Kolby Jack said:
Fox12 said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Fox12 said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Fox12 said:
The 1998 movie wasn't perfect, but at least it had characters. Characters with motivations, and personalities. Who develop.
2014 just had boring white soldier guy number 228848945. I couldn't tell you a thing about him, other then the utterly trite fact that he wants to protect his hot wife and kid. And he doesn't change as a person at all.
The obvious answer is Shin Godzilla.
Something is wrong when boring Soldier guy is more blander than Matthew Broderick.
It's hard to do, but they pulled it off.
I remember Matthew Broderick's chacrater name "Nick Tatapolous"
I don't remember the name of generic soldier guy?
And what is hollywoods issue with casting the most bland actors ever?
Remember the main human character in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes that was not Gary Oldmen?
I assume that they do it because bland=safe. He has no real personality, so he can't offend anyone. His only motivation is that he wants to protect his family, which pretty much anyone can sympathize with. He's white, like the majority of the audience. And he's a soldier, which has the benefits of giving them an excuse to have a hunky leading man, a character that is involved in lots of action, and a character that appeals to all the patriotism nuts. Why have a flawed, interesting protagonist when you can just have milquetoast?
I mean, criticize the 90s Godzilla all you want, but at least the main characters seemed like real, awkward, flawed people. That films worst sin was being kind of dumb and cheesy. Because we all know that the Japanese Godzilla films were never dumb and cheesy.
Meh, I just don't get it. People keep coming in here to say "well at least the 90's Zilla was fun." Was it? What was fun or funny in it? The main character had a doofy last name, and he said "that's a lot of fish" once. There were also the two Siskel and Ebert pastiches who didn't even die despite being there because the director hated them because they said his movies sucked.
All of this just sounds like people being nostalgic for a movie they probably haven't seen in well over a decade and trying to compare it to a movie that came out two years ago. I'm very skeptical any of you 90's defenders are thinking intelligently about this.
I'm not arguing that the 90's film is a great film. I'm arguing that it sucks less then the completely forgettable 2014 film.
The 2014 movie had totally forgettable, cliche'd charactrers. As I've outlined already, they're the type of characters that feel like they've been created to appeal to a focus group. The types of characters you expect to see in a Michael Bay film, except with even less personality. Their motivations are trite, and they don't grow or develop in any way. As for the story, it follows the completely predictable formula one would expect from a Godzilla film. Whereas some films, like the recent Shin Godzilla, try to experiment a little bit, the 2014 one felt like it was just going through the motions. A bad alien shows up, so now Godzilla has to fight it for some reason before going back to sleep in the water. At least in the original film he served as a symbol for nuclear destruction. What does he represent here? Why does he even exist? Who knows. The whole film feels like its just a setup for giant monster battles. The problem is that the weakest part of the film is the character drama, and that makes up 95% of the movie. You could argue that the movie was just an action series, but it even failed in that regard. They'd set up some big fight, and then you'd just see a cut up version on a television. When the final battle finally arrives, it's a dull and boring as the rest of the movie. Godzilla wrestles around with some dumb bat things, breathes fire once, and walks off. It's about four minutes of action, it's spread out, and it's not even very good. I didn't like Pacific Rim, but at least it had a handful of decent action scenes. The movie was painfully mediocre in some areas, and flat out bad in others. The closest we come to an interesting character is the eccentric, deranged father. He was a sympathetic character. It would have been interesting to see him develop his relationship with his estranged son throughout the film. Instead they kill him off at the beginning of the movie. So, I'm curious, in what areas do you actually think this film succeeded? Because I felt like it failed in every category, even as a dumb summer block buster.
Compare this to the 1998 Godzilla. It wasn't a great film, but it had characters. They had motivations. They had flaws. They changed as the story developed. Nick was a fish out of water that had to rise to the occasion. He was also naive and a pushover. Audrey wanted to be a reporter, but she had to overcome sexism in the workplace. She was flawed because she had commitment issues, and because she was willing to stab people in the back in order to get what she wanted. Victor was too brash to get a story. As for Godzilla, unlike the 2014 version, he felt like he was constantly the center of the film. Even when he wasn't on screen it felt like he was a constant presence. Furthermore, while it doesn't make as much sense as in the Japanese version, he still represents the dangers of nuclear weapons. He represents humanity paying for its mistakes. There's also some environmentalist stuff in there. Furthermore, Godzilla feels like an actual character that the audience can feel sympathy for.
Admittedly these are the absolute basics of film making, but the movie does at least strive to meet a certain standard. That's more then I can say for the 2014 version, which was potentially the blandest film of the year. The 90's film, while heavily flawed, had character arcs, character flaws, character motivations, and a clear central focus. The 2014 version lacked all of these things, and was a lesser film for it.
EDIT: And I'll say this as well. Some flaws are endearing, whereas others are just painful. The delightfully doofy characters of 1998 zilla are dumb, but somewhat adorable. Godzilla hiding in a sky scraper, or living in the tunnels, or laying eggs in a sports theater are stupid, but at least they're a groan worthy stupid. There was absolutely nothing interesting about the 2014 characters or events.
