What if we made a dull, lifeless remake of The Thing with dull, lifeless CGI and dull, lifeless characters and dull, lifeless writing. Okay, that’s not totally fair. The CGI is sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny bad, and one of the characters is played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She’s not written any better than anyone else, mind you. She’s just played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, so, that helps.
Wait, does that actually make this worse? I think that might actually make this worse.…
“You don’t wanna hurt anybody!”
Yeah, I know most people would probably go with the extremely obvious/iconic “nobody trusts anybody now and we’re all very tired” if they were gonna open with a quote. And it’s for sure one of my favorite lines in the movie, too. But there’s a couple times MacReady is deescalating and says “you don’t want to hurt anybody,” and it’s just weirdly meaningful to me. I believe the kids would say I vibe with it.…
“Please doctor, I've got to ask this. It sounds like, well, just as though you're describing some form of super carrot.”
The first time I saw this I gave it quite a bit of leeway because having already seen the 1982 version felt kind of unfair. A rewatch unfortunately didn’t bear that out. It’s not just that the 1982 version is better, this is… just kind of not great? It feels much longer despite being over 20 minutes shorter, likely…
I managed not to cry as much this time. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
There are a lot of big picture things I like better about the Shōwa era, principally the painting of Godzilla with a more unambiguously heroic brush after his face turn. Godzilla does have something of a face turn in the Heisei era continuity in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, but even in this film which definitively closes the book on…
I was really, really hoping revisiting this would improve my opinion of it, but sadly no. This is just too slow and uneventful, and has by far the worst version of Godzilla Jr. in the Heisei era. At least he spends most of the movie in gay baby jail.
This is just so disappointing after the way Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II knocked everything out of the park.
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Check out my compilation of Heisei era kaiju movie reviews on my blog, 24,000 Miles to the Moon!
Okay wow I’ve been sleeping on this one.
This has some of the best fights in the series, and I’m not just saying that because I’m hella gay for the first fight where Godzilla literally chokes and stomps on Rodan??? But like… it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Hmm? Sorry, got distracted.
Speaking of me being gay for kaiju, this version of Mechagodzilla is a drastic improvement over the Shōwa era one. He might be the best version of Mechagodzilla? I’ll have…
“King Shark is a shark!”
When I was a more serious superhero fan, I considered the MCU the gold standard for live-action superhero movies, and the DC Universe Original Movies the same for animated superhero movies. It’s not difficult to see why. And I don’t think it’s out of line to say that the storytelling of the DCAMU was heavily inspired by the MCU. (If I wanted to be out of line I would say the DCAMU is drastically better,…
“I don't blame those among you that fear me, for you've been taught to fear all your lives. And if you learn nothing else today, learn this. We in the Soviet Union do not oppose the citizens of the United States. We only oppose the government that oppresses you. Our sole desire is for peace and equality among all men.”
I mean, you knew I'd have stuff to say about this one. Let's not kid ourselves.
To dispense with the…
"Everyone gets to decide what they want to do with their life. I might not succeed, but this is what I choose to try."
Omg a Wonder Woman movie about her, y’know, just being Wonder Woman and stuff! We do get an abbreviated origin story crammed in there because of course we do, but it's used to establish the purple healing ray and her relationship with Vanessa, so I'll allow it.
This one sees Diana take on quite a few…
“We’ve done this dance for a long time. Too long. Aren’t you at all curious?”
I’ve been a Batman/Catwoman shipper since before I knew that shipping was a thing, so obviously I loved this. The movie makes a few departures from the comic to fit it in with the DCAMU continuity, but I think it does a pretty great job of adapting the spirit of the comic. The only change I disagreed with pretty strongly was using Bane instead of…
I haven’t seen much of the Justice League cartoon series from back in the day, just the multi-part origin episode and a few other scattered episodes here and there. So this didn’t mean as much to me as any of the Batman: The Animated Series revivals they’ve done for a few of these. Heck, even if I had seen more of the series, I doubt it could’ve meant as much, but you know what I mean.
On that note, I…
It was basically impossible to be a kid who liked superheroes in the 90s and not know about at least two storylines: Bane breaking Batman’s back, and Doomsday killing Superman. I was a much bigger Batman fan, so I read basically all of Knightfall and Knightsend, and bits and pieces of Knightquest. The Death and Return of Superman, though, I only really read the issue where Superman actually dies and a few issues of Reign of the Supermen. I also…