“Long live the king”
July 21, 2018 12:19 PM   Subscribe

The first trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the 35th film, scheduled for the summer of 2019. Stars "Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah", plus some humans including Millie Bobby Brown, Sally Hawkins, Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe and Charles Dance. Godzilla vs. Kong is scheduled to follow up in 2020. [Twitter][InterWeb]
posted by Wordshore (58 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
2019! But I wanna see it now!
posted by thelonius at 12:24 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


NO KING BUT GHIDORAH
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:28 PM on July 21, 2018 [11 favorites]


It's one hell of a trailer. I'm there for it. Also, it's neat seeing Michael Dougherty get a big tent-pole project.
posted by brundlefly at 12:33 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


What? No Gamera?

How about Gamera versus Godzilla or, perhaps, Gamera/Godzilla versus Ghidora/Rodan tag team match. Now, that’s entertainment!
posted by sudogeek at 12:35 PM on July 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


Looks dreadful. Even the M83-esque music can't save this mess.

I feel bad for Kyle Chandler, who keeps being in crap ever since FNL. Was hoping he'd have a hell of a career after that show.*sigh*
posted by dobbs at 12:37 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


Not watching because I'm trying to avoid trailers these days but I was pretty massively underwhelmed by Godzilla (2014). At least this one doesn't seem to have Aaron Taylor-Johnson in it.
posted by octothorpe at 12:45 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


King Ghidorah!!!!!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:52 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


They must have gotten the musical idea from this remix of Claire de Lune.

(My brother always told me this was his favorite music for a Godzilla attack though.)
posted by Catblack at 12:58 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wow. That looks as lame as the last one. No thank you.
posted by hoodrich at 1:08 PM on July 21, 2018


Mothra, huh? I wonder if The Peanuts will make an appearance and sing some songs.
posted by JamesBay at 1:15 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, that looks pretty terrible to me. You're wrong about the last Godzilla movie, though. The last one was Shin Godzilla (2016) and it was awesome.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 1:16 PM on July 21, 2018 [14 favorites]


How about Gamera versus Godzilla

They’re from different studios.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:46 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


I still need to see Shin Godzilla, mostly so that I can see some real-life versions of shots that are used in Neon Genesis Evangelion, but also because I heard it’s an awesome movie.

I really enjoyed the previous American Godzilla movie, but I’m not a huge Godzilla buff like a lot of people are so I can understand why people don’t like it. As far as a popcorn flick goes, this looks great.

I still need to see the second Pacific Rim, but one thing I liked about the original, along with the American Godzilla that last came out, is their sense of scale. The kaiju look huge, and I absolutely love that. If there’s ever another mecha movie, I want them to look and feel huge. A Gundam is suppose to be 18m tall, an Eva is somewhere between 40-80m tall, and Gipsy Danger is 80m tall, and they should definitely look that way on film.
posted by gucci mane at 2:07 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


I thought the musical choice made it seem worse than it likely would have otherwise. I get what they were trying to do, I think, but meh...made it seem all neutered and bad-Spielberg/Lucas kid-safe.

And yes, I keep hoping Kyle Chandler will get something better than he keeps getting.
posted by biscotti at 2:32 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Actually enjoyed the previous Godzilla movie. I'll definitely watch this one as well. Also, thanks gucci mane, I somehow missed Shin Godzilla. I will now order it. In case anyone has missed it there are 2 seasons of animated Godzilla on Netflix, "Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters" and "Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle" .
posted by evilDoug at 2:34 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


And just because...
posted by evilDoug at 2:38 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Shin Godzilla is amazing, both because of its biting satire of bureaucracy and disaster response, and because it fully embraces being a Godzilla movie and is therefore intentionally hilarious. I can't recommend it highly enough.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:40 PM on July 21, 2018 [12 favorites]


Humans are a disease on the earth ...blah blah blah blah. Can movies stop with this trope?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:06 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


Shin Godzilla was awfully good, but it's the exception to the rule. I've grudgingly accepted that movies about giant monsters stomping on stuff are never going to be as good as ten-year-old me thinks they should be. Half of the movie just has people in it, and that half always sucks... and honestly the half that has giant monsters in it usually sucks too, CGI Wonderland or no CGI Wonderland.

As long as we're doing trailers, you might wanna watch the one for Shazam.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 3:07 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


Humans are a disease on the earth ...blah blah blah blah. Can movies stop with this trope?

Is it a trope if it's true ?
posted by Pendragon at 4:02 PM on July 21, 2018 [10 favorites]


Shin Godzilla was the perfect kind of monster movie, in that it captured realistic human and bureaucratic responses to a municipal-level crisis. It was satire, but it didn't seem exaggerated; the decision making of public officials was all too believably hampered by factoring in electoral acceptance. It's the same cynicism that makes "Lenny - you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters" one of the greatest moments in Ghostbusters.

I now want a film where, after Inverness is destroyed by monsters making their way to the channel, the threat posed to British shipping by monsters is addressed by a public-private partnership coordinated by Malcolm Tucker, the absence of which from Season 10 Doctor Who still grates.
posted by MarchHare at 4:10 PM on July 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


I liked 2014 Godzilla okay, though I’d sooner it followed anyone but it’s bland central character. It’s title sequence however, was very, very good. Skull Island was awesome and felt way more like the film that title sequence promised.
posted by Artw at 4:41 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


So is this in the same "universe" as the 2014 Godzilla film and Kong island (or skull island... whatever it was called)? I'll reserve an opinion on it until i actually see the movie rather a trailer cut for people who need to have English speaking people in their dumb monster movies but... it has Ghidorah and Mothra so it is already ahead of the game.
posted by Ashwagandha at 4:43 PM on July 21, 2018


I really like the Mothra.
posted by Artw at 4:44 PM on July 21, 2018 [5 favorites]


I am confused. Are the Titans being woken to kill the disease that is humanity or save life on earth or what? Am I expecting too much sense from this trailer which looks like it takes itself way too seriously?
posted by nubs at 4:51 PM on July 21, 2018 [8 favorites]


Did I see Millie Bobby Brown try to touch a monster? I did, Jesus Christ. This is like Bryan Cranston overacting in the first movie. Take an actor from a popular TV series and have them do what they did on that show. Except it will be ridiculously out of place in a monster movie. The third movie will have Alison Brie wrestle.

This shit is stupid beyond belief. Of course I will see it.
posted by riruro at 5:16 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


>Titans being woken to kill the disease that is humanity or save life on earth or what?

Humanity has damaged the biosphere, so the Earth is sending the Titans to irradiate, stomp, and variously lay waste to absolutely everything. It's kind of like blowing up your house because there are ants in the kitchen.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:18 PM on July 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


Wait... are we having Mothra, but we're NOT having Tiny Mothra Priestesses? If we're not having Tiny Mothra Priestesses, I want my money back.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:24 PM on July 21, 2018 [16 favorites]



Humanity has damaged the biosphere, so the Earth is sending the Titans to irradiate, stomp, and variously lay waste to absolutely everything. It's kind of like blowing up your house because there are ants in the kitchen.


But humanity is busy digging the Titans up so they can lay waste to everything? Man, I'm so confused.
posted by nubs at 5:36 PM on July 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


My other problem with the trailer is that it does not appear that anyone uses a container ship as a club.
posted by nubs at 5:39 PM on July 21, 2018 [6 favorites]


I hope it has the Gamera song.
posted by JamesBay at 5:44 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


It looks like a Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn gambit, where someone tells everyone that the prophecy requires these powerful entities to save the world, only it turns out they meant "save the world from humans, by killing them." So the humans get all the Titans, and then the Titans go GRAR and then everyone is super mad at the one lady.
posted by Scattercat at 6:11 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


This shit is stupid beyond belief. Of course I will see it.

This.
posted by Fizz at 6:29 PM on July 21, 2018 [6 favorites]


It appears to be very blue.
posted by davebush at 6:42 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


But the acting looks top shelf.
posted by parm=serial at 6:48 PM on July 21, 2018


It appears to be very blue.

Don't worry, I'm sure there's a boat-load of reddish-orange just waiting to spew out from frame centre every eight minutes or so.
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:17 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


>But humanity is busy digging the Titans up so they can lay waste to everything? Man, I'm so confused.

Yeah, didn't they say something like, "Unless we find all the Titans, we're all gonna die?" I guess there's no point working overtime to make a Godzilla movie make sense.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:48 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wait... are we having Mothra, but we're NOT having Tiny Mothra Priestesses?

They are the Cosmos. Please try to keep up. *Exagerated sigh*
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:15 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Shin Godzilla was the perfect kind of monster movie, in that it captured realistic human and bureaucratic responses to a municipal-level crisis.

More than that, it's a perfect example of how a bureaucracy would respond to a Black Swan Event or Outside Context Problem. For much of the film the humans are attempting to define and deal with the problem in terms of existing rulesets for known problems. One can say that they should have dealt with Godzilla more aggressively, but they simply couldn't know what they were dealing with until too late. And it didn't help that Godzilla had an escalating response for anything they did.

The parallels to Fukushima are also very obvious in this film. Which is worth an entire FPP on its own.
posted by happyroach at 8:49 PM on July 21, 2018 [5 favorites]


I am confused. Are the Titans being woken to kill the disease that is humanity or save life on earth or what? Am I expecting too much sense from this trailer which looks like it takes itself way too seriously?

As a guess, I suspect the events in the trailer are reordered from how they will appear in the movie. The woman scientist, who appears to be the mother of Millie Bobby Brown, appears to perhaps have not been acting in good faith sometime early on in the movie, guiding people to the "Titans" out of a secret belief that they will "cure" the Earth of the infection that is the human based destruction of the planet, or to put it more bluntly, cure the Earth of some large measure of humanity itself.

Hence Millie saying "You're a monster" seemingly to her mother and the reason she appears on a screen to the collected scientists and military personnel explaining her reasoning. Millie's father, appears to have some conflict with the mother over her decisions, and since Millie is with him, not her, that seems to suggest they, somehow, are the ones who bring Godzilla into the fight against the other Titans, particularly false King Ghidorah.

In the end, perhaps, the mother's speculation will be shown to be partially right as Godzilla will save humanity and somehow turn the tide on the immediacy of Earth's destruction, but it will potentially happen for reasons she didn't expect involving humankind, represented by Millie, engaging with the monsters rather than just opening the box and letting them all out as the mother seems to do with Ghidorah and the Volcano.

That there is such a prominent shot of a POW MIA flag and the father seemingly is military suggests some weird political subtext as well that doesn't necessarily bode well for the movie, if it does play out anything like the rough scenario the trailer implies to me. But, I could be totally wrong about all of it, so we'll just have to wait and see. It definitely needs more Mothra though.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:09 PM on July 21, 2018


mmm yes, this looks just as delightfully terrible as the 2014 one and i am excited to watch parts of it repeatedly on cable until i have seen the entire film out of order and enjoyed every stupid moment of it.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:56 PM on July 21, 2018 [8 favorites]


Even for a movie with a giant radioactive lizard, the most unbelievable part of the last one was Zip disks still being usable after 20 years. In the real world they were lucky to last 20 days...
posted by Ian A.T. at 1:16 AM on July 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


Shin Godzilla is very good on Japanese collectivism, lots and lots of people working together to get to the solution... where as in the west one (or a small collection) of heroes has to do it.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:58 AM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


So is this in the same "universe" as the 2014 Godzilla film and Kong island (or skull island... whatever it was called)?

I was confused by that too. Apparently Legendary and Toho's contract means that studios get alternating years, thus they are NOT in the same narrative universe.

With that said, I'm going to have to check out this Shin Godzilla,
posted by mikelieman at 6:33 AM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Yeah, didn't they say something like, "Unless we find all the Titans, we're all gonna die?" I guess there's no point working overtime to make a Godzilla movie make sense.

Gotta Catch Them All!
posted by mikelieman at 6:34 AM on July 22, 2018


I really hope they take some lessons from Skull Island (which was kinda fun) vs the 2014 Godzilla (dour as hell).

I mean, if you want a "realistic" giant monster movie it's gonna be about existential dread and disaster relief, but that's not fun (unless Hideaki Anno is involved and guess what we got just that in Shin Godzilla). And the vast majority of Godzilla movies, the ones that we aired on Sunday afternoon on some crazy high UHF channel when I was growing up, were fun. Skull Island was fun too and made more money than Godzilla 2014 did. But nobody talks about it.

The other thing a Godzilla movie should do is actually show Godzilla. The 2014 version felt like Cloverfield at times. Another thing Skull Island did well and I hope they carry over into this new film is not be afraid to show the big monster, often and unobscured.
posted by thecjm at 6:49 AM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


I really hope they take some lessons from Skull Island (which was kinda fun) vs the 2014 Godzilla (dour as hell).

Agreed. I thought that viewing Skull Island through the lens of Vietnam/war to be quite fascinating. I like that it changed up the formula a bit. I wish more films like this took chances. I also just realized I some how missed watching Shin Godzilla and it's currently downloading as we speak.
posted by Fizz at 7:02 AM on July 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


The other thing a Godzilla movie should do is actually show Godzilla. The 2014 version felt like Cloverfield at times. Another thing Skull Island did well and I hope they carry over into this new film is not be afraid to show the big monster, often and unobscured.

Godzilla (2014) managed to be boring which is something that I didn't was possible with a Godzilla film. It's not all that hard, just show giant monsters fighting the army or other giant monsters which totally failed to do until the end. Also they cast actors like Elizabeth Olson, Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston but we spend most of the movie following some generic bland hunky leading actor whose name I have to look up every time.
posted by octothorpe at 7:16 AM on July 22, 2018


false King Ghidorah

Hssssssss!

You take that back... three times!
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:27 AM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Still no Godzuki then...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:37 AM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


NO KING BUT GHIDORAH

You’re goddamn right!

Seriously, Godzilla: King of Monsters!? I’m right fucking there!

I feel like have been eponysterically waiting for this moment my entire metafilter life
posted by Ghidorah at 6:59 PM on July 22, 2018 [11 favorites]


This is like Bryan Cranston overacting in the first movie. Take an actor from a popular TV series and have them do what they did on that show. Except it will be ridiculously out of place in a monster movie. The third movie will have Alison Brie wrestle.

This shit is stupid beyond belief. Of course I will see it.
posted by riruro at 5:16 PM on July 21 [1 favorite −] [!]


lol. 60 years later, and Americans have only a silver of an idea of how to make a Godzilla movie, what the fuck the point is, or why Godzilla movies devolved into kids' messages about how to deal with alien bullies. But at least americans can make the theater shake with the fear of God, goddammit. imax or bust.

So yes, I want to see Alison Brie as a 100m tall, glowing pink, wrestling Robeast! Howling Revenge Ghost of the defeated Pantsuit Nation! The writers could totally steal notes from Attack of the 50 ft woman "Harry! Harry!" or the stupid fun of 50 ft cheerleader....

Until Lindsay Ellis follows up on her King Kong and 9/11 work and makes a Godzilla video, here's a nerdy youtube summary.

I feel like 2014 kinda got at what I feel a Godzilla movie should be, in that it gave you that sense of implacable, unspeakable, overpowering, intelligent, malevolent doom that seems only like the cultural residue of the massive B-29 firebombing campaign and nuclear attacks. (One of the B-29 bomb groups flying out of China, then Tinian decorated their bomber with 'Kagu Tsuchi'/ wrote a book about the bombing campaigns (in)appropriately called "Scourge of the Fire God"). in 1945.

2014 is kind of missing the Doom That is Your Culture's Fault, because, well, americans are innocent and terrible at sociology like that. It does take a shot at militarism, i'll give it that, but it veers into "9/11" telephone drama, and how could it not? And of course, even in 2014, Hollywood has to spell out what should be embodied in the drama of a walking earthquake via expository dialogue from the Ken Watanabe character. because expository dialogue is just what Hollywood does.

And you would think that Hollywood could at least give you that cinematic experience and catharsis of a malevolent mountain turning on all of society, even if it's never going to have the kind of plot that makes sense to most americans. Someone upthread was complaining about having to listen to dialogue about 'humanity is a cancer'...but I feel like that kind of sentiment is the dramatic fulcrum of these movies. if you are not feeling that, it's probably not for you. I feel like most americans aren't looking for this kind of catharsis. And that's why someone got away with making that 1998 hackjob.

but perhaps a godzilla movie should give you that sense of demoralizing, crushing insignificance, like, everything and everyone you know is false, weak and going to be destroyed, and you kind of deserve it, but mostly you don't even matter. find solace in gathering your fellows and comrades to flee from the cascading rubble of your society. the army is going to give its all and accomplish little to nothing. I feel like this is what the 2017 Netflix series got right--Godzilla sits there and crushes an anime army from multiple planets with a flick of a tail, it hovers on the horizon like the mushroom cloud. This kind of catharsis is probably not what this 2019 movie is going to be about.

I haven't seen Shin Godzilla, but, having been through Katrina and the BP disaster, and a climate disaster every year on the Gulf Coast since 2014, I feel like the movie would like me. I wouldn't watch it on a rainy day in August, tho.
posted by eustatic at 10:01 PM on July 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


but perhaps a godzilla movie should give you that sense of demoralizing, crushing insignificance, like, everything and everyone you know is false, weak and going to be destroyed, and you kind of deserve it, but mostly you don't even matter.

2018 has already done this sufficiently tho
posted by poffin boffin at 10:53 PM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


I didn't think I liked Big Monster movies but I quite enjoyed Pacific Rim (although I still haven't seen the sequel) so I'm open minded about this one. But I'm also confused by the trailer, I can't tell if the monsters are goodies or baddies. Although I guess that doesn't really matter, it's all about "whaaamp whaaamp whaaamp" sirens and kablooies.
posted by like_neon at 2:14 AM on July 23, 2018


I didn't think I liked Big Monster movies but I quite enjoyed Pacific Rim (although I still haven't seen the sequel)

Pacific Rim 2: Kaiju Boogaloo: Bigger kaiju. More crazy shit. Worse writing.

The genre doesn't hinge on writing, but Pacific Rim TRIED a little bit more than most. That said about the genre, the writing is the deciding factor for me. Someone mentioned the Bryan Cranston Godzilla's breaking the ability to suspend disbelief with 20 year old Zip drives. They could have written that better.
posted by mikelieman at 2:33 AM on July 23, 2018


I am extremely excited for this. I've been a fan of Godzilla movies for... not quite as long as there have been Godzilla movies. I liked GODZILLA (2014), and loved SHIN GODZILLA (2016) and SKULL ISLAND (2017).

But I just saw COLOSSAL (2016), and, man, that's a picture what is a picture.
posted by Devoidoid at 10:50 AM on July 23, 2018


Just watched the original from 1954 on Filmstruck (not the version with Raymond Burr) and was surprised at how effective a movie it still is. Yeah, the HO scale miniatures that he stomps on don't look very realistic but the film as a whole is quite sober and more of a horror film than the later jokey full-color sequels from the sixties.
posted by octothorpe at 6:41 PM on August 3, 2018




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