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Godzilla (2014)
Subpar Kaiju Movie, Superior Disaster Movie
As several others have perhaps already noted, Godzilla 2014's biggest flaw as a giant monster movie is that it cuts away from the action about every time it starts only until the very end of the movie, which is very lame for a giant monster movie. However, if you appreciate drama, good dialogues and fleshed out characters, then you might appreciate the way Godzilla 2014 sets itself apart as a disaster movie with characters that you can actually relate to and care about, with giant monster action being a nice additional touch (despite most of it happening in the background). All by all, I would definitely recommend this movie for people seeking drama rather than those seeking action.
Bleach: Burîchi (2004)
Nothing has lasting consequences, and therefore nothing has magnitude
As far as shounens go, Bleach isn't bad, and it definitely has a decent entertainment value for the right audiences. However, as an older viewer, what frustrated me about it is that it does very little to even slightly subvert the predictable and overly used shounen cliches.
In Bleach, there's no injury that can't be healed, no amputation that can't be regenerated and no power that can't be one upped. In the end, it just feels that everything is completely devoid of consequences, which in turn makes it devoid of any meaning or magnitude and can really diminish your investment in what's happening. This is just bad writing and has nothing to do with the show/manga's shounen categorization. The 2003 Full Metal Alchemist anime is adapted from a shounen but is still thrilling as hell, because every event and action has grave and irreversible consequences.
Battles in Bleach more or less follow the same formula, which consists of two opposing characters one upping each other's powers in very linear manner. Whenever a character reveals their next secret super power or weapon, the opposing party acts shocked and gets seemingly on the verge of defeat, just to start laughing hysterically a minute later, walk us through how they had a contingency solution planned all along, and then reveal their own next power in return. That's it, they just keep one-upping one other; it gets old really quickly and in time you end up knowing how a fight will end the moment it starts.
All by all, dedicated shounen fans may enjoy Bleach or have more tolerance of its shortcomings, but I could barely look past them as someone who's not very invested in it.
The Guardians of Justice (2022)
Amateur; Even Kung Fury Has A More Elaborate Cast & Sets
Just finished ep1 and it felt like watching an animated bedtime story, except that the creators used excess budget to film and insert some very cheap live-action sequences in-between animated scenes.
Where's the substance in this show? Where's the WORLD? I don't know because we certainly see very little of it. Whenever something interesting is about to happen, the show cuts into an animated clip with a narrator's voice over it. The real world scenes are few and far in between, and are shot at such excessive zoom with the absolute minimum number of characters, sets and detail that you could get away with, much like a middle school project.
Despite the animation quality, I just can't recommend this. It's an extremely amateur production. If you want an 80s' parody with similar vibes, go watch Kung Fury instead. Even though it's not about superheroes, it's still way, way better on every front, with such detailed environments and killer action sequences.
Taiyô no ko Esuteban (1982)
The Ultimate Epic Adventure
This anime has the perfect set of elements that any epic adventure calls for:
-PARTY of adventurers all with unique goals and personalities.
-The smug, deceitful yet ultimately good-aligned party leader that everyone loves.
-NUMEROUS other parties and factions with good, neutral and evil alignments.
-DISTINCT goals for each faction (many don't even care about the Cities of Gold, and those who do have hugely opposing agendas).
-A JOURNEY beginning with a sail through the Atlantic ocean and continuing through numerous cities, landmarks and sites across an entire continent.
-EPIC battles between various warring factions throughout the show, culminating in a final showdown.
-Sci fi elements in the form of ancient technology and giant vessels.
-SUSPENSE; the artifacts that the protagonists carry will actually do something along the way!
Gojira: Fainaru uôzu (2004)
Peculiar, But The Only One of Its Kind
This one-of-a-kind movie is not great by any means, but Showa fans willing to put up with its faults (mainly bad CG) and peculiar style could find something special in it.
In case you didn't know, Godzilla's original series (AKA "Showa era movies", 1954-1975) started out very grim and serious in tone but soon took a completely different turn. Many of them have Godzilla defend the earth against your typical B-movie variety alien invaders (men with antennas and futuristic sunglasses) and perform some really wacky stunts, which gives the Showa films a goofy, light-hearted feel.
In Final Wars, aliens invade the earth yet again, but instead of wasting time on negotiations and conferences, we send the earth's most elite fighters to take them on in hand-to-hand combat, Matrix-style! The initial world-building drags on longer than necessary, but the film still manages to have the highest fight-to-dialogue ratio of any Godzilla movie ever made.
This is one of those movies that are so cheesy they're good. It doesn't only feature a thin, straightforward plot, but the characters are so unapologetically cliche that one of them talks exclusively in action movie one liners. It's so audacious that the whole thing feels like self-aware mockery, like one final extravaganza to honor the original series with all its absurdity and its charms before retiring the franchise for the next decade.
Unfortunately, Final Wars' CG is beyond awful, which is used throughout the movie as a replacement for certain stunts and monsters. It's so bad you can immediately spot everything 3D in freeze frames, and it looks even ten times worse when animated. Movements are timed so fast and psychics are so off that the monsters feel completely weightless. The alien space ships look nearly as bad as they did in the Last Starfighter, which came out in 1984, 20 years BEFORE this movie... it's truly flabbergasting!
On a final note, I don't think I would've enjoyed this movie nearly as much without having watched the main entries of the Showa series (and skimmed over most of the less important ones). If it's not clear by now, this is a really niche movie, and watching a whole lot of monsters you know nothing about go into a royal rumble in such a short time span wouldn't be as meaningful if you didn't have some sort of knowledge and connection to at least some of them.
All by all, this might for many viewers be the best Godzilla monster brawl that Toho has produced thus far.
Gojira shingyura pointo (2021)
A New Level of "Awful"
Whether or not this passes as a good sci-fi flick, I -as a Godzilla fan- have to call the creators out on some audacious and awful decisions:
-Strapping Godzilla's name to this show: The titular character's screen time is no more than 3%; approximately 7 minutes across 13 episodes.
-Deceitful advertising: Only two of the dozen monsters depicted in the op/ed credits appear, one of which isn't even at its full kaiju scale.
-Awful narration/monologue galore: At least 50% of the narration is done via characters repeatedly watching news, doing internet research, talking to themselves and attending press/science conferences.
I swear to you, the show literally cuts from one monologue to the next, from a TV news segment to a lecture, to a person talking to themselves, back to the news again. This show has very little "kaiju" and too much "scientists and journalists talking".
-Overuse of nauseating 3D: I want you to do this experiment: put a real life basketball video and a basketball anime scene side by side, and slow the real-life counterpart to the point that the ball's up-and-down movement syncs between the two, and you will discover that anime physics actually run at half the speed of real life physics or slower. So, when you blend 3D animation into anime, you have to take more factors into account than simply lowering the 3D's framerate to give it that jerky feel. Aside from simulating anime physics, the illusion of 2D can't be achieved with 3D animations that have a continuous movement flow and idle animations, since anime characters freeze at the end of their movements and never have an idle animation. Last but not least, overuse of poorly executed visual effects only further amplifies the illusion that every scene with CG elements is just taken from a video game cutscene, which doesn't blend with the anime in the least.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
A Loving Tribute? Or Maybe Just a Rehashed Version of the Classic Fairy Tale
It was very hard for me as an adult to take this movie seriously, being that it's mostly a rehash of the original 1977 Star Wars but with a severe Mary Sue case.
The plot is almost identical to A New Hope but with small adjustments, none of which are groundbreaking. The undercover infiltration of Imperial facilities happens all over again. It's very convenient that Imperial fleets/moons/planets always have all their control overrides set in one room with two guards on it, and the rebels can always land in it with pinpoint accuracy.
The lead character made it especially hard for me to suspend my disbelief and actually enjoy the movie. That girl is an Olympics-class professional at whatever she laid her hands on throughout the movie, from piloting to aerospace mechanics to dueling Sith lords. It's so blatant it's ridiculous.
Needless to say, the movie does have a bit of humor and some nostalgic moments that original Star Wars fans would appreciate, but that's about it.
Overall, this movie sits on the then line between paying a loving tribute to Star Wars, and between being a mediocre and predictable entry in the saga. I personally felt the latter.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
A Few Adjustments To A Mostly Tired Old Formula
Plain flat good and evil characters make for okay children books but for terrible adult stories. That's why it's difficult to take Star Wars or any of the conflicts that come with it seriously when they keep rehashing the same old tropes. Believe it or not, the rebels make yet another undercover infiltration of Imperial facilities by sending in 2-3 individuals and dressing them up in Imperial uniforms. How original. I have to admit that the movie does have its unpredictable moments here and there, but it's generally riddled with the same old elements that were okay in the original Star Wars, as a fairy tale told with groundbreaking cinematic spectacle, but are downright dull for a modern adult audience.
The Umbrella Academy (2019)
Drama, romance, super heroes and an adventure through time
The slow start of season one had me scratching my head at everything; so little is revealed and everyone is a prick. But a few episodes in, everything started to make sense and the internal conflicts every character had fleshed them out into believable individuals.
I would compare the social drama in this show to The Haunting of Hillhouse. Both focus on family turmoils following extreme events (death of family members and the involvement of supernatural stuff) and both feature an ousted family member who's shunned for exposing family secrets. Much like The Haunting, every character of the Hargreeves family in the Umbrella Academy has to fight an internal battle against their personal scars and grievances in order to save themselves, the family's unity and, in this case, the world itself.
Although the show is not exceptional in any particular way, it features a good blend of mystery, family drama, romance, super hero action, time travel adventures (particularly in season 2) and an occasional dash of humor. If you're a fan of that, this show is highly recommended.
The Expendables 2 (2012)
So Cheesy It's Good. Redeemed the Expendables after Disastrous Debut.
Instead of spending three quarters of the movie selling us a bland story and 2D character stereotypes, the movie jumps from one action sequence to another and almost mocks itself in the process.
The effects are way more well made this time and include a bit of vehicular combat. The movie is so cheesy it almost feels self-aware, and that blends amazingly with its homage to 80s' over-the-top action movies. The all-star ensemble cast is not only a great union of the era's top actors, but is also greatly complemented by Jason Statham, another actor whose movies and roles are so over-the-top that I can't help but find his sheer presence to be unintentionally funny. His interactions with the rest definitely contributed a lot to the "so cheesy it's good" part.