GODZILLA VS KONG Catapults to $9.6 Mil Opening Day

[Monterey Jack]

It'll be interesting to see how much that one takes in. It doesn't have the hype of ENDGAME and looks utterly generic -- like the Marvel "episodes" that fill in between the really big franchise names -- but the fans will show up for it no matter what it is, as CAPTAIN MARVEL attests.

Black Widow is a popular character, and many fans feel she's "earned" a solo movie long before this. Of course, Disney didn't deign to give Scarlett her own movie until they had killed her character off. Disney pushing it back to July in the hopes that enough people will be immunized to allow close to 100% theater capacity is dreaming, though, and they may as well have stuck to the May release date, as it seems like 65% of the movie has already been revealed in trailers over the last year-and-a-half. All of the pre-Covid movies that studios have been sitting on forever are going to feel SO stale by the time they finally get released. I feel like I've seen (well, heard) that Quiet Place II ad in front of every movie I've seen since last August.

[mkaroly]

So I just watched it...wildly entertaining. I felt the story had heart, though I do agree that it was choppy and "assembled." I wish the movie had been longer in order to flesh things out a bit more. If this is the last film America gets to make, they saved the best for last. They finally understood that people want to see the stars in the film get appropriate screen time (i.e. the monsters). The fights were outstanding, and I couldn't have been happier with the ending. I liked little things about the movie, like the Ferris Wheel in the middle of Hong Kong (which reminded me of the Toho Millenial Godzilla series of films). For my money this is the best of the lot and Godzilla 2014 is easily the worst of the lot. King of the Monsters and Skull Island are in the middle.

[AndyDursin]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... -u-s-start

$48 mil domestic opening, huge number. Give the fans what they want and they will turn out.

I sat through it again with Theo. They could have so easily jettisoned Millie Bobby and her friends out the door, they serve almost no purpose to the story other than "meeting MechaG".

The Hollow Earth stuff might have worked better had more time been spent there, but I was reading an interview with Rebecca Hall where she said the entire, big introduction they shot was unused and pared down. (Must have ended up where Lance Reddick's scenes all went)

I appreciated this one was more aimed at kids than any of its predecessors, outside the one brief f bomb which he didn't even hear there was nothing really objectionable in it. Not even any "scary parts"!

He enjoyed the big fight at the end. Overall it's a mixed bag but a big step up from KOTM at least and it was fun watching with it with a 1st grader! 2.5 stars.

[mkaroly]

I did not mind MBB and friends...all the human characters should be secondary and give context to the monster story. All they did was provide context for the MechaG story, and I was okay with that. Two things I did not like story-wise:

1. MBB and her dad side story...the scene where she finally gets in touch with him only to be cut off...unnecessary and a waste of time. No need to bring the dad back.

2. I didn't really care for how they used the Ghidorah head. I suppose since this was the last film in the series, attempting a MechaGhidorah would have been too much. But it was very anti-climactic based on the teaser in KING OF THE MONSTERS....in my opinion.

[AndyDursin]

I got the sense all of the Monarch people were there just as connective tissue with the previous movies but they clearly just cut them all to shreds to the point where they were barely needed. Not that it's any great loss but the movie could have just focused on the Kong characters and had the Monarch guys floating around in the backdrop. It wasn't necessary to split the time amongst them all.