This is a little diddy called Men Are Like Dogs...
Men Are Like Dogs.
They can be cuddly. They can be adorable. And they can rip your fucking face off.
They need care. They need love. They can kill you even if you've given them all of the above.
A dog by its nature is a stray. He will leave you if you don't feed him and rub his belly. So don't complain and give a dog what it needs or some skank will smile as it feeds.
Dogs can help.
They can aid your health.
And when you step on their paws they go yelp.
A big dog can bark at the would be burglars. But if you like them vicious he might think you're a burger.
A small dog might be fun at parties. But they're not around when the home invasion's starting.
A dog can mess up and need discipline. But if you smack them in the face too much, you can get a row of teeth in your rear end.
Dog in the mirror men of its own best friend. Love it well and it will be like Hachiko till the very end.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Movies
You know, I like movies.
I do.
I've always had a weird relationship with making films.
It's always been a matter of re-inspiration. It's never that one film that makes me a filmmaker.
It's the one that makes you love film again.
Filmmaking is filled with cynicism. It's always been a part of it. Thomas Edison was an evil dude. Any TMZ scandal pales in comparison to what William Randolph Heart did to Fatty Arbuckle.
You have to fall in love with film again. It's too difficult not to. That's what love is. It's embrace in the face of defeat.
I remember when I was in the fifth grade. My father was working on this script project that fell into development hell. It bummed him out a lot.
Hell, watching that made me depressed too.
But whatever. I'm beyond that now.
I remember my love of horror films was sort of this weird accident.
I was always nostalgic about 80s action movies.
I used to think that Terminator 2 was one of the greatest films ever made.
I still do.
I remember how in high school, every film that came out was trying to be the next Harry Potter. It sickened me. Something deep inside told me it was bullshit.
I hate that. I hated it when you were a kid, and they always pushed an aspiring franchise on you. Trying to bland up the ol' monomyth.
I remember watching Commando. I remember thinking that last scene where Arnold goes full God Mode was something to aspire to create as a filmmaker. Spraying and praying is tactically a horrible decision to make in a firefight, but it looks amazing on film.
There's a scene in Commando where Arnold chops a dude's arm with a machete. I thought that was cool. I was constantly preached about the evils of R-rated movies as a kid, and the idea that I would be able to create what I was not able to watch, a sort of homebrew punk rock of violence, was awesome to me. I purchased a book on horror films in the hopes of doing an action sequence like that in the future.
One thing led to another, I became entrenched in horror films.
We need a next generation of horror filmmakers. I thought that would be a cool thing to be. That, and rock stars.
We have another generation of rappers. We have another generation of comedians. We have another generation of basketball players. We need the next generation of genre filmmakers and rock stars who are more interested in making cool shit than Twitter followers. That preceding statement is both ironic and self-loathing.
A sixteen year old making R-rated films. You need to be at least seventeen to watch those. I wouldn't be allowed to watch the films that I had made. All of that bullshit about how violence in cinema is bad for children, and I would be a child making violent films, as if telling the entire establishment as a whole to piss off.
How the hell are you supposed to warn your children of the horrors of Isis when you cry when you watch Psycho?
I remember reading A Long Way Gone, and how Ishmael Beah talked about how he would watch violent movies and listen to rap mixtapes while serving as a child soldier.
You have to understand, this was during that post-Iraq war-everybody-hates-America era. The fact that the world loved violent movies (even for the wrong reasons) was something I found interesting. I always think French action movies are interesting. Cause they're French. They're not supposed to like action movies. But The Professional is still one of the greatest films of all time.
It was also cool to make films you weren't allowed to watch. To be told that you cannot get into an R-rated film, so you went on the weekend and made your own R-rated was kind of cool.
There's an enthusiastic violent creativity about high school. It goes away when you're in your twenties worrying about how to pay the bills. You spend your waking life as a creative worrying about quotas and demographics. That's not how good stuff is made. Sure, I try to aim for those things, but I don't think it's always going to work.
I apologize for that now, but that's a hard game to play.
Every story needs conflict. It's easy for society to take conflict personally if bad things happened to a character of diversity.
I use the third act of Star Wars as an example of this. Imagine if Luke Skywalker was black. He goes in to stop the Death Star, but Darth Vader closes in. But then, Han Solo comes in to shoot Vader away.
Social critics would say that was a symbolic of white oppression. That Luke Skywalker would not be able to finish his task without help of the white man.
Now, let's flip it, make Han Solo black. He saves Luke Skywalker, and helps the save the day.
The social critics will call him a lapdog. They say he projects an image of obedience to the white man.
The ubiquitous directionless agenda drivers (I don't know what they want, hence the title) have decided to turn everything into this inane political debate. It rarely makes things better. It doesn't award cool obscure diverse culture. It forces the already bland mainstream to adhere to quota.
You've taken a simple friendship in storytelling, and you've turned into this bullshit projection. And ironically, it stops Hollywood from casting awesome roles for women and minorities.
You try to force a conversation, when there is no room for it.
So, don't get caught in the bullshit, apologize if you really mess up, and do your thing.
I do.
I've always had a weird relationship with making films.
It's always been a matter of re-inspiration. It's never that one film that makes me a filmmaker.
It's the one that makes you love film again.
Filmmaking is filled with cynicism. It's always been a part of it. Thomas Edison was an evil dude. Any TMZ scandal pales in comparison to what William Randolph Heart did to Fatty Arbuckle.
You have to fall in love with film again. It's too difficult not to. That's what love is. It's embrace in the face of defeat.
I remember when I was in the fifth grade. My father was working on this script project that fell into development hell. It bummed him out a lot.
Hell, watching that made me depressed too.
But whatever. I'm beyond that now.
I remember my love of horror films was sort of this weird accident.
I was always nostalgic about 80s action movies.
I used to think that Terminator 2 was one of the greatest films ever made.
I still do.
I remember how in high school, every film that came out was trying to be the next Harry Potter. It sickened me. Something deep inside told me it was bullshit.
I hate that. I hated it when you were a kid, and they always pushed an aspiring franchise on you. Trying to bland up the ol' monomyth.
I remember watching Commando. I remember thinking that last scene where Arnold goes full God Mode was something to aspire to create as a filmmaker. Spraying and praying is tactically a horrible decision to make in a firefight, but it looks amazing on film.
There's a scene in Commando where Arnold chops a dude's arm with a machete. I thought that was cool. I was constantly preached about the evils of R-rated movies as a kid, and the idea that I would be able to create what I was not able to watch, a sort of homebrew punk rock of violence, was awesome to me. I purchased a book on horror films in the hopes of doing an action sequence like that in the future.
One thing led to another, I became entrenched in horror films.
We need a next generation of horror filmmakers. I thought that would be a cool thing to be. That, and rock stars.
We have another generation of rappers. We have another generation of comedians. We have another generation of basketball players. We need the next generation of genre filmmakers and rock stars who are more interested in making cool shit than Twitter followers. That preceding statement is both ironic and self-loathing.
A sixteen year old making R-rated films. You need to be at least seventeen to watch those. I wouldn't be allowed to watch the films that I had made. All of that bullshit about how violence in cinema is bad for children, and I would be a child making violent films, as if telling the entire establishment as a whole to piss off.
How the hell are you supposed to warn your children of the horrors of Isis when you cry when you watch Psycho?
I remember reading A Long Way Gone, and how Ishmael Beah talked about how he would watch violent movies and listen to rap mixtapes while serving as a child soldier.
You have to understand, this was during that post-Iraq war-everybody-hates-America era. The fact that the world loved violent movies (even for the wrong reasons) was something I found interesting. I always think French action movies are interesting. Cause they're French. They're not supposed to like action movies. But The Professional is still one of the greatest films of all time.
It was also cool to make films you weren't allowed to watch. To be told that you cannot get into an R-rated film, so you went on the weekend and made your own R-rated was kind of cool.
There's an enthusiastic violent creativity about high school. It goes away when you're in your twenties worrying about how to pay the bills. You spend your waking life as a creative worrying about quotas and demographics. That's not how good stuff is made. Sure, I try to aim for those things, but I don't think it's always going to work.
I apologize for that now, but that's a hard game to play.
Every story needs conflict. It's easy for society to take conflict personally if bad things happened to a character of diversity.
I use the third act of Star Wars as an example of this. Imagine if Luke Skywalker was black. He goes in to stop the Death Star, but Darth Vader closes in. But then, Han Solo comes in to shoot Vader away.
Social critics would say that was a symbolic of white oppression. That Luke Skywalker would not be able to finish his task without help of the white man.
Now, let's flip it, make Han Solo black. He saves Luke Skywalker, and helps the save the day.
The social critics will call him a lapdog. They say he projects an image of obedience to the white man.
The ubiquitous directionless agenda drivers (I don't know what they want, hence the title) have decided to turn everything into this inane political debate. It rarely makes things better. It doesn't award cool obscure diverse culture. It forces the already bland mainstream to adhere to quota.
You've taken a simple friendship in storytelling, and you've turned into this bullshit projection. And ironically, it stops Hollywood from casting awesome roles for women and minorities.
You try to force a conversation, when there is no room for it.
So, don't get caught in the bullshit, apologize if you really mess up, and do your thing.
Monday, September 29, 2014
The Little Things...
I'm still on vacation. Don't worry.
The irony gods live in entertainment. It's best to use that to your advantage.
Say you're not into making money, and turn into a businessman.
Claim to be an entrepreneur, and you make classics that don't make money.
I never understood judging someone for the clothes they wear. I mean, Gandhi freed his people wearing a diaper.
I like contrasts. I like chatting an introvert's ears off.
I like awkward silence with a public official trying to get my vote.
If I was who I really was, I'd probably get a warning. So, I act the weirdo. It's not illegal, but it's frowned upon. It's not illegal to be odd.
So stop making fun of this mask. It's the one you asked for.
Have too much fun, they'll call you crazy.
Don't do it for money, money makes you lazy.
It's okay to be awake, but remember to take an afternoon nap every once in a while.
A musical about a deaf girl in a library.
You know, if unicorns existed, they'd probably be homophobic. That sounds sad, but it's probably true. Ironic reality, is what it is.
The wonderful thing about writing is that you can write about whatever the fuck you wanna write about. Humanity has come along and tried to ruin that.
The Sumerians practicing cuneiform practicing this witchcraft that separated them from the barbarians. These characters they invented for themselves. Keep the magic alive.
I never felt like a failure, and I never wrote about tossing cowchips in the snow.
The irony gods live in entertainment. It's best to use that to your advantage.
Say you're not into making money, and turn into a businessman.
Claim to be an entrepreneur, and you make classics that don't make money.
I never understood judging someone for the clothes they wear. I mean, Gandhi freed his people wearing a diaper.
I like contrasts. I like chatting an introvert's ears off.
I like awkward silence with a public official trying to get my vote.
If I was who I really was, I'd probably get a warning. So, I act the weirdo. It's not illegal, but it's frowned upon. It's not illegal to be odd.
So stop making fun of this mask. It's the one you asked for.
Have too much fun, they'll call you crazy.
Don't do it for money, money makes you lazy.
It's okay to be awake, but remember to take an afternoon nap every once in a while.
A musical about a deaf girl in a library.
You know, if unicorns existed, they'd probably be homophobic. That sounds sad, but it's probably true. Ironic reality, is what it is.
The wonderful thing about writing is that you can write about whatever the fuck you wanna write about. Humanity has come along and tried to ruin that.
The Sumerians practicing cuneiform practicing this witchcraft that separated them from the barbarians. These characters they invented for themselves. Keep the magic alive.
I never felt like a failure, and I never wrote about tossing cowchips in the snow.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Dark Sabbatical
I've decided to take a break from this blog for the rest of the year.
Lately, I've been worrying about having to keep this blog updated as opposed to writing anything actually cool worth reading.
It's been this thing that has been compounding for a while.
You surround yourself with people who want to have views more than they want to write about anything cool. You read more from blogs about getting blogviews than you do anything worth blogging about.
It doesn't help that everyone gets offended by the wonderful drug that is the truth. Not agenda. Not policy. The truth.
Agendas are the pesticide of the truth.
Once upon a time, a man thought it was cool to have his film sponsor a charity project. The charity was part of the film's plot, so it felt like a good fit. It helped the movie make a lot of money. Developed brand loyalty. A "cult" like following, if you will.
But now, everybody does it. And it's annoying. Aaron Carter talking about the power of one while promoting Pokemon 2000. I bring this up a lot, but it represents how I feel about the marketing effects of false charity.
It's fine when you're making a documentary, but there's a lot of movies that I enjoy that will suffer from forcing an agenda down its throats.
A lot of movies that are cherished works would diminish from this. Can you imagine if The Goonies had some giant "save the environment" message in the middle of it?
It would completely destroy the plot of the film.
Honestly though, that stupid Pokemon 2000 junket is why Aaron Carter has drug problems. Same goes for any child star forced into a marketing tie in.
Spielberg merchandised those awesome Jurassic Park cups at McDonalds because he thought he was working on the greatest movie of all time (at least one of them) and he wanted to share this with as many people as possible.
Watch any Spielberg Behind the Scenes special.
Spielberg's crew of guys always work hard. And with each Behind the Scenes special, you appreciate their work. You know their names. Stan Winston. Phil Tippett. Throw in Ralph McQuarrie and Rick Baker while we're at it.
You don't get this with romantic comedies.
You love Alien? Who's the director of the first Alien? Immediately you say Ridley.
You love Aliens? Who was the director of that? You know. If you don't, it's only because you've forgotten for a second.
Hell, Fincher directed Alien 3.
But, having said that, answer this question without Googling/Wikipedia/Outside sources:
Who is the director of You've Got Mail?
Now, I like Nora Ephron, but I don't think most people who love You've Got Mail will care about the answer to that question. And that's frustrating.
A fan's love can cause resentment in an artist. Why can't you be more like you're earlier work? Why can't you look the same way you did in college?
The disposable and forgettable nature of culture also contributes to it. Ask any late 90s rapper.
And some bitter individuals will say that an artist needs to grind and shut up about the marketing ploys. That there are some people who go to jobs they don't like everyday, and that an artist getting paid is no different.
Well, Jon Voight had a job called Baby Geniuses 2.
It was a job.
He did it.
Do you applaud him on it?
Sisqo in Snow Dogs. He has money, doesn't he?
Go down the list on the pool of depression that is the Imdb Bottom 100. Do you applaud these people?
This is why I don't listen to short term knee jerk critics.
People are not accountable for their lies and opinions. I don't take people seriously because they don't take their own words seriously.
You can have all the health and wealth in the world, but if your passion is not in the right place, it amounts to nothing.
90% of culture doesn't feel like this thing of sincere compassion. It feels like another thing you have to do.
This blog has turned into this thing I have to do in order to promote Weight Loss Terrorists and my writing career.
That sucks.
Why can't it just be a cool blog talking about awesome things? Why do they insist on ruining everything?
People always ask about an artist's motivation.
I think they do that because they themselves don't have motivation.
Do you ever question someone's motivation to eat ice cream?
You wouldn't. You would rather question someone who didn't eat ice cream.
People sound like annoying children with all their questions.
Film criticism is up and film quality is down.
It's not fun. I go out. I don't have fun. And then I come here. And it's not even fun.
There's no fun.
So I'm done. Maybe till 2016.
Lately, I've been worrying about having to keep this blog updated as opposed to writing anything actually cool worth reading.
It's been this thing that has been compounding for a while.
You surround yourself with people who want to have views more than they want to write about anything cool. You read more from blogs about getting blogviews than you do anything worth blogging about.
It doesn't help that everyone gets offended by the wonderful drug that is the truth. Not agenda. Not policy. The truth.
Agendas are the pesticide of the truth.
Once upon a time, a man thought it was cool to have his film sponsor a charity project. The charity was part of the film's plot, so it felt like a good fit. It helped the movie make a lot of money. Developed brand loyalty. A "cult" like following, if you will.
But now, everybody does it. And it's annoying. Aaron Carter talking about the power of one while promoting Pokemon 2000. I bring this up a lot, but it represents how I feel about the marketing effects of false charity.
It's fine when you're making a documentary, but there's a lot of movies that I enjoy that will suffer from forcing an agenda down its throats.
A lot of movies that are cherished works would diminish from this. Can you imagine if The Goonies had some giant "save the environment" message in the middle of it?
It would completely destroy the plot of the film.
Honestly though, that stupid Pokemon 2000 junket is why Aaron Carter has drug problems. Same goes for any child star forced into a marketing tie in.
Spielberg merchandised those awesome Jurassic Park cups at McDonalds because he thought he was working on the greatest movie of all time (at least one of them) and he wanted to share this with as many people as possible.
Watch any Spielberg Behind the Scenes special.
Spielberg's crew of guys always work hard. And with each Behind the Scenes special, you appreciate their work. You know their names. Stan Winston. Phil Tippett. Throw in Ralph McQuarrie and Rick Baker while we're at it.
You don't get this with romantic comedies.
You love Alien? Who's the director of the first Alien? Immediately you say Ridley.
You love Aliens? Who was the director of that? You know. If you don't, it's only because you've forgotten for a second.
Hell, Fincher directed Alien 3.
But, having said that, answer this question without Googling/Wikipedia/Outside sources:
Who is the director of You've Got Mail?
Now, I like Nora Ephron, but I don't think most people who love You've Got Mail will care about the answer to that question. And that's frustrating.
A fan's love can cause resentment in an artist. Why can't you be more like you're earlier work? Why can't you look the same way you did in college?
The disposable and forgettable nature of culture also contributes to it. Ask any late 90s rapper.
And some bitter individuals will say that an artist needs to grind and shut up about the marketing ploys. That there are some people who go to jobs they don't like everyday, and that an artist getting paid is no different.
Well, Jon Voight had a job called Baby Geniuses 2.
It was a job.
He did it.
Do you applaud him on it?
Sisqo in Snow Dogs. He has money, doesn't he?
Go down the list on the pool of depression that is the Imdb Bottom 100. Do you applaud these people?
This is why I don't listen to short term knee jerk critics.
People are not accountable for their lies and opinions. I don't take people seriously because they don't take their own words seriously.
You can have all the health and wealth in the world, but if your passion is not in the right place, it amounts to nothing.
90% of culture doesn't feel like this thing of sincere compassion. It feels like another thing you have to do.
This blog has turned into this thing I have to do in order to promote Weight Loss Terrorists and my writing career.
That sucks.
Why can't it just be a cool blog talking about awesome things? Why do they insist on ruining everything?
People always ask about an artist's motivation.
I think they do that because they themselves don't have motivation.
Do you ever question someone's motivation to eat ice cream?
You wouldn't. You would rather question someone who didn't eat ice cream.
People sound like annoying children with all their questions.
Film criticism is up and film quality is down.
It's not fun. I go out. I don't have fun. And then I come here. And it's not even fun.
There's no fun.
So I'm done. Maybe till 2016.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Why The Slow News Day Will Be The Death Of Us All
People are slowly losing their mind on Twitter.
You have people with 100,000 tweets, twelve followers, and not a lot of interesting things to say.
It's understandable if some type of product was being promoted, but when you've dedicated that much metadata to emotional baggage, the problem is you.
There's this subculture of film critics on Twitter who seem to blab themselves into an endless bland purgatory. They have nothing else to do. People who have things to do don't tweet at all random times of the night. It doesn't happen.
Now, working on film shoots is probably one of the hardest things an artist can go through. It's right up there with extensive musical tours. It can drive you to madness if you're not in the right set of mind.
But it gives your life worth.
All this extra energy spent hoveling on social media goes away when you're doing things.
When you see a celebrity die, you shouldn't cry.
You should happy.
They have been remembered for what they dedicated their lives to.
You post their picture as your Twitter avatar. They don't need any other person to showcase their identity.
Now, could I be hating? Possibly.
Here lies Andrew, he liked Back to the Future alot. Is that really something you want on your headstone?
I don't know, maybe you do. It's up to you.
But, I think it sucks. Again, it could be the social media cabin fever talking.
Dr. Oz was in the news recently for allegedly using his TV show for lying to people about so called "miracle cures".
I don't think Dr. Oz was deliberately trying to throw people off.
He had 800 episodes.
800.
He probably wanted to do everything he wanted to do with his show in the first 30 episodes.
Try hosting a podcast for 800 episodes, and see if you don't spouting some snake oil alchemy nonsense.
It wasn't a matter of lying.
Anyone forced to fill a certain amount of time, under the pressure to deliver product, will ramble themselves onto inane subject matter.
I might wanna take time off from this blog to have something of worth to write about.
There's no news to report.
That's when you should be an artist and do something cool.
But instead, we decide to elevate the banal to the theatrical.
Life has a lot of interesting stuff in it. So, take some time off.
You have people with 100,000 tweets, twelve followers, and not a lot of interesting things to say.
It's understandable if some type of product was being promoted, but when you've dedicated that much metadata to emotional baggage, the problem is you.
There's this subculture of film critics on Twitter who seem to blab themselves into an endless bland purgatory. They have nothing else to do. People who have things to do don't tweet at all random times of the night. It doesn't happen.
Now, working on film shoots is probably one of the hardest things an artist can go through. It's right up there with extensive musical tours. It can drive you to madness if you're not in the right set of mind.
But it gives your life worth.
All this extra energy spent hoveling on social media goes away when you're doing things.
When you see a celebrity die, you shouldn't cry.
You should happy.
They have been remembered for what they dedicated their lives to.
You post their picture as your Twitter avatar. They don't need any other person to showcase their identity.
Now, could I be hating? Possibly.
Here lies Andrew, he liked Back to the Future alot. Is that really something you want on your headstone?
I don't know, maybe you do. It's up to you.
But, I think it sucks. Again, it could be the social media cabin fever talking.
Dr. Oz was in the news recently for allegedly using his TV show for lying to people about so called "miracle cures".
I don't think Dr. Oz was deliberately trying to throw people off.
He had 800 episodes.
800.
He probably wanted to do everything he wanted to do with his show in the first 30 episodes.
Try hosting a podcast for 800 episodes, and see if you don't spouting some snake oil alchemy nonsense.
It wasn't a matter of lying.
Anyone forced to fill a certain amount of time, under the pressure to deliver product, will ramble themselves onto inane subject matter.
I might wanna take time off from this blog to have something of worth to write about.
There's no news to report.
That's when you should be an artist and do something cool.
But instead, we decide to elevate the banal to the theatrical.
Life has a lot of interesting stuff in it. So, take some time off.
Friday, June 20, 2014
The Seven Year Itch
I've been getting sloppy.
It's something that's been going on for a while.
You try to give 120 percent. People complain. You make them feel inadequate. So you give 78 percent.
But you can't really give 78 percent. It's not natural. It goes against the laws of physics.
So you dwindle. You fall.
And you're afraid of promoting your blog because of some news story when some guy got fired for a joke on his blog that didn't make sense.
It's a lot of fucking bullshit.
You read blog posts about page views. You do all this stuff. You're chasing. You run for a while. And you stop caring after a while.
You got mothers poisoning their kids for blog views. What a loser. Learn how to be interesting, you degenerate fuck.
Sorry, got carried away...
Your idiot friends/family try to impose their half baked agendas on to you. Everything always seems conceived beforehand. You see all these people do all these different things, not because they want to but because it allegedly leads to somewhere else. Everything they do is a regurgitated rehash of what was popular last year.
Last year's over, hombre.
It takes three years to make a movie. You know what that means? It means, to be good, you need to be able to tell the future. You have to dig deep in the collective subconscious, and say what everyone wants to say, but doesn't have the balls to be able to.
You know that whole story about the guy that says "Once I get promoted, I will work harder", and he never gets promoted because he never works hard? The entertainment industry always excuses its misfires because it builds to a tomorrow that never appears.
Sometimes, producers make movies they don't like on the hopes of winning support from people who often flounder, complain, or don't show up at the box office.
Everything these days is filtered by the actions of what I call a fringe vocal few.
The idiots displaying their assault rifles in the department store. This isn't a political statement, this is about their own narcissism.
The idiots who kill people because no one liked their Facebook post. The idiots who bring drama on themselves.
Fringe vocal few. Rod Serling called them the Lunatic Fringe of Letter Writers. They went from writing letters to CBS complaining about Lassie giving birth to puppies on television to tweeting every celebrity on Twitter waiting for a response.
Never underestimate a person's ability to ruin a good thing.
Society has destroyed the ability to have a real conversation about anything for the fear of mildly damaging anyone's feelings.
Remember good television shows you would watch growing up? Remember how every once in a while they would have a sincere episode about something serious?
Episodes about Boy Meets World dealing with parents abusing their kids.
That one episode of Family Matters where Jaleel White broke character in the end and asked people to think about the violence in the Chicago area.
Yeah, it could be argued that Kirk Cameron took that whole issue-sitcom thing and went way overboard in the cause-related marketing.
But you need that sometimes. You need "Hey Arnold" episodes that talked about real shit. That episode where Stinky became the spokesperson for Yoohoo soda, and turned down a million dollars because the Yoohoo Soda marketing people made him look like an idiot.
They took what Spike Lee was trying to do with Bamboozled and made it universally accessible.
You know Dave Chappelle would watch that episode of Hey Arnold and think about his life afterward.
There's a lot of child stars that need to watch that.
Everything on the Disney/Nickelodeon/eventual ratchet child star incubator is this desensitized slurge where a bunch of kids are screaming "Oh my God! The popcorn machine is exploding!" while a forced laughtrack blasts in between promotional music videos that encourage tweens to have enough emotional baggage to fuel a soap opera.
Your love commodity. The drama that you market.
I'm convinced that actors lose their minds when they make hokey romantic comedies that go against who they are.
Look at each movie a child star was doing before they lost their mind. You think those movies sucked? The child stars who worked on that thing really hated it.
Greta Garbo starred in Two-Faced Woman. It was so bad that she gave up acting. That was in 1941. She passed away in 1990. The movie was so bad, she quit despite five decades of people asking her to come back.
I started really writing scripts in 2007. Sure, there was stuff I did when I was nine years old, but 2007 was when I reached all the way to page 100.
And I had to. Shrek 3. Pirates 3. Spider-Man 3. The climate needed that.
It's said that the seventh year is when an artist breaks out, if they don't lose themselves in the process.
I had severe emotional turmoil a few years back when I was forced to change a couple stories I wrote to something I did not want from closed minded nosey people who did not have my interests at heart. I was also working on a romantic comedy screenplay that drove me to near schizophrenia.
Which isn't to say I don't like romcoms, but this was one of those really crappy ideas. After I saw glimpses of my project's similarities in music videos and semi-Syfy channel movies, I gave up on it. And I should have.
Amputate the limb.
I wasn't having fun. I was speculating on something that cost me more sweat than I got back.
Not again.
We write what we're good at.
We don't apologize. We don't seek validation. We let inertia pull us in.
World Domination Is Not A Crime.
It's something that's been going on for a while.
You try to give 120 percent. People complain. You make them feel inadequate. So you give 78 percent.
But you can't really give 78 percent. It's not natural. It goes against the laws of physics.
So you dwindle. You fall.
And you're afraid of promoting your blog because of some news story when some guy got fired for a joke on his blog that didn't make sense.
It's a lot of fucking bullshit.
You read blog posts about page views. You do all this stuff. You're chasing. You run for a while. And you stop caring after a while.
You got mothers poisoning their kids for blog views. What a loser. Learn how to be interesting, you degenerate fuck.
Sorry, got carried away...
Your idiot friends/family try to impose their half baked agendas on to you. Everything always seems conceived beforehand. You see all these people do all these different things, not because they want to but because it allegedly leads to somewhere else. Everything they do is a regurgitated rehash of what was popular last year.
Last year's over, hombre.
It takes three years to make a movie. You know what that means? It means, to be good, you need to be able to tell the future. You have to dig deep in the collective subconscious, and say what everyone wants to say, but doesn't have the balls to be able to.
You know that whole story about the guy that says "Once I get promoted, I will work harder", and he never gets promoted because he never works hard? The entertainment industry always excuses its misfires because it builds to a tomorrow that never appears.
Sometimes, producers make movies they don't like on the hopes of winning support from people who often flounder, complain, or don't show up at the box office.
Everything these days is filtered by the actions of what I call a fringe vocal few.
The idiots displaying their assault rifles in the department store. This isn't a political statement, this is about their own narcissism.
The idiots who kill people because no one liked their Facebook post. The idiots who bring drama on themselves.
Fringe vocal few. Rod Serling called them the Lunatic Fringe of Letter Writers. They went from writing letters to CBS complaining about Lassie giving birth to puppies on television to tweeting every celebrity on Twitter waiting for a response.
Never underestimate a person's ability to ruin a good thing.
Society has destroyed the ability to have a real conversation about anything for the fear of mildly damaging anyone's feelings.
Remember good television shows you would watch growing up? Remember how every once in a while they would have a sincere episode about something serious?
Episodes about Boy Meets World dealing with parents abusing their kids.
That one episode of Family Matters where Jaleel White broke character in the end and asked people to think about the violence in the Chicago area.
Yeah, it could be argued that Kirk Cameron took that whole issue-sitcom thing and went way overboard in the cause-related marketing.
But you need that sometimes. You need "Hey Arnold" episodes that talked about real shit. That episode where Stinky became the spokesperson for Yoohoo soda, and turned down a million dollars because the Yoohoo Soda marketing people made him look like an idiot.
They took what Spike Lee was trying to do with Bamboozled and made it universally accessible.
You know Dave Chappelle would watch that episode of Hey Arnold and think about his life afterward.
There's a lot of child stars that need to watch that.
Everything on the Disney/Nickelodeon/eventual ratchet child star incubator is this desensitized slurge where a bunch of kids are screaming "Oh my God! The popcorn machine is exploding!" while a forced laughtrack blasts in between promotional music videos that encourage tweens to have enough emotional baggage to fuel a soap opera.
Your love commodity. The drama that you market.
I'm convinced that actors lose their minds when they make hokey romantic comedies that go against who they are.
Look at each movie a child star was doing before they lost their mind. You think those movies sucked? The child stars who worked on that thing really hated it.
Greta Garbo starred in Two-Faced Woman. It was so bad that she gave up acting. That was in 1941. She passed away in 1990. The movie was so bad, she quit despite five decades of people asking her to come back.
I started really writing scripts in 2007. Sure, there was stuff I did when I was nine years old, but 2007 was when I reached all the way to page 100.
And I had to. Shrek 3. Pirates 3. Spider-Man 3. The climate needed that.
It's said that the seventh year is when an artist breaks out, if they don't lose themselves in the process.
I had severe emotional turmoil a few years back when I was forced to change a couple stories I wrote to something I did not want from closed minded nosey people who did not have my interests at heart. I was also working on a romantic comedy screenplay that drove me to near schizophrenia.
Which isn't to say I don't like romcoms, but this was one of those really crappy ideas. After I saw glimpses of my project's similarities in music videos and semi-Syfy channel movies, I gave up on it. And I should have.
Amputate the limb.
I wasn't having fun. I was speculating on something that cost me more sweat than I got back.
Not again.
We write what we're good at.
We don't apologize. We don't seek validation. We let inertia pull us in.
World Domination Is Not A Crime.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Godzilla 2014 Review
So, I finished watching Gareth Edwards' Godzilla film.
There's been a minor controversy (it's the Internet) regarding this film, so I thought I'd go out and address it.
I wish I could talk about how when I was a kid growing up in Torrance, I bought a VHS case that had a double feature of Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla in it.
I'd also love to talk about the website Godzilla Tower (a Godzilla vs. Gigan reference) that apparently got turned into some fetish site, the G-Fan (I think they called it G-Fan because they loved Gamera too) magazine I always wanted to subscribe to, and this book called Master of Monsters that used to cost $220.
Master of Monsters now costs $20 on paperback since Gareth Edwards read it while researching for the new movie. I am now ordering the crap out of this thing.
I could talk about the kaiju haikus I did in high school, which got me scorn from my teachers, shows how much they were on the pulse of society. I also wonder if They Came From Hollywood ever became a real video game.
I could talk about my neighbor, who did graphic design for a collection of soundtrack CDs showing off the entire history of Godzilla until Megaguirus.
I could also talk about how I started to listen to the Outside the Cinema and Cinema Diabolica podcasts because of their Godzilla episodes, and talked to them about the failed Godzilla vs. Satan project.
I could also talk about how I watch the Heisei series Godzilla as a form of antidepressant (either that or Kakuranger).
I might even talk about Pulgasari, the Godzilla ripoff movie produced by Kim Jong Il that I obsessed over.
But, you don't wanna hear about that.
So, let's talk about this movie.
The first complaint I hear a lot about from this movie is that Godzilla is not in this movie enough.
When I first heard of this, one other movie came to mind:
King Kong 2005
Not gonna lie, I was scared.
But, there's a difference between these two films that sets the absence of the title character apart:
When I was watching King Kong 2005 for the first time, I was forty five minutes in when I had to remind myself that I was watching a King Kong movie.
I remember thinking "wait a minute, this is a King Kong movie, right? It feels like a Merchant Ivory Production" while watching it. I don't think the original 1933 version had such pacing issues, and that film was made by people who hyperventilated when Superman picked up a car.
There's never a moment in Godzilla 2014 when you forget you're watching a Godzilla movie.
There's nuclear plants going crazy, conspiracies, secrets, all types of interesting stuff. The conflict is building.
And while we're on point, King Kong had a lot of fight scenes. It had T. Rexes swinging from trees. It had the deleted Black Scorpion sequence put back in and turned up to 11. Do you like that movie? Do you remember that movie? Is it something you express your love for?
The people who don't like the pacing of Godzilla are the same people who complained that Drive wasn't more like Fast and the Furious. They're the same people who complained that Breaking Bad should've had five more seasons.
They don't like the creative decisions of Bryan Cranston, apparently.
There's a lot of Godzilla movies with wall to wall action. They bore easily. After a while, they turn into the same film. Watch them if you don't believe me. And throw in some Rebirth of Mothra while we're at it.
The only thing that truly stands out from Godzilla: Final Wars is the guy who looks like Josef Stalin, and the fact that Godzilla fought his '98 self, with one of the characters calling 98 zilla a "tuna loser" or something to that effect.
Actually, I remember a lot more from Final Wars, but nothing that resonates like Godzilla 2014.
I think Gareth Edwards watches a lot of Godzilla. Gareth Edwards feels like that one poster on the Ain't It Cool News talkback/Disqus chat/whatever that has an offbeat take on an established property that works.
But, it's not just that.
I think Godzilla 2014 was a perpetrator of opportunistic circumstance.
Let's face it, a Godzilla reboot was in development hell forever. First, they wanted to make it some Imax special. Then, they thought about trying some theme park thing.
And then the 2011 Tsunami happened.
The 2011 Japanese tsunami and the Fukushima issues that occurred afterward have made this film seem really plausible. When you read about how the Japanese government hired homeless people to clean up radiation in the area, the sinister nature of coverup in this movie seems all too real.
Back in the seventies, a couple of film producers had no faith in a project they were working on. Their film was about a nuclear plant run amok. But then, Three Mile Island happened when the movie came out, and The China Syndrome ended up becoming a highly successful film.
Godzilla 2014 feels the same way. It's tapping into our subconscious fears from the last ten years.
I hate it when people shoehorn morality into something. Aaron Carter talking about the power of one while promoting Poke'mon 2000. Yuck...
Godzilla 2014 doesn't do that. It feels real.
We live in a world where Korean ships capsize and planes go missing. And flying robots hunt Pakistani children like they're named John Connor. We're plausible for a Godzilla.
I think the next couple of years of filmmaking will sort of present subconscious themes about 9/11, the Iraq war, sort of the same way a lot of movies in the eighties were about Vietnam.
It takes time to develop a narrative about contemporary history. You can only look back after it's over.
What it was actually like to deal with Vietnam was very different than what the contemporary presentation of events was. Movies like Punishment Park, Vanishing Point, and Billy Jack give a look that's different from contemporary images.
A sort of revisionism is to take effect. We're going to take what we know now and apply it to what happened back then. 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule didn't become a legendary thing until way after it happened.
When you watch The Social Network, even though it takes place in Harvard in 2003, there's no mention of protesting the war, or 50 Cent, or Avril Lavigne, or any pop punk American Pie comedy derivative which will again rear it's ugly head in 2023.
That history was rewritten for the narrative of Facebook.
And pop culture will rewrite history. How else can Nero fiddle when Rome burned when the fiddle is a fifteenth century instrument? Because it sounds too cool not to.
Godzilla '98 was sort of like that as well. The backlash of Emmerich's project only really took root during Godzilla 2000 when the Japanese filmmakers felt that Emmerich did not do Godzilla justice.
The lack of backlash during its actual release of Godzilla '98 (or Zilla, whatever) probably has to do with the fact that American audiences were not used to Godzilla in a serious context. 70s Godzilla, like Japanese Spiderman, was a microcosm of Japan in the 70s: a country not yet taken seriously because it had yet to reach its potential.
70s Japan was a Magikarp. And 70s Godzilla had a lot of splashing.
The '98 Godzilla backlash didn't really become apparent until after 9/11. You can't watch a movie post 9/11 where Mayor Roger Ebert farts over some Hershey Kisses because a couple jets shot missiles at the Chrysler Building. It's not a good look.
Godzilla 2014 is on the same level that Man of Steel is to me. One, because both Godzilla 2014 and Man of Steel are both post-Save The Cat stories that try to do what Blake Snyder said and "Keep The Press Out Of It" regarding the conflict in their stories, but both filmmakers acknowledge that a story on their scale cannot avoid the ubiquity of the media.
So, both Godzilla 2014 and Man Of Steel have this weird tone every time the news media in their movies covers the events that are happening. The media's there, but not really. There's reports, but no real press conferences. We're so used to having press conference scenes in movies of a similar nature, that it feels strange without it.
It's like a movie where the villain wins. If you're tired of watching the hero win all the time, you might welcome it, but you get so accustomed to it, that you wish the hero won when they come up short. Game of Thrones, anybody?
Again, it's a minuscule detail that feels strange, but it doesn't derail the film.
The only thing that might separate the Godzilla 2014/Man Of Steel comparison is that while a lot of goofy Superman projects never made the public eye, we have had a plethora of Godzilla misfires. Read Superman vs. Hollywood. Watch Kevin Smith's Superman movie story. Man of Steel might be as good as it gets.
Of course, the term "misfire" is subjective. I don't think Godzilla 2000 was a misfire. It was a return to form. If anything, it was a failure in marketing. There wasn't the nerd culture that we have today that can embrace something like that. The Internet still had stigma in the year 2000. If you dated someone you met online in 2000, it would feel otherworldly. Now, it's cautious with exception, like actual real world dating.
With this past, it's hard to grade Godzilla 2014 as a film.
So, I have decided to grade Godzilla 2014 on two mantras:
First, we have the Nolan Mantra.
The Nolan Mantra (created by Christopher) goes like this: "A quality film is one where you feel like the person making it thinks this is the greatest film ever made".
Now, the person making the film is not always the director. It's not always the producer. A lot of people have hated the films they have worked on, only to see their embodiment of misery and self-loathing go on to be the defining work of their career.
The point is, someone working on this thing cares. Passion. And when passion is mixed with skill, it becomes dangerous.
Roland Emmerich does not think that his Godzilla was the greatest movie ever. He thinks Stargate and Independence Day are the greatest films ever made. Godzilla was something he was attached to for a lot of money. He was hired because of two movies he made, not for a love of Godzilla.
I think Gareth Edwards thinks Godzilla 2014 is one of the greatest films ever. Gareth made Monsters because of his philosophical fascination with monster movies. I don't think his passion is questionable.
Godzilla 2014 passes the Nolan Mantra.
The second mantra we have is the Nicholson Mantra:
The Nicholson Mantra (courtesy Jack) says that a good movie is "a film that has three great scenes and no bad ones".
There were three scenes from this movie that I thoroughly enjoyed.
They were:
1. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) being forced (spoiler, but it's in the trailer, so not really) to close the chamber down on his wife. It's the type of deep character moment that you can only compare to the original Gojira when Serizawa ponders using the Oxygen Destroyer, a device he has created that sucks the oxygen out of the nearby area.
Since Gojira's powers stem from atomic radiation, Serizawa fears that using the Oxygen Destroyer will only give way to some other abomination (which was explored in Godzilla vs. Destroyah).
The entire Gojira film was a metaphor for the post atomic age and placed the moral dilemma that America had on using atomic weapons in the shoes of the Japanese people.
It's hard to think of another time where there was a deeper character dilemma in a Godzilla film.
2. The reveal of Godzilla showing just his leg. It built suspense up so well. There was so much building up to that moment that it just felt right.
3. The Tsunami in Hawaii/Halo jump. Anyone vacationing in Hawaii with an overactive imagination has looked at that oceanic horizon and wondered if something would come out of the water and destroy the hotel skyline.
The idea of paratroopers seeing Godzilla as they fall is such an ingenious concept, that it's amazing it hasn't been overused like those longneck satellite dishes that shoot out lightning/lasers in every other Godzilla film.
Gareth really scratched an itch here.
While the third act had some minor issues (the warhead plot seemed jumbled on first viewing), Godzilla 2014 passes the Nicholson Mantra.
Godzilla 2014 finally did what those Millennium Godzilla movies wanted to do but failed at: It took away the atomic fears of Godzilla and tapped into our own fears of a nihilistic existence. But it didn't do that by making Godzilla be inhabited by the souls of dead soldiers (GMK: All Monsters Attack), but by making Godzilla a personification of the universe killing us. And when we face death, we figure out what's important.
The 2011 Tsunami changed Japan culturally. Whereas before Japan indulged in all the weird stuff that we associate Japan with, the Tsunami made a minor shift in where the values of the Japanese people were. It wasn't a total shift, Japan is still Japan, but the country is now reevaluating what it finds important.
America had the same effect after 9/11. Hope growing in the aftermath of chaos.
It always seems like we are a couple steps away from forgetting that, and because of that, it feels like the world is always a couple steps away from falling into chaos.
Now, can King Ghidorah be in the future chaos? We can only see.
There's been a minor controversy (it's the Internet) regarding this film, so I thought I'd go out and address it.
I wish I could talk about how when I was a kid growing up in Torrance, I bought a VHS case that had a double feature of Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla in it.
I'd also love to talk about the website Godzilla Tower (a Godzilla vs. Gigan reference) that apparently got turned into some fetish site, the G-Fan (I think they called it G-Fan because they loved Gamera too) magazine I always wanted to subscribe to, and this book called Master of Monsters that used to cost $220.
Master of Monsters now costs $20 on paperback since Gareth Edwards read it while researching for the new movie. I am now ordering the crap out of this thing.
I could talk about the kaiju haikus I did in high school, which got me scorn from my teachers, shows how much they were on the pulse of society. I also wonder if They Came From Hollywood ever became a real video game.
I could talk about my neighbor, who did graphic design for a collection of soundtrack CDs showing off the entire history of Godzilla until Megaguirus.
I could also talk about how I started to listen to the Outside the Cinema and Cinema Diabolica podcasts because of their Godzilla episodes, and talked to them about the failed Godzilla vs. Satan project.
I could also talk about how I watch the Heisei series Godzilla as a form of antidepressant (either that or Kakuranger).
I might even talk about Pulgasari, the Godzilla ripoff movie produced by Kim Jong Il that I obsessed over.
But, you don't wanna hear about that.
So, let's talk about this movie.
The first complaint I hear a lot about from this movie is that Godzilla is not in this movie enough.
When I first heard of this, one other movie came to mind:
King Kong 2005
Not gonna lie, I was scared.
But, there's a difference between these two films that sets the absence of the title character apart:
When I was watching King Kong 2005 for the first time, I was forty five minutes in when I had to remind myself that I was watching a King Kong movie.
I remember thinking "wait a minute, this is a King Kong movie, right? It feels like a Merchant Ivory Production" while watching it. I don't think the original 1933 version had such pacing issues, and that film was made by people who hyperventilated when Superman picked up a car.
There's never a moment in Godzilla 2014 when you forget you're watching a Godzilla movie.
There's nuclear plants going crazy, conspiracies, secrets, all types of interesting stuff. The conflict is building.
And while we're on point, King Kong had a lot of fight scenes. It had T. Rexes swinging from trees. It had the deleted Black Scorpion sequence put back in and turned up to 11. Do you like that movie? Do you remember that movie? Is it something you express your love for?
The people who don't like the pacing of Godzilla are the same people who complained that Drive wasn't more like Fast and the Furious. They're the same people who complained that Breaking Bad should've had five more seasons.
They don't like the creative decisions of Bryan Cranston, apparently.
There's a lot of Godzilla movies with wall to wall action. They bore easily. After a while, they turn into the same film. Watch them if you don't believe me. And throw in some Rebirth of Mothra while we're at it.
The only thing that truly stands out from Godzilla: Final Wars is the guy who looks like Josef Stalin, and the fact that Godzilla fought his '98 self, with one of the characters calling 98 zilla a "tuna loser" or something to that effect.
Actually, I remember a lot more from Final Wars, but nothing that resonates like Godzilla 2014.
I think Gareth Edwards watches a lot of Godzilla. Gareth Edwards feels like that one poster on the Ain't It Cool News talkback/Disqus chat/whatever that has an offbeat take on an established property that works.
But, it's not just that.
I think Godzilla 2014 was a perpetrator of opportunistic circumstance.
Let's face it, a Godzilla reboot was in development hell forever. First, they wanted to make it some Imax special. Then, they thought about trying some theme park thing.
And then the 2011 Tsunami happened.
The 2011 Japanese tsunami and the Fukushima issues that occurred afterward have made this film seem really plausible. When you read about how the Japanese government hired homeless people to clean up radiation in the area, the sinister nature of coverup in this movie seems all too real.
Back in the seventies, a couple of film producers had no faith in a project they were working on. Their film was about a nuclear plant run amok. But then, Three Mile Island happened when the movie came out, and The China Syndrome ended up becoming a highly successful film.
Godzilla 2014 feels the same way. It's tapping into our subconscious fears from the last ten years.
I hate it when people shoehorn morality into something. Aaron Carter talking about the power of one while promoting Poke'mon 2000. Yuck...
Godzilla 2014 doesn't do that. It feels real.
We live in a world where Korean ships capsize and planes go missing. And flying robots hunt Pakistani children like they're named John Connor. We're plausible for a Godzilla.
I think the next couple of years of filmmaking will sort of present subconscious themes about 9/11, the Iraq war, sort of the same way a lot of movies in the eighties were about Vietnam.
It takes time to develop a narrative about contemporary history. You can only look back after it's over.
What it was actually like to deal with Vietnam was very different than what the contemporary presentation of events was. Movies like Punishment Park, Vanishing Point, and Billy Jack give a look that's different from contemporary images.
A sort of revisionism is to take effect. We're going to take what we know now and apply it to what happened back then. 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule didn't become a legendary thing until way after it happened.
When you watch The Social Network, even though it takes place in Harvard in 2003, there's no mention of protesting the war, or 50 Cent, or Avril Lavigne, or any pop punk American Pie comedy derivative which will again rear it's ugly head in 2023.
That history was rewritten for the narrative of Facebook.
And pop culture will rewrite history. How else can Nero fiddle when Rome burned when the fiddle is a fifteenth century instrument? Because it sounds too cool not to.
Godzilla '98 was sort of like that as well. The backlash of Emmerich's project only really took root during Godzilla 2000 when the Japanese filmmakers felt that Emmerich did not do Godzilla justice.
The lack of backlash during its actual release of Godzilla '98 (or Zilla, whatever) probably has to do with the fact that American audiences were not used to Godzilla in a serious context. 70s Godzilla, like Japanese Spiderman, was a microcosm of Japan in the 70s: a country not yet taken seriously because it had yet to reach its potential.
70s Japan was a Magikarp. And 70s Godzilla had a lot of splashing.
The '98 Godzilla backlash didn't really become apparent until after 9/11. You can't watch a movie post 9/11 where Mayor Roger Ebert farts over some Hershey Kisses because a couple jets shot missiles at the Chrysler Building. It's not a good look.
Godzilla 2014 is on the same level that Man of Steel is to me. One, because both Godzilla 2014 and Man of Steel are both post-Save The Cat stories that try to do what Blake Snyder said and "Keep The Press Out Of It" regarding the conflict in their stories, but both filmmakers acknowledge that a story on their scale cannot avoid the ubiquity of the media.
So, both Godzilla 2014 and Man Of Steel have this weird tone every time the news media in their movies covers the events that are happening. The media's there, but not really. There's reports, but no real press conferences. We're so used to having press conference scenes in movies of a similar nature, that it feels strange without it.
It's like a movie where the villain wins. If you're tired of watching the hero win all the time, you might welcome it, but you get so accustomed to it, that you wish the hero won when they come up short. Game of Thrones, anybody?
Again, it's a minuscule detail that feels strange, but it doesn't derail the film.
The only thing that might separate the Godzilla 2014/Man Of Steel comparison is that while a lot of goofy Superman projects never made the public eye, we have had a plethora of Godzilla misfires. Read Superman vs. Hollywood. Watch Kevin Smith's Superman movie story. Man of Steel might be as good as it gets.
Of course, the term "misfire" is subjective. I don't think Godzilla 2000 was a misfire. It was a return to form. If anything, it was a failure in marketing. There wasn't the nerd culture that we have today that can embrace something like that. The Internet still had stigma in the year 2000. If you dated someone you met online in 2000, it would feel otherworldly. Now, it's cautious with exception, like actual real world dating.
With this past, it's hard to grade Godzilla 2014 as a film.
So, I have decided to grade Godzilla 2014 on two mantras:
First, we have the Nolan Mantra.
The Nolan Mantra (created by Christopher) goes like this: "A quality film is one where you feel like the person making it thinks this is the greatest film ever made".
Now, the person making the film is not always the director. It's not always the producer. A lot of people have hated the films they have worked on, only to see their embodiment of misery and self-loathing go on to be the defining work of their career.
The point is, someone working on this thing cares. Passion. And when passion is mixed with skill, it becomes dangerous.
Roland Emmerich does not think that his Godzilla was the greatest movie ever. He thinks Stargate and Independence Day are the greatest films ever made. Godzilla was something he was attached to for a lot of money. He was hired because of two movies he made, not for a love of Godzilla.
I think Gareth Edwards thinks Godzilla 2014 is one of the greatest films ever. Gareth made Monsters because of his philosophical fascination with monster movies. I don't think his passion is questionable.
Godzilla 2014 passes the Nolan Mantra.
The second mantra we have is the Nicholson Mantra:
The Nicholson Mantra (courtesy Jack) says that a good movie is "a film that has three great scenes and no bad ones".
There were three scenes from this movie that I thoroughly enjoyed.
They were:
1. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) being forced (spoiler, but it's in the trailer, so not really) to close the chamber down on his wife. It's the type of deep character moment that you can only compare to the original Gojira when Serizawa ponders using the Oxygen Destroyer, a device he has created that sucks the oxygen out of the nearby area.
Since Gojira's powers stem from atomic radiation, Serizawa fears that using the Oxygen Destroyer will only give way to some other abomination (which was explored in Godzilla vs. Destroyah).
The entire Gojira film was a metaphor for the post atomic age and placed the moral dilemma that America had on using atomic weapons in the shoes of the Japanese people.
It's hard to think of another time where there was a deeper character dilemma in a Godzilla film.
2. The reveal of Godzilla showing just his leg. It built suspense up so well. There was so much building up to that moment that it just felt right.
3. The Tsunami in Hawaii/Halo jump. Anyone vacationing in Hawaii with an overactive imagination has looked at that oceanic horizon and wondered if something would come out of the water and destroy the hotel skyline.
The idea of paratroopers seeing Godzilla as they fall is such an ingenious concept, that it's amazing it hasn't been overused like those longneck satellite dishes that shoot out lightning/lasers in every other Godzilla film.
Gareth really scratched an itch here.
While the third act had some minor issues (the warhead plot seemed jumbled on first viewing), Godzilla 2014 passes the Nicholson Mantra.
Godzilla 2014 finally did what those Millennium Godzilla movies wanted to do but failed at: It took away the atomic fears of Godzilla and tapped into our own fears of a nihilistic existence. But it didn't do that by making Godzilla be inhabited by the souls of dead soldiers (GMK: All Monsters Attack), but by making Godzilla a personification of the universe killing us. And when we face death, we figure out what's important.
The 2011 Tsunami changed Japan culturally. Whereas before Japan indulged in all the weird stuff that we associate Japan with, the Tsunami made a minor shift in where the values of the Japanese people were. It wasn't a total shift, Japan is still Japan, but the country is now reevaluating what it finds important.
America had the same effect after 9/11. Hope growing in the aftermath of chaos.
It always seems like we are a couple steps away from forgetting that, and because of that, it feels like the world is always a couple steps away from falling into chaos.
Now, can King Ghidorah be in the future chaos? We can only see.
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