I'm Alex Schul. I'm Sharon Schul. And welcome to School of Movies. Kong Ex-Godzilla, The New Empire. For centuries, there was harmony. The titans were the guardians of nature. And the Great Apes became the protectors of humanity. We've discovered a signal. She can feel it. Kong, Godzilla. They can feel it, too. Something is coming. Something even they're afraid of. You feel like going for a ride? Thought you'd never honest. Just try not to swallow your tongue. What? Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Is that a mini Kong? Oh, my God. That's not just a signal. That's a call for war. What is that? Kong can't stop this on his own. What is that? Kong can't stop this on his own. He won't be alone. The last time those two met up, it was almost the end of Kong. They don't have to like each other. They just have to work together. Now I have seen everything. We've made some minor augmentations. Oh. In this episode and next weeks, we will be talking about two of the best Kaiju movies ever made and both within a few months of each other. The fifth installment of the Monarch Monsterverse and a clever, compassionate alternate history version of the original 1950s got Jira. With us, we have Kaiju expert and host of the Left Over Army Monsters podcast, Dan Hetner. Oh, it's happy to be here. We would not have immediately thought of anyone else but you on this one. Now, also, you've been saying, "When are you doing Godzilla minus one?" "When will that be?" You did not want to miss this, but... No, because you had mentioned a while back, like, "Yeah, we want to wait a little bit." And then get to it and I was like, "Cool, let me know when." Yeah, it made sense because I wanted to make sure that people could actually get hold of both of these movies. It's actually quite difficult putting out a podcast about a movie that is not on widespread release or even these days in the cinema at all because people just aren't going to the cinema as much. So allowing... You're telling me... You're telling me about having to find movies that are hard to find and then talk about them with people? Okay, my whole bit. Now, that was mainly for the benefit of the audience, but yeah, absolutely. Okay, so first on the docket is Godzilla X-Con Colon, the new empire from 2024, and you don't have to have seen the movie first, though we do heartily recommend it. This was directed by Adam Wingard, who directed Your Next and The Guest, both of which Sharon and I disliked, and Godzilla vs. Kong from 2021, which we liked well enough. After King of the Monsters in 2019, finally delivered a truly spectacular and worthy American adaptation of the Japanese icon. Everything that has followed since has felt like a huge bonus that we probably wouldn't or shouldn't normally be getting. Because none of these movies do avenge his money and the critics are sniffy about the best films in the most diverse series, whilst praising the most bland. Meanwhile, a minor contingent of the pre-existing subs not dubs Godzilla fandom consider all of the American films to be trash, so it can often feel like everyone is against you when you love them. But I guess if you're on that island with us, that fittingly makes you Godzilla, or indeed Kong. Because unexpectedly, this is actually my favourite of all of them so far. Somehow surpassing King of the Monsters by a... air. Though, if they ever had to duke it out, I would predict a one-old draw with no tiebreaker required, as they both have to team up and take on the common enemy of people who spend their time at the cinema listlessly browsing on their massive phones. You ding that's a ruining and increasingly endangered experience for those that do care about movies. [Coughing] If you've not yet had the pleasure of the peaks of the Most of Us, imagine a Jurassic World without the cynicism drearily deposited throughout those movies by Colin Travorro. Replace that with bouncing excitement merely at the prospect of existing. Throw in a bunch of conspiracy bullshit that would have been way more palatable back in the X-Files mid-90s than it is now in the 2020s. An era of pizza gate and flat earthers and celebrity lizard people. And then calibrate the action to somewhere between Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005 and Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim from 2013, which still remains at the absolute top of my Kaiju favorites list. These are getting close. For this one, new Empire, you should also add Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the absolutely stellar 2011 opening act of Andy Serkis's Caesar Trilogy. That was the story about an intelligent ape who doesn't really know who he is and has nobody to relate to, finding that purpose and those people in the wild. Because despite the title, this is Kong's story. Godzilla is the shore to his Luke Hobbes. But Jason Statham, in this case, is presented in Little Vignettes to remind us what he's up to, around the playing board, until it's ideal for him to finally enter the Rock's business at the Amazing Climax to Act 3. It's also weird timing that the follow-up to the Caesar Trilogy came out within weeks of this. That's a Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. And that likewise featured an ape and human team-up encountering a new group of apes, presided over by a tyrannical ape overlord who must be deposed. A parody that I don't believe Borderlands will share, when weighed up against Furiosa, as the Mad Max without Mad Max films of this summer, time will tell whether Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian will be better than the other 80s Ghost Rump sequel that nobody expected. Or if Imaginary, I.F. and Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey II will all be as high-quality as each other with the conceptual province of imaginary friends who may or may not eat you. So, we start this movie with Kong, where we last left him at the end of, uh, we're just gonna call the fourth movie 'versus' and this one 'New Empire' just to make it less confusing. Welcome to my world. Won't you come on in? Miracles, I guess. Still happen. Now and then. He's living alone in the Hollow Earth and right away, I noticed that there was a lot more focus this time on visual storytelling. Not something that I necessarily have anticipated from Adam Wingard, but a lot of what happens with Kong takes up a big chunk of this film, and there's not a word of English spoken in it. Not even sign language. It's all what you're watching play out, which I really appreciate it. That's one of the top reasons why it's up there for me. Yeah, he definitely, on purpose, wanted long stretches of this movie to be like a silent movie, not relying on any dialogue and just letting the characters, the environment and like their body language and facial expressions tell the story. And there's other layers of that as well. One thing I noted about Trapper is how frequently he carries music with him and uses that as it's like, it's his own personal soundtrack and it provides you with a nice backbeat to follow the story along to, but it also tells you a fair bit about his character. What music he chooses to listen to? Yeah. This feels like a minor James Gunn mix in so far as, it's not done just for needle drops. It's not done for the obvious. They don't play 'I Need a Hero' and they don't play this year's version of 'I Need a Hero' which is 'Crazy Train' by Black Sabbath Ozzie Osborne. Or 'Anything by the Monkeys' which is a mister trick. Oh, come on. That would be so cheesy, but at the same time now I kind of wish that put some in one of the Planet of the Apes movies. Here we come, walking down the street. Get the funniest looks from everyone we meet because we're throwing street lamps into cars. So this was written by Terry Rossio, not to be confused with Chris Terry-O, who ruined... You always say that. I never confuse him with Chris Terry-O. Okay. Well, I never confused Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, but that's a joke apparently. Rossio wrote a lad in 'The Mask of Zora'. That's how recently we mentioned him already. Shrek, 'Empirates of the Caribbean'. So it would seem like multiple studios owe him a lot of money because they made a hell of a lot of success on those things. And up on the top soil, up on the surface, it seems like the world is getting used to having Godzilla around. This feels like more of a first for me in Sephora's. It's not like Pacific Rim where everyone's like these. These are the end times we're being destroyed by Kaiju. It's more Brian Tyree, Henry's character, Bernie. Advertising on his podcast, Kaiju Insurance, which must be like, seriously? That's a bad business to get into. Now, the payouts are going to be astronomical. They are, yes. I get what you mean about... I'm assuming that they check how often Godzilla has been around your area and your premium goes up whenever he is. Or maybe down because it's like, well, he's been here now. It's highly unlikely to come back. It's dealt with whatever was in this area. Nah, he likes familiar places. He goes back to sleep in the Colosseum. Colosseum, that's very true. It's definitely struggled. Oh, God, there's so much beautiful old architecture in Italy. And Godzilla's like, yeah, this will do fine. I think it's because of his Atlantean architecture. Sorry, Danco. Oh, yeah. Gargantu Insurance is definitely betting on the, like, anybody who has insurance then needs it, hopefully just died in the attack anyway. Oh, my God, that's so dark and yet true. It's the world. And it's interesting how, as you're saying, how this world is starting to get used to this in a certain way. The first season of Monarch Legacy of Monsters. I've never seen that. Tell us. It's split into two times, one in the 50s and then one in 2015, a year after the first Monster Burst movie. Oh, God. And so, yeah. And so it's the world starting to get used to it. So you have a lot of things that they establish and then are just seen as background stuff of, like, signs in various cities being like, "Godzilla or Kaiju Shelter over there with an arrow pointing towards it or whatever." So, like, there is a slow evolution that we're getting now of, like, how the world has adapted to this stuff. And, you know, within the fandom, there's always been jokes of, like, yeah, you know, the Tokyo Insurance, how house insurance premiums have got to be through the roof because of how often it happened in the 60s and 70s and everything, right? So I appreciate what it is. Godzilla doesn't come back to the scene of the crime. Yes, he bloody does. It depends. And, like, him curling up in the Colosseum was actually, that's a result of Adam Wingard's cat mischief that they were trying to figure out where Godzilla will be napping. And they looked over and he was laying in his little, you know, bed and they're like, "Oh, that's an interesting visual. Where could we do that?" The Roman Colosseum. They're definitely going out of their way to make both Godzilla and Kong really appealing to kids this time. Yeah. You say it's not like Pacific Rim where it's the end times. It is. It's the piece of Pacific Rim that we don't actually see, the bit that happens before when they're making kaiju blue trainers and the rock star arsenal. Yeah, the pilot's rock stars and everything is, humans are great at incorporating big stuff into the framework we already have. All the folks who are dying out or are coming to brain disease in the planet of the Apes films are looking at this reality and going, "Kaiju, you guys are kind of easy." Yeah, coming out looks tasty. You've just got to leave town when you hear Godzilla coming, and luckily, he's quite loud. Mm-hmm. Indeed. Mm-hmm. But the fact, I liked the, like you said, there's the visual storytelling of the news reports and the Eileen's TED talks and things like that, giving everybody the background, and considering that later in the film, which we will come to, the exposition gets a lot more heavy-handed. Mm-hmm. I actually quite like the light touch exposition that they have here at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. I put in my notes as well, slightly undermined by exposition, so we're definitely on the same page on that. So Eileen, played by the great Rebecca Hall, but Marvel were like, "Oh, we only need her for one film. She can fucking die at the end, that's fine." Bad idea, guys. The monster verse came along and said, "Rebecca, would you like to just stick around 'cause you are fantastic?" She gives her all in this. Like, she doesn't need to be this emotionally engaged with her character and her ward, Jia. But she absolutely brings it. Like, this was key to me loving this film as well, because if I don't care about the humans, then it's almost like I'm annoyed that there even is this interplay. But I immediately reinvested in Rebecca Hall who I actually hadn't remembered from the original "God Tell of Us" as conch. I remember Jia, but not Rebecca Hall. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think the monster verse is secret weapon and the reason it's been as successful as it has, and I say successful. Every time one comes out, people talk about, "Oh, this one was a failure, or the box office was fantastic." It's mid-tier successful. But it's making enough to keep going. And at the moment, honestly, studios accept the fact that that's the best you're going to do right now. Yeah. But the fact that they bring in humans that we can connect with and engage with and recognise their part and their story in this world is what keeps us coming back. And the fact that they've been able to do it now with multiple people is impressive as hell. Mm-hmm. They're going to the natural place for Jia, which is that she's trying to fit in in a regular society, and she's quite apart from the weird psychic visions she's having. She just doesn't quite gel with the rest of the kids. Were they doing sign in the class? They were. I don't know whether it's a deaf school or whether it's just that they've incorporated sign language into the school, like just the way they communicate. So BSL, British Sign Language, is now and became very recently a recognised language in the UK, which means that they now have the facility for BSL. GCSE is to be taught, so it's becoming much more mainstream. It almost seems like this, it's a monarch school. It's on a monarch base. Okay. They would need to provide facilities for whatever the kids in that area required. They just aren't going to have the population to justify separate special schools for people who need additional support. So having all those facilities in one place does make perfect sense. Jia is the teacher bitching about that. Jia is like, this is the girl that talks to Tom. I know. Shush. Give her a little leeway. But he is the king. For her psychic visions. She grew up on an island. But this is what I like about the way they frame. Were Tered Actels. This is what I like about the way they frame Jia's struggles. She is doubly culturally. Culturally isolated. So she is isolated within the surface world, because this is not where she's from. She is cut off from all connection to those who were her people that he died. In a storm. That's almost too convenient, and we don't have to worry about this Indigenous people. They're all horribly wiped out by nature. Yeah. But she's also cut off from the hearing world, because even though they're giving her, and it presumably isn't just for her, but even though those facilities are there within the school, it is not easy for her to engage with it. She's distracted. She's tired. It's hard to engage with sign language when you're in that state of mind. And she has several layers of cultural development still left to serve master. And everybody's expecting her to fit in with them. There's not a part from Eileen. There's not a great deal of people reaching out to try and connect with her. And there aren't any. There are tons I thought she was invisible. Well, indeed. There's no E-wee who can reach out and give her that sense of connection. Oh, and to add to that puberty. So just, like, you know, your hormones are going crazy too. Absolutely. And you have historical precedents with, you know, fighting and dealing with giant goddamn monsters. So, you know. There's not enough on top of all that already existing. Yeah. Okay, so the actual drama comes here in Rebecca Hall's character, Eileen, doesn't quite know what to do. But, like, her determination is we will figure this out. She's very much an adoptive mother. And when they get to the core of the Earth again, they find a lost tribe of E-wee, the original E-wee, that one assumes the Skull Island group branch from the... Correct. I suppose first nations of the Hollow Earth. And they meet the tribal leader. I know it's... I shouldn't be saying tribe. I should be saying nation. This is a fictional version of parallels with our reality. I'm just going to use the word tribe here because it is quite a small group. Yeah, she is considered and, like, named as the E-wee Queen. And the... these guys are protected by Mothra. And... is that yep? E-wee is a Maori word. It literally means people or nation. How perfect. For people. They are protected by Mothra. Seemingly nowhere to be seen. There's carvings of her all over the place. It seems like they are very much like the culture that Gea left behind. So as soon as they touch down there, Eileen starts getting... and palpitations and our anxiety over the fact that she's brought her here because she insisted on coming to help out Kong. But now it seems like this is the place she's going to have to stay. So she's going to have to give her up because she loves her. And I was like, that is... that feels remarkably real in a film with giant monkey punching giant lizard. It's done tactfully. And I really appreciated that. And it's followed up on the end in a way that feels equally natural and coming from a place of being emotionally genuine. Yeah. There's one new dude who is played by your favourite actor. Dan Steves. Dan Steves. Just look at your arm where you've got it written in Biro. Dan Steves. This originates back to a time when I think we saw Beauty and the Beast live action remake and you were a bit sort of meh. No, no, no. Not all that fast. And we saw the guest directed by Adam Wingard. I hate him. You hate him? Oh my god, he's so lovely in this. Eventually I was like, yeah, okay, he's alright. Okay. Do you remember Owen Grady in the Jurassic World, the Chris Pratt character? Like, if you made him feel more like a person that you could like, that's him. Trapper is kind of a fun English slash Australian. I don't know where that accent's going from, even though he is English. Did it curse me? Would he have been McConaughey in his early years? Alright, alright, yeah. Yeah, that would actually have made sense, actually. I can imagine Mahi Mahi being lowered on a helicopter with a replacement tooth for Colin. This is how they set him up as, he's got an infected tooth. Paul Kong. One of the upper left canine. It immediately reminded me of Castaway with Tom Hanks where he has to perform dental surgery himself with two rocks and I'm like, oh god. But, like, Kong doesn't even understand the concept of that, so he just comes to the surface and he's like, I just fucking hurts, make it go away. Dan Stevenson's character with great enthusiasm performs a removal on the tooth with the splintering sounds and chains and yanking and helicopters that made me go, nah! In the middle. He does get it out in one piece though, which is better than most of the dentist you've encountered. Yep. Oh god. But, yeah, you know, replacing it immediately and not going, well, now, Kong, this is going to cost you three grand to get this replacement. They give it to him for free. He's on the Kong HS. I mean, you know, how are you going to bill him? He doesn't exactly have a permanent address. Exactly. And I feel like that's how everything should be. Just, you know, don't bill people for tooth repair. Or dying, or, you know, to live if they're, you know, medically endangered. The idea should be that you save their lives and then don't ruin them financially. Anyway, that's just my little hat and the political ring there. We're... We also, at this point, Trapper gets that brilliant line about the new tooth implant. You could chomp through the Eiffel Tower with that thing, which always makes me giggle because it feels like it's a deliberate reference to some chewy, sweet adverts from Britain in the 1980s, very early 90s, where they had a stop-motion lizard creature that was very like Godzilla. Off-brand Godzilla. Yep. Eating various national landmarks until he was given a stick of chewets. A giant. And found them much tastier than, say, for example, the Eiffel Tower. We took the muncher to some of the best places to eat in the world. He ate the Taj Mahal. Yeah. The Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Empire State Building. But not one of these buildings could match the delicious chewy flavors of chewets. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Chewets are even chewier than battle-inferness plastic bones. The in the 80s, our Godzilla commercials was for Dr Pepper. Oh. Which, what kind of Godzilla was it, because that was before the Emmerich version? Yeah, no. It was for the 84/85 for an international reboot of the franchise starting the Hase era. Oh, right. Okay. Well, tell you what. Can you send me that afterwards? I will send you the chewets ad, because you're love. The muncher. Good enough. Get on top. We must stop. We must stop Godzilla before he destroys the city. Oh. What could he want? And must we pay something to appease him? We're doomed. Hold out. Hold out. Hold out. Pull me out of the ordinary. Hold out without your pepper. Yeah, in retrospect, they probably shouldn't have chosen the backdrop of the 1954 Godgeri. For that one. All the while, what's happened is that Kong's wandering around in this hollow earth, with this toothache, looking for anyone else that he can share some kind of connection with. And if you remember back in verses, he found the bones of an ancient ape civilization, and he found a weapon, an axe made with a scale that may or may not have come from Godzilla himself, but definitely one of his kind. And it has mystical properties, which thankfully deals with the whole, I think they're probably going to have to give him a gun thing that I suspected when I first heard about King Kong versus Godzilla, because Godzilla has quite a few extra weapons on top of him. But it felt like he was being dumped yet again in a place of ruin that previously had civilization there, and he's going to be the smartest thing there. But it's neat the way they illustrate through performance capture as a chap named Alan Henry, who plays both Kong and his nemesis, the Skarking in this, how excited he is by a sound that might be other apes, and then it turns out to just be this giant bullfrog thing, roaring. When Kong goes back after seeing what seems to be signs of life, a shadow emerges from the mist, and it is a little, as seen in the trailer, Diddy Kong. And his name is actually Succo. He never gets called that in the film, but if you delve into the notes, it's absolutely there. One thing I really appreciated is that it wasn't just sort of a, oh please help me, and then Kong's heart melted, and he did. This is an ape that has been abused, and so he lashes out with violence rather than trust, when Kong extends his hand, and then a bunch of rough, angry violent apes bundle onto the king and start trying to subdue him and take his axe, and another thing I really appreciate is how brutal this film can get with a really dark sense of humour, because the little monkey, the little red furred thing goes leaping into attack him at the same time, and Kong, just in a kind of, oh for fuck's sake moment, yanks the kid off, and batters his friends with the child. I have never seen that. Could you imagine a human doing that to other humans? It beggars belief, and I was howling like a hella monkey. Yeah, this is a thing that came out in some supposed links for like, uh, test audiences or whatever, and people are like, oh there's no way that's actually real, that has to be a false one. Well, it's real, folks, and yeah. First and well. Kong fights in a really dynamic way, just like, you know, when the one ape is getting away and he sort of chucks, is it a rock? Sinks the three pointer from all the way across the other side of the court, but what then occurs is Kong, well first of all, he offers mercy as he does repeatedly, with many, many apes in this. Like on a credo, a policy of, okay, I will try to save your life once. And he helps this one, you know, ragged giant gorilla up who then tries to go for him with a knife, and he's like, oh for fuck's sake, and just Spartan kicks him over a cliff. It's like you've, you get your one chance, then I will kill you. And he doesn't do it with ruthlessness, just in the kind of I have had to defend myself from things trying to kill me my entire life. It's very much based on practicality. There seems to be almost an exhaustion and depending it though, because it is this feeling of, he's had to fight off the weird wolf pack things at the beginning, he's been fighting dinosaurs for goodness knows how long. He has also been looking for creatures like him and the frustration of, well I found them, and now I have to do the same thing again. What are you saying? [Music] He did. Then they started trying to kill him. I don't want to know about these creatures anymore. [Laughs] Okay, so, um, I maybe Tarzan and Kong could do a thing together. That would be cool. I mean there's definitely similarities, but you're right, Sharon, like this. You know, he's been fighting all these things all of his life. The only thing that hasn't been like directly aggressive towards him is what everybody calls Doug, which is the lizard one that steals his half of the work dog. They had a brief shot in GVK as well. So, other than that one thing, everything's violent down here pretty much. Anything that like he has direct interaction with. And yeah, it's like, oh my God, it just, this is going to be something I don't have to kill. So what you're saying is that thing is the closest he has to a pet. Yeah, or like an annoying, you know, kind of like your neighbor's somewhat annoying dog, but like it's a dog, so you let it go. She's stealing your breakfast. Yeah, or like, you know, digging up your flowers, you're like, "Come on!" It's like a skull island, but as an entire continent. And then you realize because of the way that the land is structured, it is in fact two continents laid on top of one another, like in Inception with the city. Which again, like the visuals on that are jaw-dropping, and I love the synth score that gets employed here. Like rather than trying to go for high fantasy, they're just going for a kind of the wonder of the things that we were breathtaking by in the 80s. I also like the way he deals with those wolf dogs at the beginning. First of all, he tries to intimidate them so they won't attack him. They bat him into a corner. Then one of them attacks him and he kills it. The others still aren't going away. They think that he might weaken. So he grabs the corpse and rips it in half over his head, showering his entire body with green gore and viscera. And the wolves are terrified because that's just his butchery. They freak out and run off. And then Kong, as soon as they're gone, is like off. And he's like covered in all of his green stuff and he has to go and shower. It's like the things he now has to do to keep at the top of the food chain. Also, I like the fact that there's loads of little, well I say I like the fact. Sometimes I like it, sometimes it's a little bit too similar and it doesn't quite feel right. But these almost bookended moments of this is what Kong did and this is what Godzilla did. So you've got Kong with the ripping apart of the thing and the being doused in green viscera. And then you've got Godzilla blowing up the crab titan and covering himself in yellow goo. Yeah, that's the bit that made it feel like Hobbs and Shaw for me. You remember at the beginning of that film, they're both preparing for their day in different ways. That's a split screen. That's what we needed. Right. It would have been difficult to really advertise this film accurately as this is mostly Kong and Godzilla's in it as well. I feel like they're aware that Kong isn't the big-name seller as the same as Godzilla is. I mean, it's always hard to determine, right? Because they are both icons of film history and everything, right? And it's like, yeah, probably got, I mean Godzilla has the more robust franchise and history behind him. But, you know, Kong's just as recognizable by name and iconography. So it's hard to tell how they're doing it. But because my assumption has always just been that because the monster started with Godzilla. They want to keep, if his name's in it, he's first billed. Because he's always first billed in his stuff, right? It's always Godzilla versus whatever. Whoever he's fighting and that kind of thing. Except in King Kong versus Godzilla in 1964, which I just showed Sharon my titan punch version of, and Willow. They found it very silly. For the uninitiated my titan punch versions are classic King Kong and Godzilla movies. With as much of the noodling about taken out, so it's much more pacy. Yeah, yes, in '62 King Kong versus Godzilla, which is why, of course, and which is why, of course, in 2021, it's Godzilla versus Kong because we... It's confusing enough. Not that this franchise hasn't probably been immensely confusing for the 70 years it's existed with naming schemes. I do feel like nowadays, after this success and the last one, and Skull Island being a big winner as well, they can probably get by on the strength of just the Kong name, if for some reason they had to do a film with no Godzilla. Yeah, they definitely could. And it's, a lot of people do get a little upset in the fan about, like, this is the second movie with both of them in a row that Kong's the main focus in Godzilla is often an afterthought or sort of something that the rest of the plot at times is bumping up against rather than being a driving force of the plot, but also keep mine like, this is the first time ever that any Kong has had three movies with a continuing story because, you know, Kong has the tendency to get murdered at the end of his movies. The only time he a Kong ever had more than one movie in its own continuity was a Dino De Laurentiis one, and he died at the end of both of those. Oh, what was the second one? Again, I made a Titan punch of 76, the one with Jeff Bridges, and it stayed really high on Willow's list for a long time as well. Yeah, I think the 76 one is good, but it's definitely long at times and sometimes can be a bit melodramatic, but King Kong lives in the mid 80s with the second one, Linda Hamilton is the star in it. Oh, I've got to get hold of that. So that's the same thing Kong isn't dead. Yeah, he's been in a coma for 10 years or however long it's been, and they've been keeping him alive on life support. And then, look, if you want to go watch it, sure go ahead. I wouldn't recommend it necessarily. I think one of the reasons why both Sharon and Willow actually really liked the 70s one that I did was that only during the scene where he meets Duann, the equivalent of Anne Darrow, I subtitled him. Every time he was trying to relate to her rather than just looking at Rick Baker's face in a Kong mask, he was speaking eloquently, which you found to be extremely amusing and charming. At the same time, it made it sadder because when he died at the end, I brought the subtitles back just for his last words. It makes him feel more like the 2005 Kong, even the 2005 Kong obviously doesn't speak, but he is very eloquent in terms of his facial expressions. Yeah, and that was a big surprise. I thought that it would be hilarious and awful, but I did not expect that it would actually strengthen the emotions. But, yeah, it did. So, here, he's now playing Lone Wolf and Cub with this red diddy Kong. Suka, this little git. And there is definitely a point when this little ape leads him to a giant blue river, and then he's like, "Yeah, just go and have some water." And it's very like, "Ree-kurt-lut." "Ree-kurt-lut! Do it!" "Ree-kurt!" He's even got the shifty expression there and it feels like because these films have their lineage in the performance capture, pioneered by Andy Serkis and company at Wetter, that, like, being able to execute that same maneuver actually allows the audience to sort of fit into a kind of, "Oh, I get why you're doing this thing." Like, this guy's trouble and there's no way you can take him out yourself, but you are cunning, which makes this little bastard quite endearing, strangely. But also, he's so expressive, like, when it comes down to, like, Kong doesn't bully him. He's stern around him. He's like, "Wow, we're gonna go here." But he doesn't make the kid feel small and smaller by beating him up, throwing him around the place, roaring in his face. He's very much sort of, "Okay, kid, we're coming over here." Just like, "I get that you're railing against me at this point. You don't have to. Can we just move forwards?" And there's a beautiful moment when Kong fights, like, has bought a bit of the fish creature that looks way too close to the tiamat that Godzilla took on this time. Yeah, these were the two parallels that I was like, "Now, that one's just a little bit too similar." Yeah. Yeah, the one that Kong fights called the Drown Viper. Right. But they superficially both look like water serpents. Yeah, they're just snakes with some stuff. So, yeah, he brings along a big chunk of it and then starts chowing down. And did he comes along and is sort of scratching his arm and pointing to his mouth in a kind of, "I'm hungry too." But then when offered a piece, he's like, "No!" And then he backs off because he can't trust. He doesn't understand kindness. It's so sad. And then Kong's like, "I'm okay." And then just drops it on the ground and allows the kid to come and pick it up. But in a very nonchalant, it doesn't really matter to me if you bond with me at all. Like, you know, you asked for some food. Here it is. This is what a leader does. And just the bit that made me go, "Oh, this is really working." Was when did he's chewing away and like, "Oh, this is like more food than I've been able to eat in months. Like, all to myself. I haven't had to fight for it." But then he sort of glances at Kong eating over in a kind of a nonchalant way in the sunset and then sidles over and sort of sits on a rock near him, but he's mimicking him. The copy-catting is actually really important because effectively Kong is leading by example. Yeah. And Suko is starting to adopt him as a father figure in the absence of a decent one back home. Yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. Copy-catting you. That's very usually a sign of both nervousness and attempted clumsy affection. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And two things I'll put about that. One, their relationship as it kind of in the early parts of this. It's not the same, but there's a little bit of the kind of modern, God of War, Kratos and Atreus in there. Yeah. Just to like, you know, move, picks up the axis, grunts and is very stern or whatever. But also also massive acts as well. Yeah. But also what you were saying about, you know, it feels right that Suko has a lot of golem in him, pioneered by Andy Serkis and Weta and everything. The shot of the shadow, the large shadow through the miss of Suko then shrinks down when he's revealed to his actual size. That was actually the first of the shots that Weta Digital did for this movie. Nice. So even a little more, they had their hands and other things. My friend Kay, she works as a digital rotoscoper for Weta. So she's done our show a few times over the years. Nice. Well, I mean, like, everyone involved in the FX on this has really done their job because this is one of the few summer blockbusters that I've watched and not gone, "Oh, this looks like everything else." Because it doesn't. It really, like, they've really gone out of their way to make it more magnificent, more otherworldly. I suppose it's closer to something like Pandora than it is to something that Marvel would have done. Yeah, I would agree with that. Absolutely. Marvel have got a tough job when they finally get to the savage land, being able to show that place off in a way that feels like an amazing jungle environment. Well, one thing that I think they have the advantage of when it comes to Hollow Earth is that they're bringing in there's ideas here of space travel with the portals that distort your gravity and your perspective on things, the fact that this internal environment, which, as far as we know, is described as being within Earth, but it might not literally be. It could be elsewhere. It's just that in terms of the impact that it has on Earth, we can see that they're connected. But it's got this sort of oval shape to it. The horizon is such that we never see the edges of Hollow Earth, but it's easy to imagine that they do kind of fold round and connect to each other, which would be absolutely fascinating to see. Like a kind of a flattened sphere, is it? A walnut? Yeah. Kind of like a ring world situation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But also... Honestly, looking at this, maybe think, "Oh, what a digital we're going to do, halo." Damn. But once you get into the underground and where the E we are, all of the bioluminescent effects that they use, the bioelectricity, the curtains that sort of seal up to hide the place and camouflage. The mothra fluff. The beautiful quartz-like peaks, and they're almost like columns and pillars that have all been... I mean, Bernie describes them as looking like they're being carved, but they're so huge, it's hard not to think of them as like natural formations. They are supposed to be natural formations, because actually, even before we get to the subterranean part where Kong's initially hanging out at, you see, the first shot we see in the movie is some of those crystal formations, and those are what actually light and give light to the Hollow Earth on the inside and everything. Adam made a point to have that be the first shot of the movie because after GVK, when we first go to Hollow Earth, and unfortunately, the horrible person that made this tweet Elon Musk had asked, "How is there light inside when there's no sky or anything?" So it's like, "What here's how?" Well, there you go. But that does sort of feel like it's emphasizing... Okay, I might have imagined this, but is there not some part of Hollow Earth mythology that says that this is where humans started and this is where they were supposed to stay? Yes, in certain ways, it's always been a bit nebulous, but like, obviously, we saw from like Godzilla's crib and KOTM and everything of like, there are the word these ancient civilizations that are more ancient than thing on the surface from Hollow Earth that used to worship them, and it's never, it has not yet been made distinctly clear whether or not the ones that built Godzilla's temple are also the EOE or maybe just a different sect of them or if they're considered a different civilization, that's never been made a clear line on. But obviously, yes, all this stuff in Hollow Earth predates surface world civilization. Yeah, but it just with all of the natural stuff that they have access to that gives them their technology. It did feel as though there was this sort of underpinning of if we hadn't taken over the entire surface, then we wouldn't have needed to invent all of the things that we invented that are now destroying the entire surface because everything we needed was right there within Hollow Earth. So theoretically, yeah, and when you consider things that like, oh, there's portals from where the EOE are to the pyramids and in Rio, and like, there's the ideas like anywhere where there's especially any historical ancient piece of worship. But one of the one of the ancient worlds, yeah. Yeah, all of them are connected down to the Hollow Earth on purpose. So that's a picture that you will have one of those as well. Yeah, well, and to the point of, you know, the way they create the two pyramids smashing into each other to create the into gravity field is based on the mercury pools that were under Teotihuang. Oh, nice. So while we're down here, this is where the ape tribe are, and after, you know, gently bonding, King Kong and Diddy Kong turn up there, this is where scale kind of goes out the window because everything and everyone that we see is giant and because we're now seeing it from Kong's perspective, it doesn't feel like we're dealing with giant kaiju so much as just regular sized apes. I feel like had we stuck with just Diddy at this stage, I'm going to keep calling him that. Suko, if we'd stayed there, then like that's sort of like at knee level to Kong, like, you know, looking up at this stuff happening would still then feel Titanic. It's not much of a criticism, but it is just something I noticed at this stage. But at the same time, it gives a level of normality for Kong to step into and suddenly he doesn't feel alienated. He doesn't feel too big himself. I think one of the odd things about this that actually makes it more visually interesting is that this is not a tribe of well-kept giant apes that are all similar to Kong in dimension and shape. They are all... Scrawny haggard, malnourished, abused. Yes, but they are also all different. Some of them are taller with longer limbs, some of them are shorter, some of them are, there are some that have a little bit more breadth to them, and I think they tend to be the ones that the scar King has been sort of using as his own personal guard, and therefore they've been getting first pick of the food. But the fact that you've got different shades of fur, different patterns of fur, some of them have bald patches and things like that, and it's not aesthetically pleasing, but it does mean that you're not looking at rows and rows of the same model. Yeah, it implies one hierarchy to things, but also showing the despair in which that hierarchy creates in the lower classes or cast, whatever you want to call them, right, of like seem their hairs a lot more patchy, they're smaller, they are a bit more gaunt and probably more than malnourished. You see, you know, the kids, they're always, the children are kind of kept away from everybody else in a protective manner, unless they're the ones that clearly are like the offspring of the scar King's concubines that he's gotten nearby or whatever, and like it shows like there is a structure to this society, it's a terrible one, which is all the more reason why it needs to be dealt with and taken care of, but it does, it makes it feel more real, like yes, that's how you have to have some sort of structure in any sort of society that resembles the simian, humanoid, hominid, whatever. And you evoked Furiosa earlier, he is a bit immortal, Joe. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You immediately get this guy's deal, you can see how cruel he is, the first thing he does, well, actually the first thing Kong does is defend a village elder from a bully, who he then, a scene I think just takes down in one punch, I think that ape is dead, I think he just snaps his fucking neck immediately in one punch. But then the elder protects Diddy Kong, Kong is already leading by example, and then the elder gets kicked into the lava by this cruel, grinning piece of shit. Like, there's nothing on Cobra in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in terms of the complexity as to why the Skarking is this level of malevolent. There are always apes like you. Yeah, yeah. In his case, I think it is just the harnessing of power, and I think the rest of them obviously exist in fear. I don't necessarily think that the elder protecting Suko is because of Kong's influence. It almost feels like there are a handful of them that go out of their way to protect the children, but they are very aware of the fact that if they incur the wrath of Skar, that they're going to get the same treatment. But that does illustrate that at least Kong's benevolence is not alien to the rest of them, they're not all going to be as aggressive as the ones who jumped him. Yeah, and I'm going to make this a little worse for you. The one that gets kicked into lava is supposed to be Suko's mom. Oh, that's why. I thought it was his grandfather, but yeah, that does make sense as to how heartbroken he is afterwards, but even just the fact that somebody tried to defend him and was punished for it would probably be enough. Again, Diddy Kong is incredibly expressive. There's that kind of, "Oh my God, like, can she get out?" And then there's this kind of moment of absolute despair. So it just paints a very, very sharp picture of a fucked, decaying society that Kong needs to help bring back. And then Rebecca Hall tells us that. It's like, "Come on!" That's not like this has been made really clear already. Like, that's very much like for the cheap seats. And it's like, "Don't patronise the audience, we got it!" This coming back to, and now one of the main characters is going to tell us everything that we need to know about this particular scenario. I did actually figure out a way that they could have made just a few tweaks to this. And it would have made it a lot slicker and feel a lot more in-universe benefit. If they had set up a situation where this exposition is being delivered by an e-way telepathically, even to all of them, to the whole group, because I think it is implied that their method of communication, while Jia can obviously hear it the most clearly. The others do pick up on bits here and there. But say for example that the Queen had been telling them the story of what happened with the apes and how Godzilla plays into this. And because Eileen has been researching and discovering the mythology on the surface herself, the images that the e-way used to communicate, because one assumes that if they're communicating telepathically, it's not in verbal language, there's imagery involved. But because Eileen knows that some of these stories, she is able to make more sense of that string of images than everybody else. Then when they get the explanation later on of what's going on with the gravity technology, because Bernie has a history of that, he recognizes what they're trying to communicate before everyone and is then able to translate for the rest of the group. And like I said, just that feeling that we've come across these people who've been living here for millennia. And yet it's the two people from the group that we came down here with who were going to tell us the whole story. That was what made it feel a little bit sore thumb. They did that in Scotland as well, they don't actually talk to any specific member of the e-way tribe. Yeah, although you do have at least John C. Reilly giving you their perspective and some communication from their point of view, that but larger is kind of what I'm talking. Yeah, and that's a fair point. They talked about the editor and Adam Wingard about this cut back and forth for that exposition scene. They were like, we struggled so long to try to make it work. And this was, they were like, we were all happy with it. But obviously they were like, if we had had more time, we would have liked to maybe have figured out some little different with it. But I did appreciate them very least. Yes, while, you know, Eileen is the one who's saying this to everybody as we're going through the murals and, you know, since she actually knows the written language, she can read it or whatever. But they don't have her narrating over when we come back to, you know, Suko Kong and Scar King. And we just let that play out silently in their own way, which is appreciated at the very least and just sort of is giving a general backdrop of like, Scar King's an asshole. Yeah, we know. I think it just felt that little bit frustrated because they did such a good job on the visual communication and storytelling and then it almost seemed like they didn't trust their own ability to do that. Do you think in the original script, her explaining what happened actually transpired before Kong then walked into that place? Just so that it'd be like, right, so everyone's all on board. There's a bad king with something called a shimoo. It's from what they were saying in the common director's commentary for the movie. They put it before it, they put it after it, and then eventually settled on inter splicing in between. In fact, if anything, the established story that this has been going on for a long time doesn't actually stand to reason because fascist regimes led by a lazy cruel dictator don't tend to last. There's either an uprising and may tear you to shreds or your entire civilization perishes. You can't sustain cruelty, starvation and madness. Okay, so Shimo, I was under the impression when people started talking about Shimo that this is a classic kaiju pulled from the show or Hasei era that I didn't know about. Is this a brand new creation? Brand new creation. Yeah, this movie does not bring in any pre-existing tojo kaiju other than obviously bring back one. Yeah, nicely done. Apparently. They didn't know until the last minute that they were going to get that one. It had a different name. Oh, seriously? Yep. Okay. Well, all right, last minute may be a bit of an exaggeration. In the original script draft, they called it something else. Right. Yeah, this is what I found when I was looking into the details on how I could do a Tarzan versus Kong book. I can. I just can't put the name Tarzan on it. The concept is up for grabs, now in the public domain. The name is trademarked, so I can't use the name on the cover, though the name can be used in the story. Is that right? I think it's just if the name is used in the story, it's unlikely to be found. Right. Well, apparently, yeah, the Edgar Rice Burroughs state are very litigious and will chase down anyone. They think he's abusing this license that they got gifted by someone, because this is just literally a business created by Rice Burroughs to protect his investments. Yeah. It's not his family. It's not his estate. The deal... They didn't do anything. It's just a corporation. But the deal with trademarks is that you can't use them in such a way as somebody might confuse you with the owner of the trademark. So that's the reason why it's like leave it out of the title and you're probably okay, because you're using the title as a selling point. It might be interpreted as you're trying to convince people that you are the original Edgar Rice Burroughs. He's been dead since the Korean War. I'm not saying it makes any sense. I don't understand trademark or copyright law. There is very little logic involved in it. Yeah, it's confusing. It's muddled and it's dumb. How do we keep the money in the pockets of the people who already have it? Is the fundamental of the meaning of all of these things? Nothing. Well, but conversely, we have Kong here who, you know, will so Brian created the effects for back in 1933, who famously got screwed over multiple times and died poor as... Hell, and couldn't have two nickels threw up together. That's so sad. And I believe the whole Kong copyright debacle and the fact that it never really existed is because they made the foolish mistake of getting the tie-in novel published before the film came out. So the novel, the King Kong and the Skull Mountain Island story that was released, and it's actually pretty well written. It's less racist than Tarzan, I'll tell you that right now. But it's still racist because, you know, King Kong. Everything is by degree. It's the 1930s. But yeah, I've been reading both original books. I finished Tarzan and I'm almost finished on King Kong. It's technically available and I believe you can call it King Kong. Something happened regards Nintendo and Universal. Is that why they met in court and eventually it was asked of Universal, do you know what you own? And the big corporation went, no, and then they threw it out. And then they threw it out, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was all because of Donkey Kong and Universal having bought the rights of one point from... or required it somehow from what RKO dissolved. It's long and goddamn complicated. And then Dino De Laurenta 76 won had all kinds of issues with it too. Give Kong to the people. Make him the people's Kong. I think now, or in the next couple of years, it actually all does kind of like go public or whatever. Minus, like, specifically like the monstrous version, for example. That's uh, I believe and I hope and fingers crossed that I can get this book made without the word Tarzan in it. Anyway, moving forwards. Just spell it with the E instead of two A's. No, it's with a D. It's Darzan, he's my O star again. Watch this space, folks, I will let you know when it's out. There you go. Shimo is a brand new creation and I like what they did. Is this a her? Yes, and she... Yeah, and she is one of, if not the oldest, Titan still around. But went into hibernation for a very long period of time and then was discovered and it's flavored by the Skar King. They, it's, I can't remember whether it's implied or outright stated that she was responsible for the last Ice Age. outright said and it is implied that she's the one who put Gidora on ice. Nice. Like Godzilla beat Gidora and then Shimo came around and just like, alright, you know what, you're just going to go into an apple. So then these, to really be a moment of, hey, remember me? When they finally meet near the end. Yeah, well, that is the thing. Godzilla is doing all these things and like eating the radioactive material and going and killing Tiamat and taking their house specifically because Godzilla knows Shimo is reawakened and that this is coming and is specifically doing this to combat Shimo's cryo powers. Right. Something about the way Shimo starts to like fire off an icy blast into the clouds near the end and then gets interrupted by Godzilla. Yeah. I'm wondering if by the next one, this is ample opportunity for them to go. Okay, so thanks to the Titans and that little ice escapade in Rio, global temperature has adjusted itself and the ice caps are re freezing and our world is better now than it has been since before the Industrial Revolution. I want those to be lines in film six. Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all. Once and for all. Well, that was actually something shown in the papers in the credit sequence for King of the Monsters. In fact, it's the one Silla, the one that Godzilla kills in Rome at the beginning of this, was re their presence was strengthening the polar ice caps. So that kind of already actually happened. And the presence of the Titans in some areas is rewilding them, is that right? They go somewhere and plant symbiosis. Yeah, that's something that if I meet you said in the King of the Monsters, she was like, "Look, it's good radiation, sure whatever that is." It was written by Stanley. Right? They're good. That's the ore. I mean, can't you just be speaking, sunlight is good radiation. It's just that it needs to be filtered through a whole lot of stuff. But that's the thing. All they need to do is just wave their hand and go, "Well, Godzilla's the filter." Yeah. The energy that emanates from Godzilla's body grows plant like that. He eats nuclear waste and shits out fertilizer. Strange things have happened. Look at plants. They eat, comes outside and pump out oxygen. That's true. And again, in the KOTM credits, one of the newspaper things is talking about Titan manure. It isn't a new super-fertinalizer. So all this has been in there or whatever. So I know the idea is supposed to be that because of how they internalize and digest. However you want to go with that radiation of any type. These tomatoes taste funny and Petey's spine is glowing. Right. It's a mako. We've got an ape escape as Kong runs from the Skarking, helped by Diddy, and injures himself trying to block Shimo's ice blast. So this is very much Kong on the back foot. He's wounded. He knows it. He has a sense of his own mortality. And it's not come out of no way. He's not been pompous and stamping around the place, feeling invincible. He's been battered over the past few decades. And now he's really suffering for it. And again, the performance capture is wonderful and the expressiveness of Kong illustrates how bad things are. To the point where when he's got his back to the wall in the canyon and he's like, "Come on, come for me." And then they step over the trip wire. It's like, "Oh shit!" Like he was just performing that act to try to make them feel like he might be formidable again. It's the ripping the creature in half and showering himself in blood. It's all just a show. This is a great cinematic character. And especially, like, I watched this on a massive screen. I went to nearly the front row, which I found is actually a really good way of combating the phone browsers. You can't see them behind you not giving a shit about the movie. And Kong is absolutely huge. Also, the closer you are to the speakers, the less you can hear the people behind you chatting. Yeah, yep. The only danger zone is when it's going home time and they're all filing past you inevitably because everyone has to walk past the front. And they're saying, "That was the most worst film I've ever seen." And it's like, "You've never seen Swamp Shark." I envy you. But Swamp Shark, better than Shark to push. Oh geez. You know what? That is not a battle royale, I want to see. Then, after Kong gets the Infinity Gauntlet, he decides he's going to need some help and goes up to the pyramids to talk to Godzilla. And it's literally, as soon as I'm on the surface, he'll know. He'll come straight to me. And do you want to tell the folks at home what this sequence was inspired by? Oh, they live. They live. Yeah. It's when Roddy Piper is trying to get the magic sunglasses onto Keith David and Keith's not having it. So, it's effectively this Kong going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." I know you told me not to come up and show my face here, but hear me out and Godzilla is having none of it. It just charges in there. It is a delight, and I realized after checking through when I was doing the Titan Punches on the Live Action Transformers, Michael Bay films, to make them shorter and less gross. But the now baffling, one hour version of the second film, Revenge of the Fallen, the climax takes place with Devastator, or at least the ugly collection of shit that they call Devastator, The second bot to be called that in the Bay Fallen series. Because in the first one, it was just a tank. Because almost everything in that first film was a mistake. And the Fallen, at the pyramids, same cinematographer, Ben Saracin. That's correct. He did Pain and Gain as well, and he also did Godzilla vs. Colin. Yeah. I mean, it's tradition for kaju stuff, right? You got to go to some, you know, monuments. You got to go to some cities, and so where have we not been yet? We haven't been here and same thing with like, once we get out of there and then we go back to Hollow Earth and we go to the last place and like, well, here's another place we haven't really had a set piece at, and it's got a monument people recognize, so let's do that too. It allows you to recapture that sense of scale, which has been absolutely all over in Hollow Earth, because the whole place is fantastical and you don't know how big things should be. And still doing the tradition of demolishing those things that once gave you scale. Yeah, they wreck the wonders of the ancient world, but I suppose they also gave us themselves the actual wonders of the ancient world. So, a bunch of musculioms to dead wealthy pharaohs, force made by slaves. We can leave that. We can live without those. Yeah, that's fine. We have trees now. Right, I wholeheartedly agree. And it's also just a fun action sequence of the like, yeah, Colin is like, "Hold on, hold on, hold on. God's not having any of the, you know, he throws pocket sand in his face. God's a lot of suplexes. A full vertical suplex is going off of here." You joke about the pocket sand. I think that's intentional. I think that Adam Wingard watched that episode of King of the Hill. He talks about it in the commentary. It's like, yeah, you know, Colin's not trying to fight him and whatever, so he's just trying to distract him and get him to not kill him. So, he's just like, "Yeah, you didn't sand." I think that was the last incident. He's like, "I don't want to make him mad." So, I think sand in his eyes will accomplish that. I mean, you know, blind and long enough so you could like try to circle around. Just like, "Hey, calm down. Calm down. I'm not here for a thing. Listen, I need to, oh crap." Yeah. You know, then, Colin goes loose his temper and starts punching him in the face of a bunch. My favorite bit, apart from the suplex, which he's astonishing, is when he stops dragging Godzilla by the tail. Like, right, you're out. I'm going to drag your ass back to where I need you. Godzilla's like, "Oh, oh, hold on." Yeah, no, all the pink shit's happening right now. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Off you go. He's a mushroom cloud-laying motherfucker. That's what it means. Yeah, it's a great fight. Well, you know, there were two pyramids still standing. You have to destroy those, too. Yeah, absolutely. Not one structure still standing. Also, I hear that Rio's nice this time of year. So, when they go to Rio, because they go back down to the Hollow Earth and actually start the fight with the now invading Scar King, I do like how they put sort of a magic, and at the same time, I suppose this sort of makes sense. Amulet in the King's hand, in that that little pointy blue shiny thing is linked to Shimo, and as long as he holds it on the end of his long snake sword thing, the whip, then he has control of Shimo. I interpreted that as being one of her spines, and that it's still connected to her, and when he moves it around, it sort of creates this sort of... Like, imagine if somebody was pulling your tail. Yeah, it is supposed to be some part from Shimo. It's never said directly, but yes, that is the correct inference to make and everything, and yeah. And just like, it further demonstrates the Scar King's cruelty and gives you the idea of Shimo is also a victim in all of this, and it's not like she wants to be doing this, it's just the circumstances, and you know, they keep her behind a lava waterfall to combat the cryo powers and everything, so it's just like, she's just caged this whole time. I feel like the way she moves and the way she's positioned is like a circus elephant forced into tricks by a cruel master. Which, again, it's utilising that visual storytelling to maintain a degree of sympathy for her so that when she's released at the end and joins the heroes, it's a feeling of triumph. Unlike when Rodan turns up and goes, "Hey, I was on your side all along!" And Godzilla goes, "Master." No. Yeah, Rodan's been notable by his absence for the past couple of movies. Yeah, and he's not supposed to be dead, but, you know, he's got no scales in the game. Will likes Rodan anyway because we'll like Starscream, so I do hope to see him again at some point. Oh yeah, absolutely. Doing that, the end game. Just diving on the cool master to serve. What are the rumblings about what might be coming next, by the way? There's not any confirmed rumblings, and a wing guard is not coming back for the next movie. He's currently working on a second draft for a live-action Thundercats movie, which he's been wanting to do since he was a child. Lord. So, we'll see what hip that actually comes through, but they did. I'm so bored. No one gives a shit about Thundercats anymore. Except me, I'm a total Thundercats home. I mean, I'm gonna go see it. Oh yeah, 'cause we'll go and see it. A bunch of 50-something nerd boys will go and see it. I mean, what's wrong with that? He's gonna say it come out. Six years. I mean, to be fair, it's taken a while for the, there's been attempts for it for at least two decades at this point, so it couldn't be another decade and a half. If your audience are dying of natural causes, consider making just a smaller film. They announced Grant Spator is gonna be the next monster verse director. He did a movie in 2019 called, I believe it was called I Am Mother, but he's a very new director. And Warner Brothers announced, I think, March, late March, 2027. There is a movie slated for that. Not sure what the speculation is either the next monster verse movie or it's the next apes movie. So either way, it's kind of both. And that Wingard in the lead-up and the press for this movie's release said that like, he wants the next one to be much more Godzilla-focused. And he's talked multiple times about how Godzilla versus Destroyer from 1995 is one of his favorites and would love to do something or take elements from that. In particular, the idea of giving Godzilla a child another Kong has one. Nice. Titan Daddy Daycare? Actually, you just, you have me at Titan Daddy. Yeah, I will look forward to whatever happens. Whatever it is, it'll be a bonus again. Like, I don't expect anything, and if I get something great, then fantastic. If I get something bad, they might make another one. Yeah, I mean, they were only supposed to be four. This happened because the success of GVK for COVID and everything. And then this, finally, like last week or something, did become the highest-grossing monster verse movie. Good. At long last. Was it, did it have to beat Skull Island? Yeah. Which one got to them? Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was, I think it was Skull Island, but it was, it was either one of those two. That makes sense. Which also, by the way, underlines the whole "Konken" headline or movie scenario. Like, people got, okay, so they go to Rio. And this was the first time that I thought, "Oh, yeah, no loads of people are going to be dying here." And they don't show anything that it's definitely, like, everyone runs off the beach, but there's lots of houses and apartment blocks around where they're fighting. And I don't see anyone evacuating. Everyone's just hiding in their room. So there is a giant body count for this fight, as fun as it is. But I guess it kind of is okay. Because the Titans have no responsibility for humans. Like, they will extend us about as much protection as we'll keep them alive. Technically, they are very nice. They might save us. Technically, Kong should have responsibility because it was the great apes who were supposed to be the protectors of humans. But that was on the proviso that the humans were going to stay within Hollow Earth. We didn't. We brought this on ourselves. Ultimately, Kong can only do as much as Kong can do. If it's, he's got to stop two absolutely massive kaiju from barreling through a whole bunch of human houses. Absolutely. Are you mental? There's me, and there's eight billion of you. That maths does not work. No, it doesn't. And while Kong also did protect the Eway on Skull Island back in the day, I mean, again, it's also like the same. It's like, I'm not, I'm not contractually obligated to do this. There's no agreement here or anything. It's like a hurricane. I couldn't even keep all the Eway alive. Do you know who came in and out of that chair? But I am not who you want to be leaning on. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Absolutely. And yeah, Godzilla has never really cared. And he's just natural order and balance to the world itself. And just be like, look, whatever. Just stop actively getting in my way, which they still manage to do when they attack him in France in this movie with drums. Yeah. Absolutely. I do. But what do you think the best is going to happen here? Let's agitate the hell out of Godzilla. Indeed. One of the things that I really like about the Titan mythology is that it does have this sort of underlying hint of if there really were gods, do you honestly think they'd even be able to see you? Yeah. At best, at best it's this situation. At worst, it would be more like the Greek pantheon where they're actively fucking with you. Yeah. And that's what Scarking wants to do is rule over and like enslave and murder the humans. Yeah. Yeah. So, again, you just count your lucky stars and you've got anyone in your corner who's tough enough to take him down. So, let alone two of them all are powerful. Yeah. So, there's another ape, another bad ape that is one of the ringleaders that attacked Kong at the very beginning when he met Diddy. And that one seems to have it in for Diddy. So, there's like, he's constantly trying to harass him during this anti-grab fight at the end. And he's like, oh my God, I'm going to die. The first thing I'm going to do is to kill a child. Like, he's just so into that. And eventually, Diddy gets his very own eye, "I have had enough of you!" moment. Which is a triumph. And then he actually manages to wind up saving the day by bringing Kong's axe back to him and just being in just the right place at just the right time to destroy that magical artifact that controls Shimo. There is a lot of just the right thing in just the right place at just the right time in this movie, you have to say. I mean, that's how movies work at my opinion. Right, I'm like, oh, he wasn't there at the right time? Well, then I guess the day he'd lost in the end. Well, isn't it convenient that the Avengers were in New York at that point? Oh, isn't it a good job that that's the arm that Kong got the frostbite in? Right. And I suppose Indy knew to close his eyes and not look at the arc. I never actually got to this, but it's discussing the E-Wee tribe and there's this one high priestess/queen of the group. I feel like they were very deliberately trying to evoke the Mothra twins with her and Gia. They're there, obviously, they're not identical twins, but there's that twin feminine energy there. And she's like, yeah, do your thing? Go take your place up there. Yeah, and the fact that they've already evoked the Mothra twins being multi-generational in the earlier movies means that that age discrepancy doesn't feel, it doesn't necessarily unbalance that particular view. I suppose they could have had her identical twin be the leader of the group, but also be played by the same actress. So it's like, ah, you look like a twin, but it feels also like people would have been like, okay, so what does that mean? Was she taken away from now? She just looks like her. It's symbolic. Oh, fuck it. Right. It's all other news. Yeah. Just a touch. Also, this was kind of like, did I like the fact that they made this choice or did I not like it? They seem to have gone out of their way to not use Mothra's classic music. There are hints of it. It's there. It's just different feeling to that. There's a sadness to the one that turns up in King of the Monsters. This one's a triumphant Mothra rising. Gotcha. She finally turns up to break up the fight at the pyramids. Yeah, and she gets to not have to do the whole self-sacrifice thing. Yeah. Oh, I get to live. Mothra gets to live. Absolutely. But they do give her this moment at the end where it's like, okay, everyone back in bed now and she closes the curtain. Right. You're tucking everybody in. It's really... I'm off to watch my stories. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And you were doing this for so this brought you to tears in the film. It did. I still love the fact that when I type Mothra in my notes it tries to autocorrect it to mother. Yeah. How perfect. I knew, because I knew a little bit before the movie came out that Mothra was returning. Yeah. And I thought like, ooh, Sharon's gonna love that. And I was happy with what they did with it. Yeah. 'Cause... It's so beautiful. It's not the same Mothra from King of the Monsters. No, it's not. It's the way they are trying to describe it is that this, the Mothra that we see here is the progenitor Mothra and that's the one from KOTM. It's sort of like that. And that the one from KOTM is an offspring of and that there are probably other offspring potentially elsewhere. The old one. Yeah. Really, yeah. Really keeping her more mystical of like, yeah, like she doesn't hatch from an egg here. She's just reconstituted from the ether. Yeah. Yeah. See, I'd interpret it as, 'cause I've always has Mothra been framed as like a phoenix type creature. Yeah. I just presumed that there was an egg left somewhere that had hatched into this. Or again, just symbolic. I am absolutely fine with it not being the literal exact Mothra, but that coming back means nothing. Yeah. Yeah, it is meant to select, this is like, yeah, Mothra Prime or whatever, and that this is much more of a representation of like her being, you know, 'cause you've always been considered like a Earth guardian spirit or deity in various Toho, various versions of the Toho universes and everything. And this very much is keeping in line with that, just their own unique little take on it, which I go, yeah, no, you still got it right. And they made her wing pattern in this a bit closer to the traditional like '60s Mothra wing pattern, which I like too. Yeah. But like, the fact that she is a Moth means that she is a night goddess, which puts her in the same bracket as a lot of like, Earth mother type spirits and deities and she fits very well to bring that energy into what could fundamentally come down to just big guys smashing each other and makes it feel a little bit more like an authentic pantheon. I also, she doesn't actually take part in the final brawl 'cause she's like, I remember what happened last time. No, I'm tiny. I'm very much a lover, not a fighter. Like, it's good. I am down here and there's a bunch of apes wrapped up that I still need to deal with. I'm gonna take care of that. I'll take care of that and, you know, it's the kids, like, you know, all the kids are getting to a scuffle in your living room like, no, no, take that outside. Go, ow, ow. (laughter) So, yeah, the final emotional climax of the film isn't actually really to do with Kong at all. It's Eileen saying goodbye to Jia because now she's found her home and her people again and Kaylee Hottle. Again, bless the heart of this little actress who just really sells her whole, like, I wasn't even considering this as an eventuality. I was a little on the fence, but like, I just, why would I leave you at this stage? Like, they are very much a mother-daughter and best friend's unit. There's also a sense of stability about Jia where she's like, yeah, it's the hollow earth. I'll be back. It's one of those moments where, as an adult, you overthink things and you panic and you freak out and you kind of need to be guided by the hand of a younger, hormonal teenager who for some reason has things worked out more clearly than you. It's the being able to see things more simplistically. It is very common, too common, for adults to dismiss the perspectives of children because they think they're too simple. But honestly, a lot of the time, kids can cut through the bullshit in a way that we just can't. Yeah. And to your point, yeah, it's not like it's hard for her to get back to the hollow earth and particularly back to the e-way there. It's literally a portal jump away. Yeah. Again, I love this world. And, you know, if I could swap this reality, Isekai style for that one. I'd be like, yeah, you know what? I will jump through whatever portal to get to. It's only going to take Sharon and Willow and there's many of you folks who want to come and see the giant monsters trash our houses. As long as you don't get eaten by a tree first. Yeah, yeah. It feels like a necessary risk if you're going to live somewhere that's, you know, there's got a lot of upward mobility. So, speaking of which, actually, that is thematically on point for us to move on to the next film in our little session we've got here. So, hold on. And we will be back with Godzilla-1 next week. Statistically speaking, most of you haven't seen it. It's a really good new Japanese Godzilla movie and you should definitely listen to our show on it at the very least to find out why. Now, "School of Movies" is funded by Patreon, our $15 sponsors get credit every episode, so thank you too. Aaron Burns, Aaron LeCluse, Abel Savard, Alejandra Vargas, Alex Brewington, Angus Lee, Benjamin Biddle, Brian Novak, Cassandra Newman, Chris Finnick, Kieran Dachelor, Kennedy Dan Meyer, Daniel Solgero, Dave Hickman, David Sheely, Finbarn Nicole, Frankie Punzi, Greg Downing, James Enright, Jesse Ferguson, Joe Crow, Joel Robinson, Joanne Klorsen, Joe Gluck, Josh Powell's Land, Kevin Vahhey, Kyle Aldrich, Hello Kyle, your brand new, Lorraine Chishol, Marty Polmayer, Matthew A. Siebert, Michael Hasko, Sean Doran, Toby Skills Jungyas, Tim Wazenski, Timothy Green, Tom Painter, Tyler Long, Benjamin Hoffer, Sarah Montgomery, Kat Essmann, and finally, Dan Hebner. Massive thank you for guesting this week and next week, Dan. And we look forward to getting you on to talk about Transformers 1. This is "Kiss" with their disco song, "Bit of a Needle Drop", but I'm kind of okay with it. When it's Dan Stevens doing the dropping of the needles. You just watch the man get devoured by a topiary nightmare and you want to quote Tennyson, down here. Yeah, man, in you all about it. Let love clasp grief, man, come here. Yeah, humans, we think we took ourselves off the food shelf. Maybe. Maybe the Titans are here to abhorrent us. I think that there is something seriously wrong with you. Okay, okay, okay. I've been Alex Shaw. And I've been Sharon Shaw. And school's out. ♪ Tonight ♪ ♪ I want to give it all to you ♪ ♪ In the darkness ♪ ♪ There's so much I want to do ♪ ♪ And tonight ♪ ♪ I want to lay it at your feet ♪ ♪ 'Cause a girl I was made for you ♪ ♪ You were made for me ♪ ♪ I was made for loving you, baby ♪ ♪ You were made for loving me ♪ ♪ And I can't get enough of you, baby ♪ ♪ Can you get enough of me tonight ♪ ♪ I want to see it in your eyes ♪ ♪ Feel the magic ♪ ♪ There's something that drives me wild ♪ ♪ And tonight ♪ ♪ We're gonna make it all come true ♪ ♪ 'Cause a girl you were made for me ♪ ♪ Girl I was made for you ♪ ♪ I was made for loving you, baby ♪ ♪ You were made for loving me ♪ ♪ And I can't get enough of you, baby ♪ ♪ Can you get enough of me ♪ ♪ I was made for loving you, baby ♪ ♪ You were made for loving me ♪ ♪ And I can't get enough of you, baby ♪ ♪ Can you get enough of me ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ I can't get enough of you ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ (upbeat rock music) ♪ ♪ (upbeat rock music) (gunshot) (upbeat rock music) (gunshot) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) ♪ I was made for loving you, baby ♪ ♪ You were made for loving me ♪ ♪ And I can't get enough of you, baby ♪ ♪ Can you get enough of me ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ (upbeat rock music) ♪ You were made ♪ (upbeat rock music) ♪ I can't get enough ♪ (upbeat rock music) ♪ No one can get enough ♪ (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) ♪ I was made for loving you, baby ♪ ♪ You were made for loving me ♪ ♪ And I can't get enough of you, baby ♪ ♪ Can you get enough of me ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (dramatic music)
