King of the Monsters?  That’s an awfully binary way of looking at kaijus!

by Thom Yee

Godzilla: King of the Monsters images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

If you’re one of those [very] few people who’s spent a lot of time around this site over the years, reading our reviews, getting a sense of where our tastes lie, and maybe even paying a bit of attention to our overall website design, you might think that we’re all of us big time kaiju fans round these parts.  We’ve covered most of the major monsters movies that have opened in the last seven years.  There’s giant monsters in at least one of our five randomly generated banner images.  And, at least for me, Pacific Rim ranks almost irrationally high on my top 10 favourite movies [monster or not] of all time.  And that’s not even mentioning my ethnicity which all but gives me no choice but to be into things like giant monsters… and martial arts and… like, math probably.  But I’m not a kaiju guy [or a math guy].  Not really.  I’ve never watched Evangelion and have no plans to.  I couldn’t recite to you the names of any famous giant monsters beyond Godzilla and MechaGodzilla.  And I could count the number of Godzilla movies I’ve seen (including the subject of this review) on one hand even if two of that hand’s digits were forcibly removed (note, I didn’t say it was going to be my hand I was counting on).  And yet there’s still something inside of me, something foundational, something primal, that draws me to movies like Godzilla even if those things aren’t quite enough to make me a full-blown fan of the genre.  And I bet those same things are in most of you too. Continue reading →