Hot take:

Godzilla 2014 works best by filmmaking standards. Godzilla KOTM tries way too hard to please the kaiju fanboys and Godzilla vs Kong's only goal is to appeal to mainstream audiences who only care about seeing "a giant lizard fight a giant monkey"

I'm not saying I disliked GVK or any of the other Monsterverse films, in fact I really do want them to #ContinueTheMonsterverse , but I think in praising some of the sequels people are kinda missing the point about why the first one was made the way it was

Gareth Edwards sat down and considered so many important aspects about how gigantic monsters could exist in our world and what that experience would be like, but the sequels took all the criticism as a sign of "lets not do that anymore and make it flashy and fun"

I really did appreciate how Godzilla and the Mutos were designed with consideration about their size and movement so that if you saw them in real life it would be believable, but tbh sometimes in the sequels it feels like they didn't consider those things in certain parts

also there are some slight inconsistencies in the sequels that make it feel so different when you look back at the movies that came before them, which is why sometimes I feel like it would work better if they had the same director all the way throughout

in the beginning I kinda liked the whole "alpha predator and natural order" thing they had going on, then KOTM tried to establish them as gods who all have some kinda understanding with each other that Godzilla stays at the top or something

and part of me feels that GVK (while trying to give Kong more plot time) ultimately wants everyone to agree that "Godzilla is the best simply because he is" which tbh I'm not a fan of that kinda thinking

i really admired the idea of Godzilla being on top of the food chain cus he was all powerful but not power hungry, and he only wanted peace, but they're slowly leaning away from that and trying to make him a guy who wants you to bow to him no matter what

most of the time it didn't even feel like Godzilla really HAD a reason to go fight Kong, and saying that he wanted to assert his alpha status (for no real reason) just feels like some fanboy levels of writing

I appreciate that they made the effort to tie Kong's lore into the Monsterverse but it feels like they really just wanted to pave the way for Godzilla all along, its not fun watching the movies when you know the directors have a clear favorite

more evidence to that is the fact that Kong only gets one film while the rest of the Monterverse films pander specifically to Godzilla. Monsterverse implies that we'd be seeing more iconic creatures tell their story, not just fuel the one main creature's story

as much as people love Adam Wingward for making the most liked and best reviewed Legendary Monsterverse film, I am a little worried about future films being done in the same style as GVK cus that means we're gonna breeze right through so much of the lore and worldbuilding

I keep finding out about how much plot was cut from the original film and how the comics have to try and fill in the gaps when the movie decided to shift gears from whatever the previous movies established, and I wonder if he even studied the lore or worldbuidling at all

i assumed there were a bunch of writers keeping track of all the elements in the overall story they're telling, but word on the street is that Adam only kinda sorta knows what details are being put in the novelizations, meaning that only a handful of the population is gonna know

tbh even though KOTM shifted a bit from G'14 with tone and plot, I was pretty excited to see what the end credits were leading up to, but Adam straight up ignored most of it and just made up his own lore and characters, and barely spent time on any of them in the end

all I'm saying is that I kinda wish there was more consistency in how they chose to tell the stories, and not sacrificing good storytelling for 'appealing to a larger audience' just because people get bored after not seeing a monster after 5 minutes

going back to the whole "Godzilla is boss just because we say so" thing, i'm fine with Godzilla being an all powerful nature-metaphor antihero who wants peace, but I'm not really looking forward to him being an unstoppable bully who wants you to bow to his will

the Godzilla Earth trilogy already made him way too overpowered and impossible to kill, and yet we have to watch people try and kill him for 3 whole movies when we know its just a waste of time for them and for us

to be fair I do appreciate that the MechaG battle does remind us that Godzilla is not invincible, and therefore we have a reason to want him to survive, and even feel glad if Kong comes to help him out. all the fanboys wanna believe that he didn't need the help but i disagree

that being said, I still feel like introducing mecha into the Monsterverse feels a little too crazy considering how the first film established itself. I thought a 3 headed space dragon might have been too much but I knew the world wasn't ready for a giant robot

its fine for Pacific Rim cus they fully embrace what it is yet they find a way to make it work given the world they live in, but the Monsterverse isn't that story, so making a giant robot lizard feels like they're not taking itself too seriously anymore

I don't have GVK, in fact I had a great time watching it and it was very exciting. I am concerned about how this is the most liked film and that tells the directors to make more films just like that, which makes me worry that they're gonna disregard so many things from before

also I couldn't help but notice that Godzilla blew a hole into the earth, roared to the bottom, then walks away and is surprised that Kong crawled out .. so what was his plan if he wasn't gonna go down there himself?