3 June 2019

So We Should Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb?

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After seeing a few trailers, and being a fan of the director's previous work, I remember going fucking nuts for the new Godzilla film in 2014. If I was to compare being a movie fan to being on drugs then it was like being one of those nutters on bath-salts as I manically gobbled up every new trailer like it was the face of an innocent fucking tramp. On its release I therefore remember my initial impression of the film being that it was a little bit like the first time that I'd ever managed to get off with someone. Not because it was a mess and over far sooner than I'd expected but rather because despite having enjoyed the experience, I had probably gone in with my expectations a little too high. My life hadn't been changed the way I'd been led to believe that it would have been, but there are worse ways to kill time. I imagine I also made that comparison as a way of subtly reminding people that I have had my end away in the past and should like to be considered for any events of that nature in the future. Please. Watching Godzilla is still like having sex for me, but mostly because it's rare that I manage to get it on and even when I do, it probably means that I'm bored and having a quiet night to myself. However, nothing could quite have prepared me for sequel 'Godzilla: King Of The Monsters', which I saw the other day. If I were to compare this new film to getting laid too then it was like being invited to an orgy in which the most attractive people on the planet are said to be attending. Except when you get there it's just a creepy scout leader tugging himself off as an old lady projectile shits into his face. I didn't like it and it fucking stunk.




The film begins with Vera Farmiga and her daughter Eleven from Stranger Things using some sort of device to piss about with a giant moth in a secret base. And when I say a giant moth, I mean a giant moth. It must have been a thousand times bigger than any normal moth and at least twice the size of one that I once saw my Mum crush with a slipper about twenty years ago. I was a child at the time and I saw her smush it so slowly that its guts exploded out of its arse hole and hit the window a few feet away. That memory still fucking haunts me and now that I'm thinking about it I think I'm going to be fucking sick again. Anyway, this device that Vera Farmiga has becomes integral later on because it's actually capable of speaking to, waking up, and attracting these huge titans that are lying dormant on our planet. Imagine that it's an ice-cream van and that the monsters are like chubby little children and that'll give you an idea as to how unbelievably well that they can hear its call and how fast they end up running towards it. Unbelievably well, I say. Almost as though it stretches any real credibility when you give it even a second's thought. Sadly, Farmiga and Eleven get kidnapped with their machine because Charles Dance wants to use it to wake up all of the monsters in order to destroy most of humanity. I can empathise with him, to be honest. Apparently, this is an act of eco-terrorism which was a term I'd only previously understood as being when your babecue costs more money because you've been guilted into inviting a gang of fucking vegans.

To cut a long story short, the monsters all wake up, Godzilla has a fight with them, millions of people die, and I'm secretly jealous of the peace they must now feel. Of course, 2014's Godzilla wasn't the best film ever made but this sequel is like following up Citizen Cane with Ernie Buys A Fucking Newspaper. For a start, it looks like a piece of shit, with the action sequences being about as a clear to follow as a ghost in the fog when you've got jizz in your eyes. I imagine. But the characters here are also so unbelievably two dimensional that even if you'd died in a parachute accident then you'd still be able to describe them as being pretty fucking flat. Ken Watanabe's character exists to simply end each scene by saying the word “Godzilla” in an attempt to inject a little awe. Kind of like if you've just asked me which fictional character I think will have a penis that's about the same size as mine. Then before answering I slowly walk over to the window, pause for a second whilst looking out, and then calmly whisper the name.. “Godzilla”. Sally Hawkins plays his sidekick who quite literally fucks off about twenty minutes into the movie and is never mentioned again. I can only guess that this was at the point during filming in which The Shape Of Water started doing well at the Oscars and she figured it'd be more trouble for her career if she continued to turn up to this work. Charles Dance's character meanwhile simply spends the movie exasperated and asking Vera Farmiga, “what are you doing now?” as though he's the living embodiment of the phrase “bored out of his tits”.

There's another character in all of this too that I won't spoil for you that is essentially like a 'ditsy Hitler'. They've decided to initiate a global genocide, except that the gravitas of the situation only occurs to them once people have actually started to die. In which case they walk about the film looking a little disconcerted as though they'd unintentionally farted into a dog's sensitive nose and are now worried that its owners will work out why it's puking up the fucking walls. Not that a character's internal logic or motivation should be expected from this film, with the story having more obvious holes than you'd find in a flesh-light factory. I'll ignore asking who funds the monster-watching organisation Monarch when their technology must cost billions and we know it's not the Government. But I did wonder if there was a particular reason as to why every member of their staff was a fucking idiot. At one point a new monster appears to which a Monarch worker says, “Do you know that tropical storm that appeared when we lost the three-headed monster? Well, it's changed direction and is heading towards that new monster too”. I mean, what?! The very second Monarch lost a three-headed monster, a tropical storm just turns up and nobody thought to check it out? What were they even doing to look for the three-headed monster? Just flying around aimlessly, playing with their bollocks, and checking fucking twitter?

Later on, a Monarch agent says, “You know that three-headed monster? I reckon it might be an alien”, to which another agent says, “that would explain how it can control the weather”. How does that explain how it can control the weather?? For a start, you're just assuming that it's an alien and since when did we just know that aliens can control the weather? When was that a fact? Was the training day for these monster hunters to just watch Independence Day and then fuck about until home time? There's another character that's obsessed with his “hollow Earth theory” but honestly it's the organisation's fucking hollow brain problem that I'd be more worried about. Not that the eco-terrorists are any better. At one point they're screaming about their mad plan of unleashing the giant monsters whilst stood in front of a microphone. For some reason, that microphone is turned on and connected directly to a speaker in the room in which Eleven is being kept. I don't know why? But because she doesn't like their plan she decides to run into the room, slyly steal the monster-speaking ice-cream-van-like machine and run off with it. Because you would definitely leave the device that's so pivotal to your evil plan unguarded and on a table wouldn't you? I mean that's like us winning the war because the Germans accidentally left the instructions for their Enigma machine on the fucking bus. To make matters even worse, Eleven is surrounded by eco-soldiers that are carrying machine guns when she's up to this mischief. What is their job if not to guard that one fucking device or keep an eye on that one unruly child? Has somebody brought some fucking cheese into work that day and all of these crazy eco-bastards all just running about trying to decide if it's got fucking dairy in it??

Also, the plan of the eco-terrorists is to allow the monsters to kill enough humans that we can live in harmony with the world again? But populations tend to double every generation or so meaning that this cull would be relatively short-lived. Did they not research that? Plus isn't it just humans that they want to kill off? Because these monsters are not only so big that they trample everything in their paths but they're burning the shit out of everything with their various fire powers as they fight each other. You think it's hard to get a panda to have sex now? Try getting it in the mood to bone when its bamboo forest has gone up in flames because you woke up a fucking dragon. Not only that but these creatures are so radioactive that we actually see huge skyscrapers melt in seconds simply because Godzilla has walked past them. Almost nobody will survive in a world with these creatures as it is but even if the massive fuckers decide to go back to sleep before we're all dead then those left alive will have tumours the size of a fucking watermelon in their brains. Not that I imagine that any of this has been thought through either because even the most basic message of the film seems pretty fucking confused. There's no doubting that we're destroying the planet with our way of life and yet the people who are actually worried about this are the idiotic bad guys. Let's not forget that Godzilla was originally a metaphor for the A-bomb and the destruction that was done to Japan during the war. In this film, Godzilla is our secret radioactive weapon that we deploy when we need to annihilate our enemies. So overall I'm getting that anybody who cares about the environment is a mad bastard lunatics that threatens our superior way of life but we don't need to worry because we can all just worship the fucking bomb.

And if you don't think that 'worship the bomb' is the message of this movie then why is Godzilla depicted as being like fucking Jesus? At one point we're told that he's dead only to be told later on that he's actually not and has committed a miraculous resurrection. They don't explain how he's still alive when we were literally shown that he'd kicked the bucket by a computer that was tracking his vitals. So I guess we'll just put that one down to the idiots at Monarch not knowing their arse from their elbow again shall we? However, the most confusing moment in terms of the Jesus thing comes about when Godzilla quite literally walks on water. You might have seen the image on the posters too but he basically stands in the sea, leans his head back and breaths his blue fire/plasma breath thing into the sky. Except that when you watch the film it's not actually the sea in which you could assume he's in the shallow end but actually the ocean. We know that where he's standing is miles deep because we've just been sending submarines down to visit him on the sea bed. Now if there is some Christian subtext going on here in which you want us to view our nuclear weapon as being the son of God, which is obviously a weird fucking choice, could you at least make it a little more subtle? Because your metaphor shouldn't end up distracting from the surface level story. When Godzilla was stood on top of the ocean I was so confused that I almost said out loud, “What the fuck is he standing on?!” Does he actually have giant legs like a fucking flamingo? Are his toe-nails made out of fucking armbands? Or is this film just a massive pile of wank? A collection of scenes, images, words, and noise that bear no relation to each other as though pulled out of a fucking hat? Because as disaster movies go I can honestly confirm that this one truly is a disaster. Thanks for reading motherfuckers, and see you next time.  


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