Clash of the Franchises

Godzilla and Kong face off at sea

Your humble blogger was a paying customer for monster movies back when the giant city-destroyers were played by actors in rubber suits. So when Godzilla and King Kong were rebooted in a MonsterVerse series of movies, I was all in.

Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) are escapist fare that balanced personalities--and the vast majority of women--might find alarming.

I only watch these movies over and over because I marvel at the advances in special-effects technology, not because I have an unhealthy fascination with skyscraper-sized creatures.

Film critics who like scripts to have some intellectual depth

(WSJ: ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Review: A Mental Mush of a Monster Mash,

Chronicle: ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ is a disappointment. It’s even a little depressing)

don't like Godzilla vs. Kong much, so I did anticipate disappointment about seeing the fourth movie, now streaming on HBOMAX for the month of April in what could be the final chapter of the MonsterVerse series.

No worries, I liked Godzilla vs. Kong. It had continuity with the previous movies and impressive special effects. Also (spoiler alert), the scriptwriters resolved the conflict between the two "apex" predators Kong and Godzilla without killing either of them.

Both had been shown as entities who could have empathy with human beings and were certainly morally superior to the evil monsters they had fought in earlier films. Each had their own fan bases, and, most importantly, the franchises could continue.

I think I'll watch it again...for the special effects, of course.

Happy New Year: Time to Face Our Fear

I make it a point never to laugh at a person because of his lack of knowledge. The balkanization of culture insures that there is very little knowledge that Americans, or more broadly Westerners, widely share. (I have my own knowledge gaps, for example 21st century pop music.) Nevertheless, I had to laugh at an educated Brit's response on a TV game show.

Well, this did me in pic.twitter.com/njBVwTjb3W

— L Johnston (@FinalBullet) December 26, 2020

King Ghidorah, Megalon, and Mothra are among creatures to have fought which enduring film character in films made between 1964 and 1992?

"Lassie."

Being totally unfamiliar with kaiju is nothing to be ashamed about, but naming her as the principal slayer of movie monsters shows that one is totally unfamiliar with Lassie, too.

Speaking of the answer to the question--after a year of contending with an enemy too small to be seen with the naked eye, and inspired by the above, I spent a couple of hours this morning watching Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Taking full advantage of special effects technology that exploit today's high-resolution screens, the producers made Godzilla and his fellow monsters truly terrifying. The most powerful weapons, i.e., nuclear bombs, that humans can throw at Godzilla only make him more powerful.

If a fire-breathing, mountain-sized monster is coming toward you, you're allowed to be scared. However, in the New Year resolve not to be afraid of something that can be warded off with a flimsy cloth mask.

The Nuclear Option

The uncontrolled gusher from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig has prompted one editorialist to call for the nuclear option, literally:

Obama should be discussing the possibility of using an atomic weapon to seal the leak [bold added]. Before the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the United States successfully detonated nuclear devices both on land and under water, and two potential delivery paths for a nuke are already in place in the form of the partially completed relief wells. Assuming the bomb could be delivered close enough to the drill channel, the yield required would be relatively small. Moreover, well-established formulae establish the burial-depth-to-yield ratios that make it possible to trap virtually all of the radioactive fallout within the sub-oceanic bedrock. [snip]

It seems a reasonable conjecture that the dissipation of a limited amount of radioactive material across the vast Gulf is preferable to the blanketing of thousands of miles of American coastline in ribbons of tar.

It sounds so crazy that it just might work.

But be very careful. As this experience has taught us, the ocean deep unleashes forces that man cannot control.