You know, when the year started I sure wasn’t expecting to end up drawing a picture of Godzilla playing around with kaiju plushies alongside my silly movie horse. This is the sort of thing that you have the luck to work with when you are an artist by commission, a concept so bizarre and silly that in and on itself is just downright delightful. I only hope the coloring isn’t too garish. I’m not entirely displeased with the way the composition works here (in fact I think this is one of the few times the background is well integrated with the characters), but I think the colors could’ve been improved upon. I’ve been using too much magenta+blue combinations lately. My artwork is starting to look like the trailer for “The Color from Outer Space”.
 
Still. Drawing Godzilla happy and calm is weird. He looks fine when he’s angry, but the moment you make him happy he plummets into the uncanny valley for me. I don’t know. You guys let me know what you think.
 
I think the biggest tragedy this year in terms of movies is not the fact that “Alita: Battle Angel” didn’t get enough play, despite how many people went to see it and said it was actually pretty good (I’ve yet to find out myself). I think the biggest tragedy this year in terms of movies is the fact that “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was put down in the box office due to (insert reason here). It seems everything is killing cinema lately, so regardless of said cause being Disney, Marvel, movie schedules, film critics, film audiences, Scorsese, Coppola, or whatever new reason clickbait news websites decide to come up, that is irrelevant to the facts. The facts that this movie, despite the box office results, made ToHo so happy that they have moved into Hollywood to keep supporting the Monsterverse forward. Sure, the movie has most likely not made its money back, (hell it might not even came close to break even) but when you make the creators of Godzilla so happy by respecting the spirit of the originals, you know you’re going the right way.
 
Ok, now with that out of the way, what did I think of it? I think the movie is perfectly fine on its own, and as part of the genre it’s a rather remarkable tent pole that people will go back to, scratching their heads as they try to figure out why this bombed in the box office. It sure isn’t perfect, but let me get real here for a moment. Anytime a new Kaiju movie comes out, all I hear is negative things about it, even from the people who actively liked it. All they talk about is the same thing. “There’s too many humans and not enough monsters”, “there’s too many monsters and not enough humans”, “there’s too much giant robot stuff in this movie just tone it done”, “aaaaah where’s the robots you hacks!?”, and you know what? It’s getting old. This sort of movie, the kaiju genre, can’t stand against a regular criticism. You can’t use the same measuring rod for this movie as you would use for other movies, not even in the blockbuster circle. These are movies about giant monsters punching each other in the face. Is the face-punching framed well, with good effects, good music, and one-dimensional-yet-likeable-enough characters for you to follow (apart from the monsters)? If the answer to this is yes, then it gets a thumbs up from me, and guess what? This movie has it.
 
I think 2019 will go in history as the new 1982, where a ton of movies were released and only a few selected ones did relatively good in the box office, enough to be remembered. Did you remember a new Men in Black film came out this year? As well as a new version of Hellboy. Also there was Gemini Man with Will Smith, directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee. Dark Phoenix stumbled through the door and crashed through the floor. Do you remember any of these? Regardless of how well or how bad they did, movies this year have come and gone at such pace I’m amazed people remember even the big ones. Just a random thought, feel free to discuss this in the comments, I encourage you.
 
Forget the flaws, forget the preconceptions, and don’t listen to anyone (not even me). If this movie calls your attention, definitely give it a go. If not then I guess there’s always time to check out “Chernobyl” in HBO (keeping with the nuclear threat theme).