Reviews

I absolutely loved this show as a kid - was not to be missed on Saturday mornings in 1967 - so I purchased the series on DVD and started watching the episodes again.

In the 2nd episode - Sarko the Arkman - Sarko captures Tundro, Igoo and Dorno and takes them back to his planet.

Zandor realizes where they'd gone - and he and Zok, along with Gloop, fly on Zok to this planet.

So Zok is not only capable of FTL speed and space travel, but apparently can protect his charges against the vacuum of space.

They all fly home in Sarko's ship after defeating him.

BTW, I love the backstories that are hinted at but never told - obviously, Sarko and Zandor have a history of animosity, and the Herculoids are well known to Sarko. Would have loved to have known what Sarko hoped to learn by studying Tundro and Igoo.

I loved the classic Gojira, and the '56 American version "Godzilla King of the Monsters" . I really want to like this movie, but I can't.

What's good? Well, Legendary DID listen to criticism of the 2014 film - that it lacked footage of the monsters. There's LOTS of monster footage. There were a lot of "Easter Eggs' and fanboy moments for fans of Japanese giant monster movies.

Too bad they didn't listen to the criticism of the human plot, which like in 2014, is painful to watch, and drags the entire film down.

The serious flaws that beset the 2014 Legendary Godzilla film are on full display here. Typical Hollywood style chase sequences, and tiresome near misses, with the main characters just missing getting stomped, crushed, devoured, blasted by milliseconds -not once or twice, but again, and again, and again, and again.

Like so many undisciplined CGI fests of the 21st century, just because the director CAN show something on screen, doesn't mean he should. For example, having the main human characters running around on the ground, almost literally under the feet of monsters fighting..... just terrible. Especially when stretched out for considerable screen time. Such scenes lose all suspense, and becomes just ridiculous and face-palmingly bad; just tired Hollywood action-flick cliche stuff.

And that nearly indestructible Orca - the LITERAL plot 'device' - I could see it working the first time on the Kaiju - they think it's another monster - but given the obvious malevolent intelligence of King Ghidorah, and in general the intelligence levels of the kaiju wouldn't they just ignore the damn thing after multiple uses? Or wouldn't he just let the other monsters know , since he was actively communicating with them and directing their attacks on humanity - "Hey, ignore that call - it's nonsense" or similar?

And ok, maybe it somehow makes sense for the girl to take the device to Fenway Park to use the PA system to amplify the sound to draw Ghidorah there (although she didn't know that Godzilla was revived at that point, so what was the benefit of drawing Ghidorah to Boston?) Ok, so let's accept that. But why would she feel the need to STAY at Fenway Park once she activated it? Other than to be kaiju-fodder when Ghidorah arrived to level the stadium? Oh yeah, which led to more dumbness....

The silliness of her ridiculous escapes while Ghidorah WAS demolishing Fenway - how many near misses did we see?

And then finally Ghidorah stomps on the Orca - with a multi-thousand ton foot. GREAT - finally, that stupid literal, plot device is gone. Kaput. Nope. Somehow, at night, in the middle of a wrecked stadium, and in a friggin' torrential rain storm, one of the characters FINDS the 'badly damaged' Orca.

And then, in another Hollywood miracle, the main characters are able to repair - at night - in a rainstorm - a complex electronic device. With the little girl's help - lol. Oh, and not to mention,somehow the battle between Ghidorah and Godzilla at Fenway just happened to head in the same direction the little girl was fleeing - she got knocked out and trapped under debris - and the parents, as with the Orca getting 'found' at Fenway - managed to spot, just in the nick of time, at night, in a rainstorm, in the ruins of an entire neighborhood- her hand sticking out of a bathtub (that protected her). And even though injured badly enough to be knocked out - she comes to in the nick of time, and is perfectly fine - and able to help with the previously mentioned miraculous Orca repair. No recovery time needed from serious injuries/concussion, apparently. LOL. She borders on a MarySue type character.

And then with the Orca's tiny little built in speakers, no Fenway assistance required, it was somehow able to be used to attract Ghidorah - again. Heckuva boom box right there.

You know, most films require a suspension of disbelief - but this film's stupid writing, and tiresome (over)use of Hollywood 'near-miss' CGI driven close calls, just stretches that suspension to the breaking point and beyond. And for me, that made the film unenjoyable.

The charm of many of the 60s and 70s Toho films - they were made on a very fast production schedule, on very limited budgets. So you'd expect a bit of sloppy writing. But this turkey - with the months of production and pre-production that goes into a film like this - and the huge budget, why must the writing be so bad, and the action scenes so predictable and formulaic?