Michael's Movie Grade: B-
Pure dumb fun action movie spectacle that is best seen on the big screen.
Most of you are familiar with Martin Scorsese's criticism of Marvel movies where he compared them to theme park rides. While I disagree with this when it comes to Marvel films, this comparison is completely apt when it comes to a movie. However, this is not really a criticism here as this film works well as just this. Getting out of this movie I felt like I had been on a really good ride at Universal Studios. The visuals and action scenes here are amazing. This film takes a real sci-fi turn early on, and it works fantastically. The whole sci-fi world is simply incredible to look at. The sheer amount of detail in each moment in this sci-fi atmosphere helps make this an incredible visual treat. The action scenes are also great and the climatic one is a pure thrill ride. Director/writer Adam Wingard (who also directed Godzilla VS. Kong (2021)) is a huge fan of these characters and his passion is truly felt in these action scenes. It can also be felt in the scenes between Kong and his son (?), as there is a lot of pantomime moments here that shows the filmmakers truly understand these characters. I always have respect for purely visual storytelling and these moments to this quite well. This movie also benefits from a great villain who feels like a real threat to our heroes (even if he does kinda look like he could be a boss in a Donkey Kong Country video game). However this pure visual spectacle does mean that this movie will lose a lot on the smaller screen when it comes out on Blu-ray and streaming. In fact this is a movie that needs to be seen on either IMAX or Dolby to actually experience it.
While comparisons to last year's Godzilla Minus One (2023) may not be fair, it is interesting to note the completely different approach to the human characters. In Godzilla Minus One the human characters were the heart of the story, giving us a powerful emotional drama. In this film however they are simply stand-ins for the audience. They are watching the monster action and commenting on it, while we see it through their eyes. While I prefer the Godzilla Minus One approach, this works well enough. There is little depth to these human characters, but they serve their purpose and do it well. There are a couple moments where there is some attempted drama between the human characters, but these are few and far between. This is probably for the best as those moments are the weakest in the film.
The main flaw with this movie is the first act. This first act mostly consists of clumsily delivered exposition. Not only is this exposition delivered in an awkward way, but it also simply is not very entertaining. Luckily the movie gets much more fun as it goes along. The movie also has some very weak comedy moments.
This is not a great movie, but it is a very fun one.
No comments:
Post a Comment