I watched a show called Godzilla on Netflix last weekend and
much to my not surprise and somewhat annoyance, the first forty-five minutes
had little to no actual Godzilla. It’s like the movie (also called Godzilla, I
think) that came out two or three years ago. Two-hour movie, one (admittedly
cool-as-hell) actual Godzilla fight at the end.
This is my mini-rant: if you make a movie called Godzilla,
it should contain at least fifty-one percent Godzilla. Not ninety-minutes of
humans running around doing human things and then five-minutes of Godzilla
beating up some idiot kaiju who thought it would be a good life-choice to pick
a fight with the King of the Monsters.
NOTE: If you’re a kaiju and you’re reading this, maybe think
twice about fighting something referred to as the King of the Monsters. Start
lower, like a Jester of the Monsters or Serving Wench of the Monsters. Work
your way up.
I’m now convinced that at some point, I’m going to watch (yet
another) movie called Godzilla only to figure out it’s a rom-com about two
humans who fall in love and have wacky hijinks, possibly involving a ferret and
six pumpkins. The two humans will wind up at the pier, making out on a bench,
as the credits roll, only to have Godzilla rise up and incinerate them with his
atomic breath.
Okay, yes. I would probably watch that.
My point, and I do have one, is that if you’re going to make
movies about humans, call it ‘Humans’ or something. In fact, I would be willing
to bet that the vast majority of movies are about humans anyway doing human
things, like roller-skating or fly-fishing or astro-physics.
Humans movies should be about humans, Godzilla movies should
be about Godzilla. Much like Bambi movies are about Bambi. Or Hamlet movies are
about Ham.
No other movies, to my admittedly limited knowledge, can get
away with this. It would be like having a movie called ‘Steve’ that contained no
Steves.
Just give me a movie of Godzilla fighting a succession of
kaiju. There can be humans in it, but only to occasionally shout ‘Look!
Godzilla!’ and then get crushed by a building.
Yes, I am a simple man.
Cheers,
-Jason