In Which I Discuss the Second Godzilla Trailer…

The second Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer has dropped.

This trailer gives us some addition information, not all of it good.

We clearly see the emergence of Rodan, King Ghidorah and Mothra. Of the three, Mothra is the clear beneficiary of the Legendary CGI treatment, Rodan looks actually less likely to be able to fly than his Toho predecessor, more like an inflatable pool toy. King Ghidorah, meanwhile looks like, well, a CGI King Ghidorah- which is not to say he is bad, but how do you improve on arguably the fiercest monster design of all time? Less head flailing I suppose, but that kind of made him endearing in a Kermit the Frog sort of way.

For the record, the official tag from Legendary and Warner calls him “King Ghidorah”- perhaps as a result of the licensing agreement, but I prefer just calling him Ghidorah.

There appears to potentially be some additional monsters (I might have seen that wrong)- possibly red shirt MUTO monsters that will be tossed aside in some sort of Mortal Kombat (or dare I say Godzilla: Final Wars) style march to the boss (Godzilla himself).

So far, this movie is dutifully following the Godzilla mythology, movie 1: Nebulous Possibly Bad Guy. Following movies, let’s juxtapose him in a twist and make him the Good Guy- no one will expect THAT.

The premise of this film is suspect (which, ironically, allows it to fit nicely into the Franchise), in that “Oh, we found a couple. OH MY GOD,  now it’s RAINING MONSTERS!”

MUTOS are apparently sayonara (except for the aforementioned glimpses) as Legendary was able to secure the rights to Toho’s additional monsters. Let’s be honest, I could be off with that- after all, this is a trailer, and MUTOS won’t sell tickets. Not a bad thing, but clearly telegraphed and comical. Gareth Edwards is also sayonara as he was working on Rogue One and apparently decided he was too whatever to work on the sequel movies.

The REAL problem so far with these movies for me (admittedly a selfish observation), is that I already own them, from each of the ’60’s, ’80’s and ’90’s. Add in the “Young person apparently emotionally attached to Godzilla” and I imagine I could edit this movie together from 3-4 of Godzilla’s past adventures. The CGI is not so far improved from the special effects employed by Toho’s last set of movies that it makes up for the sheer repetitiveness.

Ken Watanabe again get’s the zinger line, which is a good thing.

And finally, the last scene, of Godzilla “sprinting” at Ghidorah- I admittedly was a critic of lethargic over-the-hill Godzilla that seemed ready to check out- this made me think Godzilla was that pet lizard that you prod along with your finger to get him to move… oh boy.

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