- Rodan (1956): A mining company has unexplained flooding, and miners die cut up. Suspicion falls on Goro the brawler… Engineer Sageru is sure he's not guilty, and reassures Goro's sister Kiyu—ah, Honda Ishiro's romances. Every film needs a pretty boy & girl, even if all they say to each other are their names.
It only takes 18 minutes to show the first larval monster, a record for early kaiju films. The giant mob of mine security with their poking sticks and little revolvers are ineffectual as always, but why do they have so many?
The lighting is pretty bad. It captures the darkness of the mines, but even outdoors is very dim to hide details of the larva puppet. The rear projection scenes are not as bad as previous efforts, but still obvious. The only place where lighting is good are the office & hospital sets.
Everyone at the mine and JSDF is competent, and respects science experts, unlike the Godzilla vs Mothra flick. But the scientist then blurts out some unsupported bullshit about the hydrogen bomb moving tectonic plates. The civilians are really quite dumb and deserve their deaths. Then there's an endlessly long nothing happens act.
Baby Rodan is so cute and chubby it's amazing. I've only ever seen it as a giant lean flying death, and of course I adore Pteranodon. The flying model and suit are excellent, and Rodan's wave of destruction is lovely, though they didn't find a traditional Japanese castle to destroy this time. It's a shame it's embedded in a pointless movie.
However, the tank models are preposterous, and the JSDF jingoism is eyeroll bad, lots of sound and fury inflicting no harm on Rodan, but everyone's very proud, it's a very military-focused adventure at this point. None of Godzilla's horror at war, this treats Rodan like, say, Korea, a contemporary problem to be solved by bombing the shit out of it. The end is literally 10 minutes of rockets being shot into a mountain while nothing else happens, and two demoralized Rodans die like Romeo & Juliet. Humans are the monsters.
★★½☆☆ If it wasn't for my absolute weakness for Pteranodon and Pterodactyl, this would be a spectacularly bad movie. As it is, it's merely bad.
- Watchmen: So eventually the show tells us where Dr Manhattan is, and the nature of Ozymandias' prison, and the origin story of Sister Night. Still no answers as to why, in fact it deliberately has the plot eat its own tail, stupid people causing the problems stupid people investigate. Nothing happens at great length. Interesting ideas like the memory pills are brought up, used in a stupid way, then discarded. The whole thing is a tale told by an idiot. Which, again, Damon Lindelof, I knew it'd be incoherent nonsense made up on the spot, like talking to a toddler. But I don't understand how this fool gets anything this nonsensical and badly-written produced. Got a couple more eps to go and then I can wash my hands of this shitshow.