
The film also introduced Monarch, the seriess answer to S.H.I.E.L.D.
and the Avengers Initiative: a secret international agency of scientists and military officials tasked with studying thekaiju.
In retrospect, complaints that the human characters are insufficiently developed seem misguided.
The hatchings of MUTOs are associated with strip-mining and nuclear fission and other crimes against Mother Nature.
Godzillas follow-up, 2017sKong: Skull Island, is a WTF????
pivot: majestic, nutty, and irreverent.
Fuck around and find out, guys.
Environmental destruction doesnt just trigger the awakening of the beasts from Hollow Earth.
It forces humans to choose sides.
The parents are Monarch researchers.
The viewer has to make the case for why theyre actually wrong.
There are no good guys or bad guys, only competing interests.
One of them is, What is good and evil?
Same with Kong inSkull Islandand the new movie.
Ghidorah and Godzilla are competing alpha predators, as the film makes clear.
If Godzilla had died, theyd be pledging allegiance to the dragon.
Their guiding sensibility is more marble than Marvel, more Old Testament than New.
Bad for property values, good for the ozone.
Doing Toho proud, the Legendary monster flicks are more pointedly political than other Western franchises.
The margins of these films were stuffed with secondary and tertiary allusions.
Godzilla in this movie is a demonic shape-shifter with dead-fish eyes and glowing red gills.
Much of the films action is a send-up of Japanese bureaucracy with jokes in the spirit ofDr.
When Godzilla appears in Tokyo Bay, the government starts by deciding which department has to deal with him.
The plot ofGodzilla 2000is obsessed with DNA extraction and moral as well as physical lineage.
Godzilla is once again recognized as a manifestation of human destructiveness.
Godzilla exists in us, an official says.
Godzilla vs. Kongexpands on that idea.
Demian Bichirs industrialist is perfecting a cyborg assassin powerful enough to destroy thekaijubecause hes in denial about the future.
These films are mainly concerned with information delivery and fan service.
The Westernizedkaijufilms are a level up.
