Apparently EMPs can turn off combustion engines now.
And apparently EMPs do not wipe floppy disks despite the ability of a fucking fridge magnet to do so.
And if you're going to try to use terms like "alpha predator", remember that terms like that necessitate eating your god damn prey after killing it, not just hunting for sport. Yes, Godzilla brings "balance" but he's not even part of the fucking food chain.
Also why the hell did they all open their parachutes so late during the HALO jump? The HALO sequence was beautiful, right up until the point when they got to the city and were all "Hmm, maybe I should wait until I've nearly hit the ground to open my 'chute." "We lost some men on the skyscrapers" says the team leader. No shit, maybe that's because you forget that HALO jumps are for going under radar, not just for the hell of it!
EMP's can kill a car's internal computer, and when that goes down the whole car basically ceases to function. While almost none of us ever know it, there is a surprising amount of electronics in modern vehicles.
As for the disks, probably yeah =P I'm more surprised they even had computers that could *read* the floppy disks.
The alpha predator bit was a little poorly handled, yes. They made it seem more like hunting, when it seemed, to me, to be more of a territorial dispute. Godzilla showed about zero interest in eating the mutos, he just didn't like them strolling around his territory. This wasn't a lion hunting a gazelle, this was a lion killing the hyenas who've snuck into his territory to hunt his gazelles. They did explain it poorly though, yeah.
My impression was that their HALO jump was more for speed than anything. HALO jumps aren't just for beating radar, they're also the fastest way to get something from a plane to the ground, since you spend most of the time at terminal velocity and only pop your chute at the last moment. The military uses what are basically HALO tactics to deliver supplies in the field. I believe most HALO jumps pop their chutes between 3000 and 2000 feet, with 1500 being around the bare minimum you can pop and still get your reserve chute deployed if you have to (if you don't care about your reserve chute, you could potentially risk popping lower too). The tallest buildings in San Fransisco are between 600 and 800 feet tall, so that's not actually all that far above the skyline really. But in the end, I think it was mostly for a cool looking scene too, yeah.
EMP's can kill a car's internal computer, and when that goes down the whole car basically ceases to function. While almost none of us ever know it, there is a surprising amount of electronics in modern vehicles.
As for the disks, probably yeah =P I'm more surprised they even had computers that could *read* the floppy disks.
The alpha predator bit was a little poorly handled, yes. They made it seem more like hunting, when it seemed, to me, to be more of a territorial dispute. Godzilla showed about zero interest in eating the mutos, he just didn't like them strolling around his territory. This wasn't a lion hunting a gazelle, this was a lion killing the hyenas who've snuck into his territory to hunt his gazelles. They did explain it poorly though, yeah.
My impression was that their HALO jump was more for speed than anything. HALO jumps aren't just for beating radar, they're also the fastest way to get something from a plane to the ground, since you spend most of the time at terminal velocity and only pop your chute at the last moment. The military uses what are basically HALO tactics to deliver supplies in the field. I believe most HALO jumps pop their chutes between 3000 and 2000 feet, with 1500 being around the bare minimum you can pop and still get your reserve chute deployed if you have to (if you don't care about your reserve chute, you could potentially risk popping lower too). The tallest buildings in San Fransisco are between 600 and 800 feet tall, so that's not actually all that far above the skyline really. But in the end, I think it was mostly for a cool looking scene too, yeah.
Ah, I see. I was actually referring more to the boat, but that explains why they went to the effort of showing him turn on the GPS autopilot rather than just throw the throttle down. I just assumed that if the electronics went down, the engine would simply continue, but that's my ignorance of how it all works.
And they also showed a massive USB dongle when the Japanese fella was looking at the floppy data, which was a strange bit of consideration given that they just ingored the EMP/floppy thing.
I'd find that a bit easier to swallow if a) Land was Godzilla's territory at all or b) the MUTOs were some sort of threat to Godzilla's food supply, but neither was really true. The MUTO's existence really had no effect on Godzilla; they occupied different parts of the planet. I would have preferred some sort of "Godzilla feels threatened" sort of explanation, given that they did both nearly wipe him out at the end. Maybe they could have said something about him going after the hive/nest? Iunno.
Oh, yeah that makes sense. Makes a little less sense when you remember that literally the only guy available who can possibly disarm the nuclear warhead is part of the squad too, but oh well
Overall, I did enjoy the movie, but that was only the first and last bits. After Cranston's death and before San Fran gets shithoused was just kind of a holding pattern. Some more MUTO fighting would have filled the gap quite well.
Hell, the entire movie was pretty bad, but the ending just didn't have anything 'good' enough to redeem it.
Godzilla in his own movie, is almost entirely useless: The three or so times he fights the 'Male' Muto by himself, despite the first attack he does is chomping onto it's dammed head, cannot kill it. Hell, he doesn't even visually scratch the creature until he kills it with a iron girder by tail whipping it.
Good job, 'Zilla, you suck ass as a predator. You had it dead to rights but you don't kill it. You let it get away. Hell, you even bring the other one into the fight instead of killing it. Then you get your ass kicked for about four minutes, where you should have died, then get saved by Derpy McMarine in his one moment of actual relevance in the entire movie that didn't even need him.
I also enjoy how your atomic breath is hilariously useless against the Female, you didn't even char it's exterior for the thirty seconds you blast on it. You just kinda ignored it until you decided to blast down it's mouth because it was taking five minutes to stare longingly at Derpy McMarine or the bomb instead of, doing what it did for the rest of the movie, and just killing and taking what it wanted.
Also, the fuck is this 'Balance' that Godzilla is supposed to uphold? We've taken over the world and changed every ecosystem we've touched, but apparently this hasn't actually changed whatever 'balance' he's supposed to uphold. Also, if Godzilla can actually hear the mating calls of the creature, (Which it's putting out for 15+ years) Why doesn't Godzilla ever just walk up to the cocoon and rip it in two?
Fun Fact: Godzilla's first appearance in this movie, he racks up a larger kill count then the male Muto does in the entire movie.
Square-cube law aside (If I'm to accept the fact the creatures can apparently grow and gain mass simply by absorbing radiation, I'm going to just assume their physiology is such that: A. they do not require oxygen or conventional sustenance, and B. have or can develop bodies tough enough to withstand proportionally increased physical stresses), it was a pretty great monster film. I'm not usually a movie person, but I liked it.
The human characters (wow, seeing them take a lot of flak here) were simple and well portrayed in my opinion. This is a Godzilla movie, so I took the lead character simply as a framing device with which to view Godzilla and/or Godzilla-like events. To that end, I was not disappointed. I got a guy who just wanted to get back to his wife and son when suddenly GODZILLA AND/OR GODZILLA-LIKE EVENT HAPPENS! This happens two, three, maybe four times in a row, with varying degrees of guy, wife, and son, and then we call it a film. Hooray!
But let's crack the can open and look a little deeper, shall we? We got the son who at age 6 or whatever watched his family probably die as their workplace collapsed around them through a school window. He grows up and moves on, and then becomes Mr. Average. He ends up saving the day and getting re-united with Mrs. Average and Average Jr.
He is not compelling.
Luckily for him he gets caught up in events that, when taken as a comparison, are significantly more compelling. Crafty directors, being all "eyy, here's your protagonist for you! Don't get too invested, because we've got some Godzilla on the way!" Could we have just cut out the middleman and did only the Godzilla bits? Who knows? Probably not, we've got a budget and we've gotta hire us some lead actors to justify said budget!
Then we've got the father. Hoo-boy. Crackpot conspiracy theorist who turns out to be right. What giant monster or apocalypse film would be complete without one?
I've gotta give the film props for giving him a personal motivation. Even more so for actually showing us the tough call he had to make: shutting the door on his wife to contain a reactor leak, and then having her come up to the window to say goodbye. They both understood the situation, and that it was the right call, but dang. As a thought exercise, imagine yourself doing that to your loved one.
Joe Theorist, as a character, really needed that to get the ball rolling. And then he spends his entire life trying to recover what he was on the verge of figuring out, and the world won't let him. It's a key premise and they delivered it solidly enough.
Then there's Dr. Serizawa, our Japanese Godzilla expert. He was there when Joe was in custody and tearing his heart out, and he just watched. The man who lost his wife to... something. Something that got covered up and forgotten. And he knew. And Serizawa knew he was right.
We're later treated to him showing the admiral a pocket watch from Hiroshima, symbolic of his personal stake in all things Godzilla (and Godzilla-like events): he lost his Father there. Combined with the in-universe knowledge that the bomb "tests" in the Pacific were to fight Godzilla (and/or Godzilla-like events), I think the implication is that, just like Joe, he lost family to an atomic incident involving Godzilla-like events that was later covered up by the government and media as something else.
I'm just really fond of characters who know the overarching truth to a story.
Giant monster fight time!
I like the EMP touch, it almost kinda justifies the lack of sheer military might thrown at the problem.
I still think we could have just shot the MUTO through with a Railgun and called it a day. The EMP has a range of, what was it, five miles?
Yeah, we could easily shoot 'em from outside the dead zone with a mach 7 projectile. I mean, we know from the fact that one of them got impaled on a skyscraper that they can be pierced given enough kinetic energy. Apply a railgun projectile launched with a few megajoules to a few square feet of its flesh, and Bob's yer uncle. Didn't even need to use the boat nuke, did we?
But limiting the US Navy's arsenal only to things that can't stop the monsters made for a nice, dramatic fight choc-full of atmosphere, a sense of scale, a sense of direction, and all around excellence. And it gave Godzilla a purpose for being there.
End of the day, I'd say it was a great film for showcasing a fantastic giant monster battle.
The finale was great. It was worth the price of admission for me and I've been watching Godzilla movies since I was 7, and now I'm 32.
Yeah it had too much human junk. What was funny is that I talked to my mom over the phone a day after I saw it, and then I told her that I liked it, but I felt that it took a bit too long for Godzilla to come out, and she said "Yup, that's what I remember the Godzilla movies you and your brother used to watch were like."
Square-cube law aside (If I'm to accept the fact the creatures can apparently grow and gain mass simply by absorbing radiation, I'm going to just assume their physiology is such that: A. they do not require oxygen or conventional sustenance, and B. have or can develop bodies tough enough to withstand proportionally increased physical stresses), it was a pretty great monster film. I'm not usually a movie person, but I liked it.
The human characters (wow, seeing them take a lot of flak here) were simple and well portrayed in my opinion. This is a Godzilla movie, so I took the lead character simply as a framing device with which to view Godzilla and/or Godzilla-like events. To that end, I was not disappointed. I got a guy who just wanted to get back to his wife and son when suddenly GODZILLA AND/OR GODZILLA-LIKE EVENT HAPPENS! This happens two, three, maybe four times in a row, with varying degrees of guy, wife, and son, and then we call it a film. Hooray!
But let's crack the can open and look a little deeper, shall we? We got the son who at age 6 or whatever watched his family probably die as their workplace collapsed around them through a school window. He grows up and moves on, and then becomes Mr. Average. He ends up saving the day and getting re-united with Mrs. Average and Average Jr.
He is not compelling.
Luckily for him he gets caught up in events that, when taken as a comparison, are significantly more compelling. Crafty directors, being all "eyy, here's your protagonist for you! Don't get too invested, because we've got some Godzilla on the way!" Could we have just cut out the middleman and did only the Godzilla bits? Who knows? Probably not, we've got a budget and we've gotta hire us some lead actors to justify said budget!
Then we've got the father. Hoo-boy. Crackpot conspiracy theorist who turns out to be right. What giant monster or apocalypse film would be complete without one?
I've gotta give the film props for giving him a personal motivation. Even more so for actually showing us the tough call he had to make: shutting the door on his wife to contain a reactor leak, and then having her come up to the window to say goodbye. They both understood the situation, and that it was the right call, but dang. As a thought exercise, imagine yourself doing that to your loved one.
Joe Theorist, as a character, really needed that to get the ball rolling. And then he spends his entire life trying to recover what he was on the verge of figuring out, and the world won't let him. It's a key premise and they delivered it solidly enough.
Then there's Dr. Serizawa, our Japanese Godzilla expert. He was there when Joe was in custody and tearing his heart out, and he just watched. The man who lost his wife to... something. Something that got covered up and forgotten. And he knew. And Serizawa knew he was right.
We're later treated to him showing the admiral a pocket watch from Hiroshima, symbolic of his personal stake in all things Godzilla (and Godzilla-like events): he lost his Father there. Combined with the in-universe knowledge that the bomb "tests" in the Pacific were to fight Godzilla (and/or Godzilla-like events), I think the implication is that, just like Joe, he lost family to an atomic incident involving Godzilla-like events that was later covered up by the government and media as something else.
I'm just really fond of characters who know the overarching truth to a story.
Giant monster fight time!
I like the EMP touch, it almost kinda justifies the lack of sheer military might thrown at the problem.
I still think we could have just shot the MUTO through with a Railgun and called it a day. The EMP has a range of, what was it, five miles?
Yeah, we could easily shoot 'em from outside the dead zone with a mach 7 projectile. I mean, we know from the fact that one of them got impaled on a skyscraper that they can be pierced given enough kinetic energy. Apply a railgun projectile launched with a few megajoules to a few square feet of its flesh, and Bob's yer uncle. Didn't even need to use the boat nuke, did we?
But limiting the US Navy's arsenal only to things that can't stop the monsters made for a nice, dramatic fight choc-full of atmosphere, a sense of scale, a sense of direction, and all around excellence. And it gave Godzilla a purpose for being there.
End of the day, I'd say it was a great film for showcasing a fantastic giant monster battle.
About that Square-cube law thing, how would you say real world scientists would react to creatures that fly in the face of it? Because you just know it's going to come up in future installments.
I stand by my initial thoughts, it was like a cooking programme where the camera is constantly on the chef, but I am glad that so many of y'all liked it. Makes me hopeful they'll do another one.
About that Square-cube law thing, how would you say real world scientists would react to creatures that fly in the face of it? Because you just know it's going to come up in future installments.
Well, no. I don't know that. As a matter of fact, I think the opposite: they'd be wise not to mention it at all. It's something that separates fiction from reality, and while it would be fun to try to explain away, the better path would be to just ignore it and enjoy your work of fiction.
I mean, you could say Godzilla has bones made of an unrealistically tough density, or that none of the creatures use oxygen the way we normally do, but conventional flight and lift generation is a pretty constant real world issue regardless of biology.
Small birds can fly even without extensive wingspans, because the sqaure-cube law dictates they will have an extremely tiny volume proportional to their height. Hummingbirds have tiny wings that they can beat rapidly to achieve a masterful flight capability with little effort. Large birds of prey, like eagles, need to be built like muscular powerhouses with dominating wingspans and still find it easier to ride thermals to attain great heights.
The MUTOs? ...yeah. "It shouldn't be airborne but it is" just about covers it. You can't say they have an unrealistically light density to get airborne, because then they would be torn to shreds by helicopter fire and would be as threatening as a ball of tissue paper.
The only thing I'm coming up with is to say they somehow found a way to manipulate the amount of force gravity exhibits on their body (or in other words they have biological anti-gravity powers). And that's really just substituting the issue; picking and choosing which phenomenon you want to have no known explanation for.
Square-cube law aside (If I'm to accept the fact the creatures can apparently grow and gain mass simply by absorbing radiation, I'm going to just assume their physiology is such that: A. they do not require oxygen or conventional sustenance, and B. have or can develop bodies tough enough to withstand proportionally increased physical stresses), it was a pretty great monster film. I'm not usually a movie person, but I liked it.
The human characters (wow, seeing them take a lot of flak here) were simple and well portrayed in my opinion. This is a Godzilla movie, so I took the lead character simply as a framing device with which to view Godzilla and/or Godzilla-like events. To that end, I was not disappointed. I got a guy who just wanted to get back to his wife and son when suddenly GODZILLA AND/OR GODZILLA-LIKE EVENT HAPPENS! This happens two, three, maybe four times in a row, with varying degrees of guy, wife, and son, and then we call it a film. Hooray!
But let's crack the can open and look a little deeper, shall we? We got the son who at age 6 or whatever watched his family probably die as their workplace collapsed around them through a school window. He grows up and moves on, and then becomes Mr. Average. He ends up saving the day and getting re-united with Mrs. Average and Average Jr.
He is not compelling.
Luckily for him he gets caught up in events that, when taken as a comparison, are significantly more compelling. Crafty directors, being all "eyy, here's your protagonist for you! Don't get too invested, because we've got some Godzilla on the way!" Could we have just cut out the middleman and did only the Godzilla bits? Who knows? Probably not, we've got a budget and we've gotta hire us some lead actors to justify said budget!
Then we've got the father. Hoo-boy. Crackpot conspiracy theorist who turns out to be right. What giant monster or apocalypse film would be complete without one?
I've gotta give the film props for giving him a personal motivation. Even more so for actually showing us the tough call he had to make: shutting the door on his wife to contain a reactor leak, and then having her come up to the window to say goodbye. They both understood the situation, and that it was the right call, but dang. As a thought exercise, imagine yourself doing that to your loved one.
Joe Theorist, as a character, really needed that to get the ball rolling. And then he spends his entire life trying to recover what he was on the verge of figuring out, and the world won't let him. It's a key premise and they delivered it solidly enough.
Then there's Dr. Serizawa, our Japanese Godzilla expert. He was there when Joe was in custody and tearing his heart out, and he just watched. The man who lost his wife to... something. Something that got covered up and forgotten. And he knew. And Serizawa knew he was right.
We're later treated to him showing the admiral a pocket watch from Hiroshima, symbolic of his personal stake in all things Godzilla (and Godzilla-like events): he lost his Father there. Combined with the in-universe knowledge that the bomb "tests" in the Pacific were to fight Godzilla (and/or Godzilla-like events), I think the implication is that, just like Joe, he lost family to an atomic incident involving Godzilla-like events that was later covered up by the government and media as something else.
I'm just really fond of characters who know the overarching truth to a story.
Giant monster fight time!
I like the EMP touch, it almost kinda justifies the lack of sheer military might thrown at the problem.
I still think we could have just shot the MUTO through with a Railgun and called it a day. The EMP has a range of, what was it, five miles?
Yeah, we could easily shoot 'em from outside the dead zone with a mach 7 projectile. I mean, we know from the fact that one of them got impaled on a skyscraper that they can be pierced given enough kinetic energy. Apply a railgun projectile launched with a few megajoules to a few square feet of its flesh, and Bob's yer uncle. Didn't even need to use the boat nuke, did we?
But limiting the US Navy's arsenal only to things that can't stop the monsters made for a nice, dramatic fight choc-full of atmosphere, a sense of scale, a sense of direction, and all around excellence. And it gave Godzilla a purpose for being there.
End of the day, I'd say it was a great film for showcasing a fantastic giant monster battle.
About that Square-cube law thing, how would you say real world scientists would react to creatures that fly in the face of it? Because you just know it's going to come up in future installments.
If I had to guess, I would say that due to the massive growth rate, the muscles are also acting as weight support in a way. I mean, if radiation can safely be used to catalyze ATP formation for cell division and general activity, I could expect evolution of secondary support features such as secondary bones used to dissipate stress
or maybe it's just a kaiju movie and we should just sit back and enjoy the fights
About that Square-cube law thing, how would you say real world scientists would react to creatures that fly in the face of it? Because you just know it's going to come up in future installments.
Well, no. I don't know that. As a matter of fact, I think the opposite: they'd be wise not to mention it at all. It's something that separates fiction from reality, and while it would be fun to try to explain away, the better path would be to just ignore it and enjoy your work of fiction.
I mean, you could say Godzilla has bones made of an unrealistically tough density, or that none of the creatures use oxygen the way we normally do, but conventional flight and lift generation is a pretty constant real world issue regardless of biology.
Small birds can fly even without extensive wingspans, because the sqaure-cube law dictates they will have an extremely tiny volume proportional to their height. Hummingbirds have tiny wings that they can beat rapidly to achieve a masterful flight capability with little effort. Large birds of prey, like eagles, need to be built like muscular powerhouses with dominating wingspans and still find it easier to ride thermals to attain great heights.
The MUTOs? ...yeah. "It shouldn't be airborne but it is" just about covers it. You can't say they have an unrealistically light density to get airborne, because then they would be torn to shreds by helicopter fire and would be as threatening as a ball of tissue paper.
The only thing I'm coming up with is to say they somehow found a way to manipulate the amount of force gravity exhibits on their body (or in other words they have biological anti-gravity powers). And that's really just substituting the issue; picking and choosing which phenomenon you want to have no known explanation for.
Well, if the MUTOs are able to use radiation to catalyze cell processes like ATP generation, I think they could discharge some of the excess energy to produce a force counter to gravity.
Issue is that, from a biology point of view, the radiation used in reactors and weapons is ionizing which means that it may be high enough energy to produce a hydrogen gradient but I can't think of any methods to prevent the energy from interfering with DNA or proteins. As for the wings, think about how some armors work, they use alternating layers of materials to counter different threats, it may be reasonable to assume that the wings on the MUTO consist of ordinary skin with webbing of Keratin or some sort of elastic protein to maintain structure and an outer layer of chitin for impact protection
Yeah, i get bored so thinking about stuff like this occupies my day
This line of criticism never made sense to me. Yeah, you see military quite a bit in this movie, but every single time (except for the small group of soldiers at the end) the military tries to get involved in this movie they make the problem worse. By the end I wanted them to butt out already before they kill everyone in the city (they almost did). The boats near the bridge fired on Godzilla and nearly killed everyone stuck there. The movie clearly made the military look retarded.
OT: I liked the movie for the most part. Bryan Cranston's character was really good in my opinion, I'm just sad he got the boot so quickly. Yes, the military family story was entirely too convenient and didn't add much to the movie as a sub plot, but it wasn't awful. IMO Bryan Cranston teaming up with the Japanese scientist would have made a far more interesting human sub plot *shrugs*. All would have been forgiven though if they had simply let me watch the monsters fight during those scenes when they abruptly cut away.
I really like the direction they are going with this Godzilla reboot, but I really hope the next one is better.
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