Charles Dance – Tripping Through Gateways

Returning to the present after Kong Skull Island’s 70’s setting, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is our chance for some giant monster against monster action.

With a quick revisit to the destruction of the end of 2014’s Godzilla by Gareth Edwards, we meet the Russell family who are searching for their son while Godzilla fights the MUTOs.

Jumping to the present, Mark and Emma Russell are estranged, with Emma continuing her scientific work with Monarch. When Emma and their daughter Maddie are kidnapped by Echo-Terrorists, along with a weapon that allows for some communication with the titans, Mark is recruited by Monarch to help get them back.

It turns out to be more complex than that, some believe that the Titans are the key to healing the planet. But their confidence lacks important data that could doom the planet and humanity.

So… One of my complaints with Edward’s Godzilla was it’s slow drawn out reveal of Godzilla. This was the umpteenth version of Godzilla and the slow reveal was unnecessary and pretty annoying. Here, we get to start seeing the titans very quickly and dramatically. Director Michael Dougherty knows that a movie called Godzilla: King of the Monsters will need to deliver on the monsters.

And boy does he. The film has several exciting sequences as Godzilla fights the new renditions of classic ToHo monsters. The designs of the creatures are great, they have a sense of life and threat.

I also liked the human characters in this film. It was nice to see Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins return from the previous film. Chandler is solid as a character who would just as soon see the titans all dead, but is forced to confront his anger and bitterness to save his family and the world. Vera Farmiga is both sympathetic and frustrating as Emma, who loves her family, but seems to skirt the line of ethics in her choices. And Stranger Thing’s Millie Bobby Brown is very good as the surviving child who really wants to do what is right and also honor her lost brother. The film has a fun supporting cast as well.

I really enjoyed this film. The myth building, the action and the characters came together for crazy monster bashing fun.

The success of Aliens had the studio rushing to try and get an Alien 3 going. There were a lot of false starts and bad ideas that led to what we got. Good scripts got tossed aside for weird ideas. There were questions on whether Weaver wanted to return. While she did finally return, she pushed for this to be the end of Ripley’s journey.

Music video director David Fincher was given the job of bringing the film to life. It should be noted, Fincher was deeply unhappy with his experience and even producers admit they treated him very badly. Which is unfortunate. Because the end result was a muddled and overall messy film with some good ideas and some terrible choices.

After the events of Aliens, Ripley, Newt, Hick and Bishop are in hypersleep on a small escape pod. There is a malfunction that results in the ship crashing on a small prison planet. Only Ripley survives. The prison operates on a skeleton crew, primarily made up of the inmates. Most have adopted a form of Christianity that sees themselves as so unable to resist the draw of sin, living on a planet without temptations is their only choice. As religious leader Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) notes, Ripley’s arrival has put temptations back in place.

An alien facehugger has escaped with Ripley and finds a host. This film added a new twist to the series. It suggested that the alien xenomorph actually borrows traits from it’s host. In this case it is a dog. This results in a xenomorph that runs around on all fours and is more canine in it’s movement.

Once the xenomorph is discovered, Ripley and the inmates struggle to defeat it. Alien 3 is an attempt at not repeating the previous films. So they drop Ripley on a planet with no weapons. Unfortunately, a lot of the decisions with the script resulted in nullifying the progress of Ripley in Aliens. Killing her defacto family put her back at square one. The studio interference left us with a film disowned by it’s director and far more to weaken it. The strengths are few and far between. The religious aspect is kind of interesting and the cast is terrific. Yet these things cannot save a slapped together script and poor CGI.

Tag: Charles Dance

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