Godzilla
We rented Godzilla vs. Megaguirus last night. Okay, okay. I snuck it into our Netflix queue and squealed with delight when it arrived. Melissa went off and re-arranged socks in the bottom drawer in Solomon's room or something. Anyway, this was to be the first opportunity for Solomon and I to bond over monster movies. Unfortunately, I seemed to have picked the worst Big G film of the bunch.
Now, some will argue that all of the Godzilla films are crap. My wife, for one, but she endulges me by keeping most of her comments to herself. When it gets too much for her, I just ask if she'd like to wait out in the car until the film is over. Which, not surprisingly, is only funny if you get the right tone to your voice.
So, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. Awful, awful, awful. And I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to monster flicks. Not only is the Godzilla suit an odd knock-off which is so uncomfortable that the guy in the suit can barely move, but the wire work with Megaguirus is, well, visible. I'm willing to suspend a lot of belief -- "Dude, there is no way a 30-ton butterfly can knock over a 40-ton reptile" -- but the rigidity of the monster models are just so hard to watch. It's hard to believe that modern effects could build a film this Corman-esque.
Godzilla's All Out Monster Attack is the other side of the coin. While a lot of it takes place at night, thereby obscuring some of the more obvious scale model bits, the added CGI is very nicely done. That one's a keeper (and actually I subjected my in-laws to it just the other night). It's a strange counterpoint to Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (these two are two-thirds of the Alternate Reality version of the Big G) which is so clearly on a different budget.
I'm going to have to track down a copy of Destroy All Monsters. Eight monsters trash the world's capitals before descending on Tokyo for a no-holds barred slug fest. Now that's the sort of monster film that I want my boy grow up on. I did, and I still have very fond memories of that film.
Stomp Tokyo is your one stop link to all things Godzilla.