#IT'S A GOOD THING HE DOESN'T REMEMBER AND NEITHER DOES SLATER...

[mrcspectr]

New Jeremy talking about Jake article is released. Jeremy Slater: Is he good? Is he evil? We don't know

Jeremy I trusted you wtf. You literally said a month ago that making him evil would be a mistake

Article

Sigh. So. I got a notification for this article yesterday actually and I rolled my eyes at it so hard that I figured I wouldn't even give it my full attention. But I can see that it's started to gain some traction here and a few people have asked me, so I wanna just. Try and squash a little bit of the disappointment if I can.

First off, I should mention that The Direct is starting to make a habit of taking older interviews and portraying them as new, exciting information for headlines. The quotes they take from Jeremy here are actually from an Inverse article dated as May 25th, 2022. Which I mean, is only three weeks ago, but it's definitely not from yesterday. So that's significant.

Anyway, the issue we're all having:

Again, at face value, I can see how negative this looks because I read it in exactly the same way. It made me angry because this is totally different from what Jeremy said on May 12th. But what made me view it differently was in remembering how we're told the story.

The first few episodes, The Goldfish Problem and Summon the Suit, are almost entirely told from Steven's point of view. He's confused, he's scared, he doesn't know who Marc is, so neither do we. We're meant to feel unsettled because he feels unsettled and we're discovering this whole world alongside him as the audience. And then we get to Asylum, and we see Marc's side of the story from his own memories, but we're watching them through Steven's eyes. We're perceiving a life through someone else.

It's the way Jeremy says, "Marc and Steven are still totally unaware of his existence. We don't necessarily know, is he good? Is he evil?" Because, in reality, we don't know anything about Jake because they don't. Marc and Steven only have glimpses, gaps in time, not really enough to form a solid idea one way or the other, so at this point, we'd question him in the same way. We can make assumptions and form our own interpretations, but in the roots of the story, so can Marc and Steven. And they can be wrong.

Think about it in the way Steven has such a firm idea of what's good, and Marc has the same in what he thinks is bad. It doesn't necessarily mean that their opinions are fact, but they believe they are, and a lot of my Jake Lockley analysis is rooted in the idea that the boys would misunderstand his actions/motives. And not only that, but we have to think of the sentence "and we know he is definitely more on board with Khonshu's worldview in terms of punishing evildoers." We know Khonshu has uh.. not entirely legitimate concepts of justice and vengeance, but why would someone who's "evil," want to "punish evildoers?" If everything about Jake was meant to be seen as corrupt and senselessly destructive, wouldn't he want to just.. let them be? Wouldn't he allow Harrow to keep on killing instead of removing him from the equation for good?

There, THAT is the line that really did it for me here too. "everything is in service of the greater good." A benevolent force doesn't care about the greater good, that's the whole point. Evil looks at the greater good, laughs in its face and spits on it. The idea is this: is he going to be a friend to Marc and Steven. Is he going to be an enemy to Marc and Steven. That idea of an enemy can be anything that causes conflict in the relationship, whether that be opposing worldviews, clashing morals, etc. A lot of what we know about Jake, which granted is very little, alludes to him having these sorts of conflicts with the boys. They don't know his background or his reasons for doing what he does, but they assume the worst because they're scared. They're confused.

Maybe I'm reading too much into things, and I'm obviously a little bias here, but I find it hard to believe that Jeremy would suddenly change his mind and begin to hold such a.. flat take on Jake as a character. It's boring. And besides, we're talking about the same guy that said this not that long ago:

There's a big difference between being generic evil and being perceived as evil by those around you, just because they don't have all the information yet. And hopefully someday, we will.

#and you don't have to listen to me because i could be totally wrong but #i think at face value the way this article is written and the way the quotes are used can be #awfully misleading really #also anon babe please don't think i'm nagging at you i am nagging at poor journalistic habits y'know #i appreciate you bringing it up so i could talk about it #anonymous #asks #moon knight

[adamwatchesmovies]

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

I didn't expect Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire to make me seriously consider the topic of film reviews, but here we are. I'm in the camp that's going to call this a good movie. The film has some clearly established objectives and it meets them. It's sure to please those who buy tickets to see it whether they're established fans of the Godzilla franchise or were introduced to the King of the Monsters with this MonsterVerse cinematic series. On the big screen, where the action is "to scale", it's a lot of fun and moves quickly from one earth-shattering brawl to the next. It's going to make a lot of people happy, so how can make it "bad"? On the other hand, the screenplay is often clumsy and those clearly established objectives mean the film is unambitious. All it wants to do is what you'd expect it to and nothing more.

Set a few years after the events of the previous film, Titan attacks are now a way of life, even if the colossal beasts are inevitably repelled by Godzilla. Meanwhile, Kong discovers he is not the only member of his species living in Hollow Earth and Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), self-described titan expert/conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), Titan veterinarian "Trapper" (Dan Stevens) and young Jia (Kaylee Hottle) travel underground to investigate.

The last time Adam Wingard directed Godzilla and Kong, we had two separate human plots, one of which could've been eliminated without affecting the plot too much. Consequently, writers Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater now give us the minimum amount of humans on screen. We don't even have random loved ones on the surface to put in danger when a monster shows up. Aside from the Kong/Godzilla storyline (I'll get to it in a bit), all the people traveling to the Hollow Earth worry about is how Kong will defeat the monster he has to square off against, except for Jia and Dr. Ilene, who have a more involved, more emotional story independent from the great ape's. There's a thin point made about exploiting the environment and the impact our civilization might have on the residents of Hollow Earth, but it's blink and you miss it. That's what I mean when I say this film is unambitious. The movie everyone is going to compare GxK: TNE is Godzilla Minus One, which said a lot about a lot of things, had characters the audience fell in love with and delivered great monster action. To be fair, this is not that film. It doesn't want to be - but it could've been.

Now, let's get into the Kong/Godzilla story so I can give the film some praise. Neither of these characters can speak, which means a lot of the storytelling is done solely via body language and actions. While the motivations may be simplistic, what's happening and how we should react is always clear. We even manage to get a pretty good "feel" for the personalities of the more prominently featured kaiju (there are even more here than in the first two hours of Godzilla: King of the Monsters), which is not an easy task. For established fans, it's a treat to see several new monsters introduced, instead of getting old favorites with new paint jobs… again. I'm also going to circle back to Jia, who had a similar story to Kong's in the previous movie and does here too. There's a nice parallel and I sense that this universe has finally established some characters it can bring back over and over again. They will ensure that we care about more than just Kong and Godzilla. I'm particularly happy with the Titan veterinarian, who would naturally run toward the series' action and for good reason.

Like its predecessor, Godzilla x Kong offers several big, varied action scenes in all sorts of different environments. You may not remember the dialogue but you will remember the visuals. It also shows audiences something new, whether they're intimately familiar with the Godzilla franchise or not, which is another thing easier said than done considering it's appeared in 38 films so far. All of this makes me hate that reviews have to put movies in buckets of "good" and "bad". It could've been a better movie. It should've been a better movie but I also like what we got and I won't be the only one. (Theatrical version on the big screen, March 28, 2024)

#Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire #Godzilla vs. Kong #Godzilla #Kong #King Kong #Adam Wingard #Terry Rossio #Simon Barrett #Jerey Slater #Rebecca Hall #Brian Tyree Henry #Dan Stevens #Kaylee Hottle #Alex Ferns #Fala Chen #2024 movies #2024 films