Ableton Forum

So I guess the only purpose a human drama can serve for this is:
A. To have some sort of moral question ie it's really about 'if humans keep fucking around with dangerous things they will have dangerous consequences' and/or
B. American propaganda (whattup italian guy!) to keep american families strong against 'the war on terrorism' or 'the war on climate change' - to always stay strong and close-knit about one-of-the-many-knowns-and-unknowns-that-we-should-always-be-afraid-of-in-the-back-of-our-mind.

Cool, I'll go in with really low expectations and save the buzz for when it won't be wasted on by being killed.

i'm not sure about this movie but i love what Shia LaBeouf and the hotties brought to the Transformers.


and by love i mean

I'm jumping the gun too early and sure I guess all Godzilla flicks barely have Godzilla in them just like Jaws and Alien, etc, but for fucks sake just once I'd like to see some destruction without regard for humanity. BEEN THERE, DONE THAT. FUCK THE CHARACTERS.
HULK SMASH
and why is there so much hate for Pacific Rim?

You see, this is what's really happening with movies now....especially monster movies and scifi: Somehow it's okay to have really fucking awful characters spewing out shit dialog in utterly boring human drama drivel sequences.

f
f
s

Let's take a few of the all time fucking great monster movies, shall we? Let's examine how Godzilla COULD HAVE HAD VERY ENGAGING CHARACTERS THAT YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING GAVE TWO SHITS ABOUT:


Jaws
I mean, I can really not think of a finer example. The shark is the de facto star of the movie, but the motherfucking human characters in the form of Brody, Hooper, and Quint are so utterly compelling - their stories and interaction with each other so engaging - you really can't get enough of them. The moments between shark stuff become ESSENTIAL to the overall story and plot. The shark as metaphor (liberally stealing from Moby Dick, of course) is complete genius. Quint? My God. It's Shaw at his absolute finest without a doubt.

Cranston is brilliant actor, but can you imagine if Quint was running around in Jaws with the kind of hysterics that Walter White was demonstrating in Godzilla? Painful. Fucking painful.


John Carpenter's The Thing
It's an ensemble cast that works so fucking well together - and without a single chick / romantic / family mumbo jumbo to fuck it all up. The human aspect is critical to the overall story, which helps of course, but it all could have gone so dreadfully wrong. For instance, let's say that there was a running subplot whereby MacReady was having trouble balancing his checkbook because of a divorce and called his future ex wife every now and again... omfg.


Alien
We don't know if Dallas or Ripley have daddy issues or they lost their mum in some tragic space station accident. We don't know because WE WOULDN'T FUCKING CARE. Can you imaging scenes where Brett and Parker were down in the hold comforting each other because one of them has been having trouble sleeping or some shit? omfg.




The most important aspect of the 3 movies mentioned above is that we ACTUALLY CARE about the characters. They aren't boring fucking cardboard stereotypes going through the motions until the next monster scene. Their interactions and relationships are focused as part of the larger monster plot. Was this so hard to get right in Godzilla? Apparently so....


Here's what I would have done:

Walter White has been quietly going insane with grief and conspiracy theories in Japan. He's a nuclear engineer by training. He's become dangerous. Once Godzilla and the Mutos emerge and he's taken in my the scientists/army, he starts hatching his own plot to destroy them - at all costs. He starts doing unspeakable things to ensure their demise. Other likeminded crazies may join him. In the end, Godzilla becomes his white whale. Walter White in Godzilla should have been the Quint character from Jaws - only batshit crazy.


mlah.


Fucking hopeless.

I actually liked Pacific Rim and thought it leaned more to the side of huge monster/robot combat than human drama.

However, when I watched it a second time at home I found I didn’t enjoy it as much.

LoopStationZebra wrote:You see, this is what's really happening with movies now....especially monster movies and scifi: Somehow it's okay to have really fucking awful characters spewing out shit dialog in utterly boring human drama drivel sequences.

f
f
s

Let's take a few of the all time fucking great monster movies, shall we? Let's examine how Godzilla COULD HAVE HAD VERY ENGAGING CHARACTERS THAT YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING GAVE TWO SHITS ABOUT:


Jaws
I mean, I can really not think of a finer example. The shark is the de facto star of the movie, but the motherfucking human characters in the form of Brody, Hooper, and Quint are so utterly compelling - their stories and interaction with each other so engaging - you really can't get enough of them. The moments between shark stuff become ESSENTIAL to the overall story and plot. The shark as metaphor (liberally stealing from Moby Dick, of course) is complete genius. Quint? My God. It's Shaw at his absolute finest without a doubt.

Cranston is brilliant actor, but can you imagine if Quint was running around in Jaws with the kind of hysterics that Walter White was demonstrating in Godzilla? Painful. Fucking painful.


John Carpenter's The Thing
It's an ensemble cast that works so fucking well together - and without a single chick / romantic / family mumbo jumbo to fuck it all up. The human aspect is critical to the overall story, which helps of course, but it all could have gone so dreadfully wrong. For instance, let's say that there was a running subplot whereby MacReady was having trouble balancing his checkbook because of a divorce and called his future ex wife every now and again... omfg.


Alien
We don't know if Dallas or Ripley have daddy issues or they lost their mum in some tragic space station accident. We don't know because WE WOULDN'T FUCKING CARE. Can you imaging scenes where Brett and Parker were down in the hold comforting each other because one of them has been having trouble sleeping or some shit? omfg.




The most important aspect of the 3 movies mentioned above is that we ACTUALLY CARE about the characters. They aren't boring fucking cardboard stereotypes going through the motions until the next monster scene. Their interactions and relationships are focused as part of the larger monster plot. Was this so hard to get right in Godzilla? Apparently so....


Here's what I would have done:

Walter White has been quietly going insane with grief and conspiracy theories in Japan. He's a nuclear engineer by training. He's become dangerous. Once Godzilla and the Mutos emerge and he's taken in my the scientists/army, he starts hatching his own plot to destroy them - at all costs. He starts doing unspeakable things to ensure their demise. Other likeminded crazies may join him. In the end, Godzilla becomes his white whale. Walter White in Godzilla should have been the Quint character from Jaws - only batshit crazy.


mlah.


Fucking hopeless.

But size does matter. In those examples it’s somewhat believable a human or 5 five could go up against the monster because it’s comparably human sized, maybe 2 or 3 times human size. Kind of hard to weave a compelling individual human interest story when the monster is the size of a skyscraper and 10’s of 1000’s of people are getting indiscriminately crushed into the dirt. Hard to get emotional about one man’s story with that shit going on, or believe that just they could do a damn thing about it.

No I didn't think you're were hating on PR just that it seems to be popping up alot in Godzilla topics and it mostly seems to be hatin'. I mean it isn't the dogs balls but I guess it came out of left field for me since I didn't know much about it and seemed to have a good enough balance of action and character.
I think the big complaint about Godzilla is the fact that it spends so much time with the characters yet they seems so vanilla.
Otoh some say it's not as bad as a Roland Emmerich flick so it has that going for it.

Oh and I saw Monsters and it was ok, kind of meh. The air of 'we want it to focus more on character than monster' pretension was a little too apparent.

speaking of monsters and too apparent, I saw that recent documentary/interview with Donald Rumsfeld and Danny Elfmans score was way too distracting andmanipulative it was a real PITA. This isn't even about Danny Elfmans style of music; he's doing what he's doing and it's his job to write shit, but this is more director/production choice. The soundtrack is 50/50 Snow White running through the forest and kids choir portraying some sense of wonder/poison and it was too pervalent; big old pink-elephant who put on too much perfume. smh Using it was like telling a family they should get out of the house because it's on fire and they're already choking and trying not to get hit by a falling beam.

But size does matter. In those examples it’s somewhat believable a human or 5 five could go up against the monster because it’s comparably human sized, maybe 2 or 3 times human size. Kind of hard to weave a compelling individual human interest story when the monster is the size of a skyscraper and 10’s of 1000’s of people are getting indiscriminately crushed into the dirt. Hard to get emotional about one man’s story with that shit going on, or believe that just they could do a damn thing about it.

I disagree, size or quantity doesn't matter, it's mostly about the writing, then some directing and editing. It doesn't matter what the problem is, and they don't even need to spend a lot of time on the characters to make them interesting or empathetic. A good writer can sum up a great character with a great line, a good actor can portray it as intended and a good director can capture it. Apparently that just didn't happen in this case.

Note to disaster film makers: If you're going to invest in characters then invest in them, otherwise don't and spend it on destruction. Manage your priorities, and follow through with them. It's bad enough most audiences don't realize they're being insulted by basic vanilla drivel, now it's to the point where basic vanilla audiences are starting to recognize it. Why would you want 'schlock' on your resume?

shadx312 wrote:

But size does matter. In those examples it’s somewhat believable a human or 5 five could go up against the monster because it’s comparably human sized, maybe 2 or 3 times human size. Kind of hard to weave a compelling individual human interest story when the monster is the size of a skyscraper and 10’s of 1000’s of people are getting indiscriminately crushed into the dirt. Hard to get emotional about one man’s story with that shit going on, or believe that just they could do a damn thing about it.

I disagree, size or quantity doesn't matter, it's mostly about the writing, then some directing and editing. It doesn't matter what the problem is, and they don't even need to spend a lot of time on the characters to make them interesting or empathetic. A good writer can sum up a great character with a great line, a good actor can portray it as intended and a good director can capture it. Apparently that just didn't happen in this case.

Note to disaster film makers: If you're going to invest in characters then invest in them, otherwise don't and spend it on destruction. Manage your priorities, and follow through with them. It's bad enough most audiences don't realize they're being insulted by basic vanilla drivel, now it's to the point where basic vanilla audiences are starting to recognize it. Why would you want 'schlock' on your resume?

Can you name a movie with a skyscraper sized monster where you gave a shit about the human characters? And it didn’t kill the flow of the movie?

I was wondering about Cloverfield but I got distracted. That's open-ended right now.

Ghostbusters

and maybe The Host but I have to see it first.

shadx312 wrote:Ghostbusters

But Ghostbuster’s plot wasn’t entirely the marshmallow man. That was a small part of the movie.

Cloverfield. Great example. You were invested in the characters without having them all pull the painfully hamfisted moves of relationship and soul searching nonsense.

Size doesn't matter. We've seen that also in Jurassic Park. Characters that are, at the very least, not driveling on forever.

The actors in Godzilla - every single one of them - seemed like they'd rather be fucking anywhere but on that set.

This is squarely the fault of Edwards. He's a fucking hack, plain and simple. Monsters was awful, just awful. I knew this would be as well.

Here's Watanabe's expression the entire fucking movie because, well, Edwards is a fucking dolt:


"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE ALL OUT OF SHAMROCK SHAKES??????"

entire
fucking
movie

beats me wrote:

shadx312 wrote:Ghostbusters

But Ghostbuster’s plot wasn’t entirely the marshmallow man. That was a small part of the movie.

Point taken, but still. Refer to LSZ previous posts.

There aren't that many skyscraper monsters; I think it's in its infancy, in the sense that those kinds of movies tend to be put in the hands of directors who probably have more technical commercial advertisement experience than theatrical so even if they have some sort of talent, it isn't in the realm of characters.
I suppose Peter Jackson did a decent job of having some emotional link between Mandingo and Barbie but it was mostly flop.
The exception would be JJ Abrams, who seems to have great all around experience, but his tv background is fo sho an asset for character experience.
But really, what good directors have been at the helm of a skyscraper monster flick?
It can't be a surprise there's going to be some suckiness going on.