Switched out Netflix for HBO Max and wow th selection is so much better on Max
If I didn't already have it I'd get Max just for Babylon 5 and Rome the series. All the other movies, shows, comedy specials, and DC shit is just a bonus.
I've had Netflix forever but I can't honestly remember the last time I opened it up to watch something. Usually just flip through a hundred options and then close it to go back to Hulu.
EDIT: what are the must watch series I need to see on HBO Max?
Doom Patrol.
After the first few episodes you might feel it's not very well balanced tone wise but a lot of that is due to them establishing the setting and once it's rolling along the show is really something else.
I don't think Harley Quinn nails it's humor right out of the gate but once it does it's a lot of fun through both seasons
The first half of Exterminate All the Brutes is heart wrenching to the point where I've only managed to watch half of it over the last three weeks.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
All the suggestions before me are great if you haven't seen them, besides Rome my two favorite HBO exclusive series are Deadwood and Carnivale. Hung wasn't bad for a dramady, but goes at least 2 seasons too long, Leftovers is powerful but being someone with clinical depression it eventually got too much for me at times and I'd have to take long breaks.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Second Deadwood and Leftovers, especially since Leftovers gets as much as an ending it's ever going to have. Rome is also great if you haven't seen it.
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It's like they blew the budget on voice acting in Invincible and then went to see what they had left for the animation budget. "Uh we have $6.45 left to animate this with." "Million?" "No. Just $6.45."
HBO Max also has a bunch of Cinemax shows. Warrior is a great martial arts show based on a concept by Bruce Lee and was just renewed. Banshee is a pulpy crime show with a lot of sex and ultraviolence. And there's Steven Soderbergh's early 1900's hospital drama, The Knick, which is also getting a new season.
Rewatched Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. Still absolutely fantastic. The writing and humor are top notch, it has a warm, cozy feeling to it, lots of great expressions and visual gags, especially for the princess, and it has a very satisfying ending. Also only like 12 episodes, so very minor time commitment. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it.
The dub also seems pretty alright if you're not a fan of subs. The princess' VA for English seems pretty good from what I've seen.
Speaking of HBO Max, watched the 4 Monsterverse movies and goddamn are the Godzilla movies bad. Kong movies? Pretty good, but the two solo Godzilla movies are bad and worse. I have no idea how they greenlit a sequel after King of Monsters, but hey Godzilla vs Kong wasn't bad so it worked out alright in the end.
Unless you’re watching these on an IMAX with thousands of watts of sound you’re doing it wrong.
The tv and setup we were watching it on definitely didnt do the visuals any justice, but god damn were the plots of both bad. Godzilla 1 started out okay, but then just nose dived after the big bad showed up. I'd like to rewatch Godzilla vs Kong on a better tv (assuming HBO Max will push 4k HDR), it was a pretty good brain off movie! I just wont get the chance before it leaves HBO Max.
The first Godzilla I can understand, the second one is definitely more fun. Absolutely had too much human character subplot, but they fixed that in the newest one so they are listening!
My problem with the second was that it started at 11 and had nowhere to go. Who are these people? Why is she bringing her kid to work with a giant monster? Oh look eco terrorist! Followed by stupid plot twist.
I cant believe someone got paid to write it, even after the credits I'm not entirely sure it wasn't actually written by an algorithm.
We watched Godzilla 2 back to back with Godzilla vs Kong and the first 10 minutes of G v K are better written than the entirety of Godzilla 2 combined.
I dont feel like I'm even asking for that much! The bones of the movie weren't bad, there was stuff to work with! But at every opportunity the movie just went with the laziest, dumbest idea.
I say this with all sincerity, Godzilla King of Monsters might be the worst movie I've ever seen.
We watched Godzilla 2 back to back with Godzilla vs Kong and the first 10 minutes of G v K are better written than the entirety of Godzilla 2 combined.
I dont feel like I'm even asking for that much! The bones of the movie weren't bad, there was stuff to work with! But at every opportunity the movie just went with the laziest, dumbest idea.
I say this with all sincerity, Godzilla King of Monsters might be the worst movie I've ever seen.
Eh, the first one is even worse in my opinion since it's got much of the issues of the second plus it's just boring. Even when Godzilla finally does show up for real, the fight is like ten minutes long and intercut with a bunch of "who gives a shit" soldiers dicking around with the nuke. Even Godzilla's fire is dull and anemic, particularly after waiting all movie for that shit. At least when KotM is in a fight scene, it's committed to that fight scene being a hell of a thing. Every one of them is visually impressive, with multiple shots looking they were ripped straight from some old-school awesome Godzilla posters like this:
Hollywood has severe issues with kaiju films because, like with actors and helmets, they cannot fathom that the kaiju should be the main focus instead of people. Why would people go to see giant monsters fight instead of people talking and running and screaming, right? Which is why GvK is way stronger than the prior two films, because the films locks in on Kong at the start and he is the main character, and the overall focus is limited to pretty much Kong, his handlers, Team Conspiracy, and Evil NotMusk. KotM has something like quadruple the different groups it's trying to keep up with, and none of them are interesting or relevant.
We're definitely lucky to have gotten GvK after the prior two films.
Yeah, Invincible is good, I'm enjoying it, but it's not in the same league as HQ.
And the animation in Invincible is... not quite garbage, but pretty 80s Saturday morning cartoon in a lot of places.
The voice cast is fantastic, though.
I dunno, I can’t stop hearing Jay from Big Mouth whenever Rex Splode talks.
Justin Roiland has a role a few episodes in, and it's impossible not to hear Rick.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
We finally got around to streaming the live action Mulan this weekend. Maybe it's harder for me since the original animated movie was one of my favorites as a kid, but the whole thing was garbage. I guess set and costume design was pretty good if there were any redeeming qualities. How it has 72% on rotten tomatoes is beyond me.
tbh my reaction to everything live action versions of Disney animated movies at first was "but... why?" and when they announced "live" action Lion King it changed to "Oh fuck the fuck off".
I've seen a few of them due to living with a tiny human and they're the very definition of superfluous bullshit.
We finally got around to streaming the live action Mulan this weekend. Maybe it's harder for me since the original animated movie was one of my favorites as a kid, but the whole thing was garbage. I guess set and costume design was pretty good if there were any redeeming qualities. How it has 72% on rotten tomatoes is beyond me.
tbh my reaction to everything live action versions of Disney animated movies at first was "but... why?" and when they announced "live" action Lion King it changed to "Oh fuck the fuck off".
I've seen a few of them due to living with a tiny human and they're the very definition of superfluous bullshit.
I liked the live action Aladdin, Jungle Book and Lion King.
We finally got around to streaming the live action Mulan this weekend. Maybe it's harder for me since the original animated movie was one of my favorites as a kid, but the whole thing was garbage. I guess set and costume design was pretty good if there were any redeeming qualities. How it has 72% on rotten tomatoes is beyond me.
tbh my reaction to everything live action versions of Disney animated movies at first was "but... why?" and when they announced "live" action Lion King it changed to "Oh fuck the fuck off".
I've seen a few of them due to living with a tiny human and they're the very definition of superfluous bullshit.
I liked the live action Aladdin, Jungle Book and Lion King.
I mean to each their own but I thought Aladdin was terrible because while there were definitely other flaws trading in Robin Williams for Will Smith is a fatal one. I felt The Lion King (but CGI) was an absolute waste of time. It felt like a crass cash-in.
The Jungle Book is the only one I saw that didn't actively annoy me by existing and even then? I can't really think of anything it had over just watching The Jungle Book.
Plus all the Will Smith songs were all slowed way the fuck down sing talk versions of the original, they might as well have Shatner to do the covers, he would at least have been more lively.
Switched out Netflix for HBO Max and wow th selection is so much better on Max
If I didn't already have it I'd get Max just for Babylon 5 and Rome the series. All the other movies, shows, comedy specials, and DC shit is just a bonus.
I've had Netflix forever but I can't honestly remember the last time I opened it up to watch something. Usually just flip through a hundred options and then close it to go back to Hulu.
EDIT: what are the must watch series I need to see on HBO Max?
The Knick. It's a fantastic series, and it's pretty cool they picked it up. And I had the same feeling when I switched to Max, where now I just have too many things I want to watch and definitely not enough time to see them all.
Rewatched Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. Still absolutely fantastic. The writing and humor are top notch, it has a warm, cozy feeling to it, lots of great expressions and visual gags, especially for the princess, and it has a very satisfying ending. Also only like 12 episodes, so very minor time commitment. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it.
The dub also seems pretty alright if you're not a fan of subs. The princess' VA for English seems pretty good from what I've seen.
Plus all the Will Smith songs were all slowed way the fuck down sing talk versions of the original, they might as well have Shatner to do the covers, he would at least have been more lively.
Except the end credits version of Friend Like Me which I'm still baffled they didn't use in the movie proper.
Hollywood has severe issues with kaiju films because, like with actors and helmets, they cannot fathom that the kaiju should be the main focus instead of people. Why would people go to see giant monsters fight instead of people talking and running and screaming, right? Which is why GvK is way stronger than the prior two films, because the films locks in on Kong at the start and he is the main character, and the overall focus is limited to pretty much Kong, his handlers, Team Conspiracy, and Evil NotMusk. KotM has something like quadruple the different groups it's trying to keep up with, and none of them are interesting or relevant.
Personally I think Godzilla vs Kong went a bit too far in minimizing the human element of the plot, especially after reading the novelization and finding out that the movie pretty much cut out as much of the human side of the plot as they could without it becoming incomprehensible. Some of the things present in the novelization wouldn't have added much to the movie, but I can't help but be a little bit annoyed now when I read or hear someone nitpick something about the movie that was originally going to be explained (which is the same way I feel about people wondering why the ORCA device was apparently unguarded and trivial for Millie Bobby Brown's character to steal in KotM; in the novelization she snuck around, found a stun gun, and used it on the guy guarding it). The little bit we get from Bernie's perspective shows he knows wayyy more than he lets on, and Ren Serizawa's whole deal is cut from the movie when he's the son of a major character from the first two movies.
There were also going to be scenes
set in Hollow Earth featuring ruins of an ancient human civilization
Found Primal on HBO Max and wow this might be the coolest thing I've ever seen.
I wished there was a little more of a focused narrative thread to it, but the execution and overall design is some of Genndy's best work. The feature length cut of the first 4 episodes Tales of Savagery is an amazing, distilled essence of the piece and my favorite thing to come out of it.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Hollywood has severe issues with kaiju films because, like with actors and helmets, they cannot fathom that the kaiju should be the main focus instead of people. Why would people go to see giant monsters fight instead of people talking and running and screaming, right? Which is why GvK is way stronger than the prior two films, because the films locks in on Kong at the start and he is the main character, and the overall focus is limited to pretty much Kong, his handlers, Team Conspiracy, and Evil NotMusk. KotM has something like quadruple the different groups it's trying to keep up with, and none of them are interesting or relevant.
Personally I think Godzilla vs Kong went a bit too far in minimizing the human element of the plot, especially after reading the novelization and finding out that the movie pretty much cut out as much of the human side of the plot as they could without it becoming incomprehensible. Some of the things present in the novelization wouldn't have added much to the movie, but I can't help but be a little bit annoyed now when I read or hear someone nitpick something about the movie that was originally going to be explained (which is the same way I feel about people wondering why the ORCA device was apparently unguarded and trivial for Millie Bobby Brown's character to steal in KotM; in the novelization she snuck around, found a stun gun, and used it on the guy guarding it). The little bit we get from Bernie's perspective shows he knows wayyy more than he lets on, and Ren Serizawa's whole deal is cut from the movie when he's the son of a major character from the first two movies.
There were also going to be scenes
set in Hollow Earth featuring ruins of an ancient human civilization
that were cut.
Seeing as this wasn't an effort anywhere close to Shin Godzilla, I have to agree with the general audiences on this one in that less human stuff was a massively better movie. Further, I just don't care about something like the conspiracy subplot beyond what we got; given the political shit of the last few years, the last thing I want to see is some disturbed shut in conspiracist being proven more right. The best thing about that subplot is that it was dumb, but didn't overstay its welcome. This isn't a spy thriller, it's a kaiju movie. That little group was good to show the audience the other big arc waiting to hit the Kong arc, and that's all it needed to do. We didn't remotely need something like an extended tragic backstory or anything like that. A paragraph at a dinner was plenty.
And it took three movies to force the studio to a point where the kaiju were finally the main focus, not a bunch of annoying inconsequential human stuff. Skull Island worked because the human angle was coherent, cogent, and had an actual point in terms of world scope. The humans were the focus, the monsters the experience.
But when the movie says "Godzilla versus Kong", that had better be the focus. Not some tedious family arcs or contrived conspiracy stuff, just good old giant monsters.
And yeah, I would've liked more Hollow Earth stuff but, again, the movie isn't titled "The Hollow Earth". They kept the focus tight, and the payoff was a movie with enormously better focus and far less humdrum human annoyance. And audiences went "yes, more of this, not the other stuff".
Seeing as this wasn't an effort anywhere close to Shin Godzilla, I have to agree with the general audiences on this one in that less human stuff was a massively better movie. Further, I just don't care about something like the conspiracy subplot beyond what we got; given the political shit of the last few years, the last thing I want to see is some disturbed shut in conspiracist being proven more right. The best thing about that subplot is that it was dumb, but didn't overstay its welcome. This isn't a spy thriller, it's a kaiju movie. That little group was good to show the audience the other big arc waiting to hit the Kong arc, and that's all it needed to do. We didn't remotely need something like an extended tragic backstory or anything like that. A paragraph at a dinner was plenty.
And it took three movies to force the studio to a point where the kaiju were finally the main focus, not a bunch of annoying inconsequential human stuff. Skull Island worked because the human angle was coherent, cogent, and had an actual point in terms of world scope. The humans were the focus, the monsters the experience.
But when the movie says "Godzilla versus Kong", that had better be the focus. Not some tedious family arcs or contrived conspiracy stuff, just good old giant monsters.
And yeah, I would've liked more Hollow Earth stuff but, again, the movie isn't titled "The Hollow Earth". They kept the focus tight, and the payoff was a movie with enormously better focus and far less humdrum human annoyance. And audiences went "yes, more of this, not the other stuff".
No Godzilla movie is anywhere near Shin Godzilla, it's the gold standard for Japanese Godzilla movies rather than the average. What's interesting about Shin is that the human cast are groups of hundreds of people and there is no depth given to the main characters, including the main character himself. The reason this works is because they gave a shit about writing the humans cast instead of making them expendable nobodies the audience don't care about. Without that care Shin wold have suffered on the angle like any other Godzilla movie.
General audiences don't care about wha the humans do because of the studio doesn't give them a reason too. That's a choice they made and they've made tiny strides to improve this but the main priority is the big monsters not humans, when they don't have to chose between them to tell a good story. Its similar to slasher movies Hollywood does.
I agree they shouldn't have had a sub-plot around a conspiracy nut and isn't not like he movie did it's best with that premise anyway. They're able to do a sub-lot like that and be interesting, Hollywood does his regularly so why not put that for into Godzilla? They do this in Japanese kaiji films - spies, soldiers and conspiracies aren't out of place there by any stretch.
They definitely should be doing more like Kong Island did with the human cast in the movies. We need more of that, and for the humans to not be useless or boring. Which sometimes mean we get conspiracies. and in fighting amongst the humans. KOTM did this well, IMO.
The focus was too tight in G vs K, they let no details for anything in Apex. The human villains weren't interesting and had no depth and a character like Bernie shouldn't be anywhere near a Godzilla movie in 2021.
Yeah, Invincible is good, I'm enjoying it, but it's not in the same league as HQ.
And the animation in Invincible is... not quite garbage, but pretty 80s Saturday morning cartoon in a lot of places.
The voice cast is fantastic, though.
I dunno, I can’t stop hearing Jay from Big Mouth whenever Rex Splode talks.
Justin Roiland has a role a few episodes in, and it's impossible not to hear Rick.
Jason Mantzoukas always plays himself
I am curious , comic and possible show spoiler
Will Mantzoukas also voice Robot if he becomes a Rex clone?
Unclear. Same spoilers.
Both Mantzoukas and Quinto are only listed as playing their one character on IMDB.
This could be because Robot is still Robot after he transfers his consciousness, or because a clone of Rex is still the same credit, or because the transfer doesn't happen before the next season, or because they don't want to give away spoilers in the credits.
I will say that Mantzoukas pulling off playing Robot in Rex's clone would be an unexpected display of versatility, in my opinion.
The Godzilla series has had a surprising number of entries involving spies and terrorists and what not. Just off the top of my head:
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster - Terrorists blow up a plane that the princess of another nation was in. She mysteriously reappears unharmed in Japan, but isn't acting like herself and is prophesying the appearance of a monster that destroyed the planet Venus in the distant past. Terrorists still show up to try and finish her off.
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep - A group shipwrecked on an island discover a terrorist organization's base and work to free enslaved captives, which include the missing brother of one member of one of the protagonists.
Destroy All Monsters - Aliens use mind control devices to make the operatives of a monster containment facility into their pawns while also taking control of the monsters to attack all around the world. The protagonists have also have a spaceship and at one point use it to find the aliens' moon base and attack it.
Godzilla vs Gigan - A group infiltrates a shady company because one of the higher ups looks just like a dead relative and another of their number has gone missing while investigating.
Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla - A priestess has a prophecy of a dangerous monster that will appear, and that the only way to ensure it will be stopped is to obtain a statue and bring it to her shrine to awaken an ancient guardian monster. The protagonists are eventually joined by an INTERPOL agent and have gun battles with aliens disguised as humans over the statue, and eventually infiltrate the base where Mechagodzilla is stored.
Godzilla vs Biollante - The movie opens on a gun battle between JSDF operatives and paramilitary agents hired by an American corporation called Bio-Major in a damaged section of Tokyo over a collection of Godzilla cells, only for the victorious paramilitary guys to quickly be killed by an assassin called SSS9. BTW, the scene is set to this awesome track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlyVD6YnQ-I
Both agents of Bio-Major and SSS9 appear throughout the movie, with the assassin even killing one of the main characters near the end before getting taken out by an artificial lightning generator that had previously been used against Godzilla. The writer wasn't a particularly big fan of the Godzilla series but did love James Bond movies, and apparently he was so insistent that Godzilla needed to be taken in a different direction that it angered some fans at the time (though nowadays his movie is considered one of the best in the series).
Godzilla Final Wars - Monsters attack around the world only to be stopped by supposedly benevolent aliens who claim to have come to save Earth from both the monsters and an approaching meteor while also secretly replacing various politicians with disguised agents of their own.
Godzilla 2014 has a different tone than all the rest of the monsterverse. I would have been fine with it's human to kaiju screen time, if only they hadn't killed off Bryan Cranston so early. If you're going with that much human plot, you need great actors and characters we want to watch. Skull Island was similar, it had the "what's going on" and "wonder" theme's but put more humor into it. It's almost a "what could have been" with Godzilla 2014, given it's good actors had parts throughout the plot.
For the most recent 2 they seem to be struggling with the writing. I tend to agree with Hexmage, ideally I'd like a decent mix of human stuff and monster stuff. GvK had too little and KotM's had a bit too much. But the quality also plays a factor. Maybe KotM's wouldn't have been as bad, if the human plot wasn't nonsensical and/pr had so much silly family drama stuff. For as much human plot as there already was, I wanted more Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins, just much less MBB and co. Conversely, even though I think GvK didn't have enough human stuff, even with more from the novelization, I didn't want the conspiracy stuff. Outside of how it feels given recent real life events, in movie it felt like it was copy/pasted from a Micheal Bay transformers script (bumbling adult and 2 kids stumble into evil plot). That entire plot could have been cut to give way more time to Apex, Ren Serizawa, and others.
I hated the liquid on the machine crap, let the 2 main characters, Godzilla and Kong beat Mechagodzilla. Also I think I would have preferred just hints about Mechagodzilla. Don't tell us what the energy is for, just that you need it. Drop hints that you are powering something to fight Godzilla. Let the humans pilot Mechagodzilla for the Godzilla only part, with Godzilla winning till Ghidorah takes over.
I'll be honest, I think it might have been more interesting had the subplot focused on Ren Serizawa instead of Millie Bobby Brown's character. I don't dislike her character or anything, but Chandler as her father was an unpopular character, her character's mother is dead, and she's kind of limited in what she can actually do versus older characters. Meanwhile, Ren had a connection to a major character from the first two movies and was essentially his late father and Godzilla's enemy. The parts of the novelization told from Ren's point of view depict him as believing his father was a misanthrope with a bizarre reverence for a giant lizard, whereas his intention was to make a machine that could defeat and subjugate the creatures his father revered for the sake of humankind's future. I will say that I wouldn't be surprised in Ren Serizawa were to come back if a sequel is greenlit.
I also wish I knew what would have happened in the originally-intended version of the movie where Zhang Ziyi's Dr. Ilene Chen was part of the main plot, as opposed to Hall's Ilene Andrews.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Rewatched Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. Still absolutely fantastic. The writing and humor are top notch, it has a warm, cozy feeling to it, lots of great expressions and visual gags, especially for the princess, and it has a very satisfying ending. Also only like 12 episodes, so very minor time commitment. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it.
The dub also seems pretty alright if you're not a fan of subs. The princess' VA for English seems pretty good from what I've seen.
Rewatched Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. Still absolutely fantastic. The writing and humor are top notch, it has a warm, cozy feeling to it, lots of great expressions and visual gags, especially for the princess, and it has a very satisfying ending. Also only like 12 episodes, so very minor time commitment. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it.
The dub also seems pretty alright if you're not a fan of subs. The princess' VA for English seems pretty good from what I've seen.
They're going to make a How I Met Your Father show on Hulu starring Lizzie Mcguire. Just stop.
How I Met Your Mother had some solid episodes and jokes in the first couple seasons. It was just dragging it out for-fucking-ever and then the ruinous final bits that wrecked it, I think. Also some of the gags that weren't funny the first time but which they kept up for years. I'd give a reboot a shot. Maybe hindsight will help them.
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Doom Patrol.
After the first few episodes you might feel it's not very well balanced tone wise but a lot of that is due to them establishing the setting and once it's rolling along the show is really something else.
I don't think Harley Quinn nails it's humor right out of the gate but once it does it's a lot of fun through both seasons
The first half of Exterminate All the Brutes is heart wrenching to the point where I've only managed to watch half of it over the last three weeks.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Come Overwatch with meeeee
The dub also seems pretty alright if you're not a fan of subs. The princess' VA for English seems pretty good from what I've seen.
The tv and setup we were watching it on definitely didnt do the visuals any justice, but god damn were the plots of both bad. Godzilla 1 started out okay, but then just nose dived after the big bad showed up. I'd like to rewatch Godzilla vs Kong on a better tv (assuming HBO Max will push 4k HDR), it was a pretty good brain off movie! I just wont get the chance before it leaves HBO Max.
My problem with the second was that it started at 11 and had nowhere to go. Who are these people? Why is she bringing her kid to work with a giant monster? Oh look eco terrorist! Followed by stupid plot twist.
I cant believe someone got paid to write it, even after the credits I'm not entirely sure it wasn't actually written by an algorithm.
We watched Godzilla 2 back to back with Godzilla vs Kong and the first 10 minutes of G v K are better written than the entirety of Godzilla 2 combined.
I dont feel like I'm even asking for that much! The bones of the movie weren't bad, there was stuff to work with! But at every opportunity the movie just went with the laziest, dumbest idea.
I say this with all sincerity, Godzilla King of Monsters might be the worst movie I've ever seen.
Yes. This works for me.
I dunno, I can’t stop hearing Jay from Big Mouth whenever Rex Splode talks.
Eh, the first one is even worse in my opinion since it's got much of the issues of the second plus it's just boring. Even when Godzilla finally does show up for real, the fight is like ten minutes long and intercut with a bunch of "who gives a shit" soldiers dicking around with the nuke. Even Godzilla's fire is dull and anemic, particularly after waiting all movie for that shit. At least when KotM is in a fight scene, it's committed to that fight scene being a hell of a thing. Every one of them is visually impressive, with multiple shots looking they were ripped straight from some old-school awesome Godzilla posters like this:
Hollywood has severe issues with kaiju films because, like with actors and helmets, they cannot fathom that the kaiju should be the main focus instead of people. Why would people go to see giant monsters fight instead of people talking and running and screaming, right? Which is why GvK is way stronger than the prior two films, because the films locks in on Kong at the start and he is the main character, and the overall focus is limited to pretty much Kong, his handlers, Team Conspiracy, and Evil NotMusk. KotM has something like quadruple the different groups it's trying to keep up with, and none of them are interesting or relevant.
We're definitely lucky to have gotten GvK after the prior two films.
Justin Roiland has a role a few episodes in, and it's impossible not to hear Rick.
tbh my reaction to everything live action versions of Disney animated movies at first was "but... why?" and when they announced "live" action Lion King it changed to "Oh fuck the fuck off".
I've seen a few of them due to living with a tiny human and they're the very definition of superfluous bullshit.
I liked the live action Aladdin, Jungle Book and Lion King.
I mean to each their own but I thought Aladdin was terrible because while there were definitely other flaws trading in Robin Williams for Will Smith is a fatal one. I felt The Lion King (but CGI) was an absolute waste of time. It felt like a crass cash-in.
The Jungle Book is the only one I saw that didn't actively annoy me by existing and even then? I can't really think of anything it had over just watching The Jungle Book.
Jason Mantzoukas always plays himself
The Knick. It's a fantastic series, and it's pretty cool they picked it up. And I had the same feeling when I switched to Max, where now I just have too many things I want to watch and definitely not enough time to see them all.
This is my wife and kids favorite show.
Except the end credits version of Friend Like Me which I'm still baffled they didn't use in the movie proper.
Personally I think Godzilla vs Kong went a bit too far in minimizing the human element of the plot, especially after reading the novelization and finding out that the movie pretty much cut out as much of the human side of the plot as they could without it becoming incomprehensible. Some of the things present in the novelization wouldn't have added much to the movie, but I can't help but be a little bit annoyed now when I read or hear someone nitpick something about the movie that was originally going to be explained (which is the same way I feel about people wondering why the ORCA device was apparently unguarded and trivial for Millie Bobby Brown's character to steal in KotM; in the novelization she snuck around, found a stun gun, and used it on the guy guarding it). The little bit we get from Bernie's perspective shows he knows wayyy more than he lets on, and Ren Serizawa's whole deal is cut from the movie when he's the son of a major character from the first two movies.
There were also going to be scenes
Anyone who hasn't seen this, needs to.
Best show since Good Place.
Roy Kent is just awesome.
I wished there was a little more of a focused narrative thread to it, but the execution and overall design is some of Genndy's best work. The feature length cut of the first 4 episodes Tales of Savagery is an amazing, distilled essence of the piece and my favorite thing to come out of it.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Seeing as this wasn't an effort anywhere close to Shin Godzilla, I have to agree with the general audiences on this one in that less human stuff was a massively better movie. Further, I just don't care about something like the conspiracy subplot beyond what we got; given the political shit of the last few years, the last thing I want to see is some disturbed shut in conspiracist being proven more right. The best thing about that subplot is that it was dumb, but didn't overstay its welcome. This isn't a spy thriller, it's a kaiju movie. That little group was good to show the audience the other big arc waiting to hit the Kong arc, and that's all it needed to do. We didn't remotely need something like an extended tragic backstory or anything like that. A paragraph at a dinner was plenty.
And it took three movies to force the studio to a point where the kaiju were finally the main focus, not a bunch of annoying inconsequential human stuff. Skull Island worked because the human angle was coherent, cogent, and had an actual point in terms of world scope. The humans were the focus, the monsters the experience.
But when the movie says "Godzilla versus Kong", that had better be the focus. Not some tedious family arcs or contrived conspiracy stuff, just good old giant monsters.
And yeah, I would've liked more Hollow Earth stuff but, again, the movie isn't titled "The Hollow Earth". They kept the focus tight, and the payoff was a movie with enormously better focus and far less humdrum human annoyance. And audiences went "yes, more of this, not the other stuff".
I am curious , comic and possible show spoiler
No Godzilla movie is anywhere near Shin Godzilla, it's the gold standard for Japanese Godzilla movies rather than the average. What's interesting about Shin is that the human cast are groups of hundreds of people and there is no depth given to the main characters, including the main character himself. The reason this works is because they gave a shit about writing the humans cast instead of making them expendable nobodies the audience don't care about. Without that care Shin wold have suffered on the angle like any other Godzilla movie.
General audiences don't care about wha the humans do because of the studio doesn't give them a reason too. That's a choice they made and they've made tiny strides to improve this but the main priority is the big monsters not humans, when they don't have to chose between them to tell a good story. Its similar to slasher movies Hollywood does.
I agree they shouldn't have had a sub-plot around a conspiracy nut and isn't not like he movie did it's best with that premise anyway. They're able to do a sub-lot like that and be interesting, Hollywood does his regularly so why not put that for into Godzilla? They do this in Japanese kaiji films - spies, soldiers and conspiracies aren't out of place there by any stretch.
They definitely should be doing more like Kong Island did with the human cast in the movies. We need more of that, and for the humans to not be useless or boring. Which sometimes mean we get conspiracies. and in fighting amongst the humans. KOTM did this well, IMO.
The focus was too tight in G vs K, they let no details for anything in Apex. The human villains weren't interesting and had no depth and a character like Bernie shouldn't be anywhere near a Godzilla movie in 2021.
Nearly all of the people I want to see come back, are. From the staples, to Trent Crimm (The Independent!) and a few others.
There's one noteable absence, pisses me off though. Was it a salary issue? On-set egos? Executive meddling?
Why were they recast?
WHERE IS COACH BEARD'S BEARD?
That thing looks nothing like the original.
#NotMyCoachBeardsBeard.
Unclear. Same spoilers.
This could be because Robot is still Robot after he transfers his consciousness, or because a clone of Rex is still the same credit, or because the transfer doesn't happen before the next season, or because they don't want to give away spoilers in the credits.
I will say that Mantzoukas pulling off playing Robot in Rex's clone would be an unexpected display of versatility, in my opinion.
The Godzilla series has had a surprising number of entries involving spies and terrorists and what not. Just off the top of my head:
Both agents of Bio-Major and SSS9 appear throughout the movie, with the assassin even killing one of the main characters near the end before getting taken out by an artificial lightning generator that had previously been used against Godzilla. The writer wasn't a particularly big fan of the Godzilla series but did love James Bond movies, and apparently he was so insistent that Godzilla needed to be taken in a different direction that it angered some fans at the time (though nowadays his movie is considered one of the best in the series).
For the most recent 2 they seem to be struggling with the writing. I tend to agree with Hexmage, ideally I'd like a decent mix of human stuff and monster stuff. GvK had too little and KotM's had a bit too much. But the quality also plays a factor. Maybe KotM's wouldn't have been as bad, if the human plot wasn't nonsensical and/pr had so much silly family drama stuff. For as much human plot as there already was, I wanted more Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins, just much less MBB and co. Conversely, even though I think GvK didn't have enough human stuff, even with more from the novelization, I didn't want the conspiracy stuff. Outside of how it feels given recent real life events, in movie it felt like it was copy/pasted from a Micheal Bay transformers script (bumbling adult and 2 kids stumble into evil plot). That entire plot could have been cut to give way more time to Apex, Ren Serizawa, and others.
I also wish I knew what would have happened in the originally-intended version of the movie where Zhang Ziyi's Dr. Ilene Chen was part of the main plot, as opposed to Hall's Ilene Andrews.
Is this only on Funimation? Their random awful ad breaks are killing me
I believe it is. They're a relatively cheap streaming service, though. $60 a year.
But not Bays and Thomas, so at least there's that blessing.
How I Met Your Mother had some solid episodes and jokes in the first couple seasons. It was just dragging it out for-fucking-ever and then the ruinous final bits that wrecked it, I think. Also some of the gags that weren't funny the first time but which they kept up for years. I'd give a reboot a shot. Maybe hindsight will help them.