Godzilla: King of the Monsters had a bit of a marketing kick a few weeks ago, culminating in a trailer just like last time, and just like last time, I want to talk about it, because this film is continuing to look absolutely amazing, and I'm continuing to be the happiest little creature on Earth that the movie I've wanted to see most of all in my life is actually getting made and is just six excruciatingly long months away, and that trailer, oh we'll get to that, but as before, we have to round up all the shit that's lead to this point, so let's begin another round of worshiping.
Since my last post about this film, I've been keeping up mostly with other stuff, mainly Battlefield V and Doctor Who, all the while playing Red Dead Redemption and going back on a Transformers kick ahead of Bumblebee, which I've since watched four times and am currently madly, obsessively in love with. But I did buy the last currently available NECA Godzilla figure that I didn't have; the burning Godzilla from Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah, and I got a Netflix account in that time as well, and naturally watched the Polygon Pictures produced Godzilla anime on there. I did review of those films on the blog after watching them, but if you haven't read them, I thought both of them were shit; both of them had things I liked, but both of them wasted all of their potential, both of them were incredibly boring to watch, and had the most uninteresting and dull interpretation of Godzilla I've ever seen, giving Shin Godzilla, a film I've gradually come to dislike also, a run for its money. That, however, has very little bearing on my thoughts towards King of the Monsters, a film coming not from Toho but from Legendary, the studio that's already given us one belter of a Godzilla film and one kind of decent Kong film, not to mention Pacific Rim, sequel notwithstanding. While it also saddened me that Gareth Edwards wouldn't return to direct the sequel, that sadness melted away upon the release of the first trailer, which was a visual feast that teased some awesome monster goodness. Edwards' approach to Godzilla was something I personally really dug but that opinion is not unanimous; the film was also hated by a lot of people for reasons I understand to some extent. But the first trailer for King of the Monsters seemed to be doing away with that approach and taking a more old school one instead, which I both like and dislike; dislike because that means the subtlety of the first film will be lost, and like in the sense that Fuck Yeah giant monster smackdown, Ghidorah and Godzilla kicking the piss out of each other for two hours. Like most men, I never really grew up, I'm still a big dumb excited kid that loves those old monster movies, just now I'm bigger and more cynical, with a pinch of bitterness. So despite Toho really dropping the ball with their last three, probably four shots at Godzilla in my eyes, I'm still very much looking forward to Godzilla being back on the big screen.
It all began with Tokyo Comic Con, an event which Godzilla: King of the Monsters was going to be present at, obviously, and rumours were plentiful as one would expect; there was going to be a trailer, Godzilla toys were going to be unveiled, and the classic monsters were finally going to be shown to the world for the first time in their modern, Hollywoodised glory. Just like before, a still was released ahead of the show that depicted Godzilla looking like he was ready to break things, which naturally lead to anticipation that the next trailer wasn't far behind. Some of those things ended up happening, no trailer sadly, but there was a teaser and they played a clip of Bear McCreary's score for the film, a rendition of the classic Godzilla March by Akira Ifukube. A crappy audio recording of the song leaked online and when I heard it, it reminded me a bit of what they did with the soundtrack of the 2017 Ghost in the Shell film; different but instantly recognisable. There was also a toy reveal, with a giant statue of the new Godzilla shown off alongside the S.H. Monsterarts figures of the four classic monsters; Godzilla, Ghidorah, Mothra and Rodan, and three of them looked exactly how I'd expected them to. Godzilla is still the same, minus the subtle changes like the more Showa inspired new spines, and Rodan hasn't really been Hollywoodised at all apart from his smaller head, and while Ghidorah is much leaner now than he was in the Japanese films, he's still unmistakably Ghidorah, which is amazing. These three redesigns are all amazing in my opinion, and while the S.H. Monsterarts figures look amazing, they're a bit out of my price range, so I'll have to settle with NECA's toys, which have yet to be revealed. But S.H. Monsterarts unveiled four toys, yet I've only talked about three, so what did they do to Mothra? What indeed, because Mothra's redesign is the most substantial by far, with a vastly smaller body and head than in the Toho films, a much less pronounced face and longer, meaner looking legs, with the front pair looking more like claws. This is a little surprising, what with how little the other three monsters were changed in their journey Stateside, but it does stay in line with the design philosophy of those other three, making them look more natural and animalistic, while also making them look meaner and more deadly, Mothra is simply that philosophy pushed to the extreme. She's been redesigned to look more like an insect, she looks less like Mothra but more like a real world moth, which don't have the massive bodies and tiny legs that Mothra had in the Toho films. The pictures released of the toy fail to do the design justice in my opinion, since I've watched the trailer and now know what she looks like in the film.
Oh yeah, the trailer, that happened. I was surprised that it wasn't released at Tokyo Comic Con, it instead premiered at the Brazil Comic Con before going public a day later, with the Monarch twitter page releasing three little three seconds teasers in the build up to its release. When I checked my YouTube subscriptions after finishing work and saw the trailer in my notifications, I might have done a little excited dance in the car park in front of my co-workers. I'd wanted to wait until I got home before watching the trailer, but I instead watched on my phone on the walk home, and then I watched it again, then again, then I got it up on my TV when I got home, then I watched it again. All in all, I've probably watched the trailer about forty times by now, and that's the honest truth, but why would I not watch it a million times, it's an awesome trailer. I had expectations going into the trailer, chief among them being that the trailer wouldn't show much, that like the first, there'd only be brief glimpses at the monsters, but holy shit was I wrong, because this trailer holds nothing back. The first leg of the trailer shows us stuff we've mostly seen before; the Monarch teaser with Millie Bobbie Brown and the cameraman, only now without the cameraman and with other shots of death and mayhem spliced throughout, Rodan flying over that town from the first trailer, a load of dead fish, and the shot of a decimated Washington from the first trailer, now from the view of a cockpit and with Ghidorah's shadow ominously visible in the storm clouds. Then we get a Doom teleporter sound, which is exactly what that sounds like, and the trailer instantly shifts gears. The very next thing we see is a jaw dropping shot of Rodan climbing out of a volcano, which kind of sets the tone for the rest of the trailer, lots of Jaw dropping visuals and lots and lots monsters. And can we just dwell for a second on how fucking cool that shot is, Rodan's awakening is a scene I can't wait to see because this trailer and the last trailer make it look like one of the coolest scenes in the film. The trailer sets up a very clear dichotomy, one that establishes our heroes and villains, before giving us an incredibly creepy and incredibly awesome reveal of Ghidorah, something that looks like a splice of the finale of the film and his awakening in the Antarctic, another scene I'm desperate to see. Something about the way this trailer sounds is just ace as well, with ominous, rumbling music and a sound that I can only assume is some kind of roar, and once the trailer really kicks into high gear, the thunderous drumbeat of the music combined with the sheer epicness of the visuals is just something special.
It's also in this last leg of the trailer that we get our best looks at Ghidorah and Mothra. Mothra looks much better on screen than she did as a toy, a visual heightened by her roar, which doesn't sound very Toho, but does sound amazing, as does Ghidorah's roar, which also doesn't sound very Toho. And there's a close-up of Ghidorah firing his Gravity beam, oh yes. The standoff shot with Godzilla and Ghidorah looks like a painting, perfectly displaying the sheer size of the two monsters, with a flash of lightning to emphasise the force of the two monsters, it's beautiful. Seeing Rodan doing a barrel role is also a badass visual, but of what we've seen so far, I think Rodan's just going to be a badass in every scene he's in, which is very different to his last onscreen appearance; at the bottom of the body pile after Godzilla kicks the piss out of him, Anguirus and King Caesar in Final Wars. But if we want to discuss badass visuals, then the last ten seconds of this trailer are where it's fucking at, I literally can't watch this ten second bit without my heart rate going into triple digits, in fact, they showed this trailer at Cineworld in the trailers for a screening of Aquaman, and I probably pissed the entire cinema off with my pounding foot and repeated, growled fuck yeahs. This must be quite some bit then, and indeed it is, even people who aren't interested in this film at all have told me how cool that final shot is as Godzilla and Ghidorah charge at one another and clash, which you know is a final battle shot, and holy shit is it awesome. I honestly can't put it into words, Godzilla charging, Ghidorah charging, the music, the lightening, (which is blue behind Godzilla and yellow behind Ghidorah, interesting observation) and how the trailer hard cuts to the title while the pounding drumbeat just keeps pounding, I honestly can't explain how that makes me feel. It also shows definitively that Godzilla can look big while also moving like a freight train *cough* Anime Trilogy *cough,* the speed really adds to ferocity of the clash, and perfectly accompanies the music. We already knew that Legendary had a better grasp on portraying Godzilla's size than at least Polygon and also debatably Toho, a Godzilla that's massive and threatening, but also proactive and aggressive, one that actually uses his arms. Speaking of Toho, there've been rumors that Legendary has more monsters than they'll admit to, which might be possible, but it's also possible that they don't, or that they do and won't announce or reveal it until the film releases, either way, we're not finding out until May, but the trailer does give us a glimpse at some other monsters besides the big four; a big crab thing rising out of the desert, and a mountain moving by itself in what I assume is the United States. This would make sense as there are three Titans in mainland America and two in the Middle East according to the Monarch sciences website, so we're getting our first look at two of them here, not that there's much to see; one's a bunch of legs and the other's a mountain, but so far, the Monsterverse's monsters have been crazy, and how ever many new ones they're cooking up for this film, I'm sure they'll all be just as weird and cool as the MUTO's and Skullcrawlers.
This trailer really is something, but it's also a trailer that makes a promise to the audience, and that promise is monsters, lots and lots of monsters. Do I doubt that King of the Monsters will deliver on that, no, there really isn't a spin on this one, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is shaping up the be the best kaiju movie America has ever produced, and the way I see it, at worst the film could turn out like Kong: Skull Island, a passable film with awesome Kaiju action. But when we're talking about Ghidorah, Rodan, Mothra and Godzilla, four of the most famous kaiju in history, coming to the big screen with hundreds of millions of American dollars behind them, that really is all the film needs to deliver on for a majority of people, and even if the human story is pathetic, if they then deliver on the big four, I'll love the film regardless. Speaking of delivering on the monsters, a new poster dropped before the trailer released. It was of Godzilla, obviously, and also featured a really good look at his new spines, as well as Millie Bobby Brown for some added star power and sense of scale. I and many others thought nothing of this outside of it being a cool poster, but then three more were released that each depicted a star monster, and two of them gave us our best looks at that monster yet. Like Godzilla's poster, there's nothing remarkable about any of these posters, none of them give us anything that we haven't seen before, they just show off the Monsters, but god damn are they cool posters. I particularly like the Rodan poster for its volcanic, chaotic visuals and its fiery colours, but the poster also proves something that we've known for months, that Rodan hasn't changed at all, he's still a giant pterosaur with a mean arse beak and a spiky belly, and as someone with an immense amount of affection for Godzilla and his many foes, I am in love with this film's Rodan. The weakest poster is actually the Mothra one, since it doesn't really show us much of Mothra herself, just her stupidly big wings, while Ghidorah's is just big and cool and creepy, everything it should be for the Destroyer of Worlds. These are four brilliant posters though, as weak as Mothra's is, and they'll all be going on my wall as soon as I have my hands on them, God knows where I'll put them though, don't really have a patch of wall big enough for four massive movie posters side by side. To be honest, expanding our horizons from just the posters, I'm stunned that the marketing is being so open about the monsters; the marketing of the first Godzilla didn't even show the MUTO's and the closest we got to knowing what they looked like before the film were the Bandai toys, then in rolls the sequel and its marketing with the modesty of a porn star and the grace of, well, a porn star, this is a weird analogy. To be fair, I did say that if the marketing suddenly gave us everything, I wouldn't complain, and how can I, the film's still months away and I will take anything I can get. Yet I at least expected that Ghidorah wouldn't be getting the stoplight in the marketing, because surely they'd at least want to keep that a surprise, yet the trailer ends with Godzilla and Ghidorah clashing, so what the fuck do I know.
I'm very late to the party as usual but I'm sure you knew someone as hyped for this movie as I am wouldn't just keep his mouth shut about a new trailer, and what a trailer it was. There's nothing new to say at this point though, you already know that I am more excited about this film than I've probably ever been about a film, in fact I'm almost entirely confident that at some point between now and the film's release I will die of a lightning strike or Liopleurodon attack or some other freak event, because I am that excited and the universe is that much of a bitch. to tell the truth, that's probably not going to happen, and I'll be walking into that cinema wearing my brand-new Godzilla Tshirt that a friend got me for Christmas, as well as the world's biggest and most insufferable smile, I doubt they'll let my take in my twenty-four inch Godzilla toy though, that'll be pushing it. so roll on 2019, and my most anticipated film of the year and probably of my life.
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