THE STORY: It is the future (like say – 1989). Robots are now commonplace, being used for everything from manual labor to childcare. But, robots go bad and when they do, the LAPD calls in Sgt. Jack R. Ramsay (Tom Selleck), an expert in so-called “Runaways”. When a madman (Gene Simmons) invents a microchip that turns all robots into runaways, Ramsay, and his new partner (Cynthia Rhodes) must put a stop to his evil plan – the fate of the world just may depend on it! Oh, and also Ramsay is afraid of heights. Trust me, that’s important.
THE PLAYERS: Starring: Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Kirstie Alley, G. W. Bailey and Gene Simmons. Written and directed by Michael Crichton.
THE HISTORY: While most famous for his novels, Michael Crichton actually had a decent Hollywood career as a director, having a couple of solid hits under his belt (Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery) by the time 1984 rolled around. At the time, Tom Selleck was riding high on the success of “Magnum P.I.” but was bent on breaking into films after landing the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but being forced to drop it due to his Magnum contract. Thus, in ‘83/84, we got a slew of Tom Selleck vehicles, High Road to China (a better-than-average Indiana Jones clone), Lassiter (not bad – not nearly enough action), and Runaway.
Jack Ramsay is not exactly a character whose name is on the tip of everybody’s tongue, but Runaway was a really great popcorn movie that Michael Crichton wrote and directed. It was very futuristic, it had robots and all sorts of stuff, and it was a nice movie. It was a good movie that I’m very proud of. It didn’t do very well, which was a great disappointment to Michael, who became a friend. And Gene Simmons was in it! Gene hadn’t been in a feature film before, but he was great. We had some great talks and good times. He played this evil guy named Luther who’d invented bullets that could go around corners and hone in on people, and he had robot spiders that could attack people and inject them with poison. I know it sounds hokey, but with Michael Crichton at the helm, it was pretty good stuff. – Tom Selleck- A.V. Club Interview
Sadly for Selleck, none of the movies did particularly well at the box office, with Runaway doing just awful, opening in seventh place at the box office and being beaten by notorious bombs The Cotton Club and Dune. In the end, the film eked out a disastrous $6.7 Million at the box office and temporarily ended Selleck’s big screen career (although three years later, his Three Men and a Baby would become the biggest film of 1987). Crichton’s career as a director also took a hit, with him only helming one bad Burt Reynolds vehicle, Physical Evidence, in 1989, before turning his attention back to the page so he could write a crazy-sounding book about a dinosaur amusement park.
WHY IT’S GREAT: Ok, so “Best movie” might be a little too generous for Runaway, but as a kid growing up in the late eighties/ early nineties, Runaway was a favorite. It’s easy to look back at it now and laugh at the hilariously low-tech robots (a shot of Selleck’s robot nanny making pasta is especially bad), but this is still a fun sci-fi actioner. In fact, those of you who might be younger but super into eighties retro stuff like Kung Fury might get a real kick out of the unapologetically silly (made better by the fact that it tries to be so serious) flick.
There are a lot of things to like about Runaway, chief of which is Tom Selleck’s straight-laced performance. Say what you will about the guy, but he wanted to be a movie star, so he delivers in Runaway, even if I suspect he knew deep down there was no way this would really work. It’s kinda strange seeing him waltz around a futuristic L.A. Maybe copying Harrison Ford’s career so closely was a bad plan – as I’m sure him playing a futuristic L.A cop had more than a little to do with Blade Runner. Selleck really came into his own when he was more laid-back and likable, like on “Magnum P.I” and his latter-movies (Quigley Down Under is especially solid), so it’s weird to see him so serious here, but it works.
It’s also worth noting in this MeToo era that he’s among the most gentlemanly heroes of the eighties, treating his female partner with respect (they become an item but she makes all the moves), being ultra-professional with a female suspect he has to search (the late Kirstie Alley in an early role), and never indulging in the casual sexism you might expect given the era and genre. I’m not trying to be overtly P.C as these movies are a product of their time, but it’s a nice, forward-thinking touch.
Likewise, Cynthia Rhodes makes for a likable heroine/love interest, and it’s a shame she essentially retired from films after this, while Gene Simmons camps it up in a hilariously over-the-top performance as the big bad. While the movie was a flop, Simmons went on a solid run of playing bad guys, following it up with Wanted: Dead or Alive (another underrated action flick – with one of the best bad guy death scenes), and the bug-nuts Never Too Young To Die (recently re-released by Shout Factory and available to watch for free on their streaming app). I also enjoyed seeing G.W. Bailey turn up as the angry police chief. He made a great career out of playing grumpy authority figures in this era (second only to James Tolkan), and I’m glad he’s still going strong thirty-plus years later. Also – any film with a score by Jerry Goldsmith gets an automatic recommendation, although it’s crazy synthy and dated.
BEST SCENE: The only thing people really remember about Runaway is the MacGuffin, and it’s a good one. Simmons’s baddie invents a heat-seeking bullet that chases Selleck around during the chase sequences, and the bullet POV shots are incredible, even if they seem to have eaten up the budget, with the animation for the bullets absent the entire third act.
SEE IT: Runaway is available on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play, and also shows up on Crackle from time-to-time.
PARTING SHOT: Runaway is a silly slice of eighties cheese, but I’ve watched it many times over the years, and I always have a great time. It’s a pretty nostalgic flick for me, and a guaranteed good time for anyone interested in this era.
With Colin Farrell taking over the role as the Penguin and no doubt on his way to becoming the “definitive” version for a younger generation, he reflected on some of the other quintessential performances throughout the Batman franchise. And like so many of us, he put Heath Ledger’s Joker at number one.
When asked which performance in any Batman movie was his favorite, Colin Farrell replied, “I mean, Heath. Heath takes it, you know.” That’s about as good of a pick as you can have, as Ledger’s Joker is widely considered one of the best performances in any comic book movie, even earning him one of the few posthumous acting Oscars ever given. Colin Farrell has a pretty special professional connection to Heath Ledger, too, stepping in (alongside Johnny Depp and Jude Law) to fill in for Ledger on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus following his tragic 2008 death, which occurred just one month after filming commenced.
But Colin Farrell didn’t stop there, going on to cite another Joker performer within the core Batman universe. “I mean, I don’t want to sit on the fence, but I’ve enjoyed so many of them. I love Jack [Nicholson] as well as the Joker.” He also added that most Batman characters – hero or villain – can be performed in a multitude of ways. “And these characters of lore are so well-designed initially that they just withstand. It was like, Christian Bale was asked a question, I saw once, about the new Batman that was coming and about Robert [Pattinson] playing Batman, and Christian said something along the lines of, and I paraphrase, that these characters, they survive and they invite multiple interpretations.”
Colin Farrell isn’t the only Penguin to have given his take on a similar matter, as Danny DeVito – who of course played Oswald Cobbelpot in 1992’s Batman Returns – previously said that he chooses his own interpretation of the character as the best one. That’s not exactly as humbling of a route that Farrell might have taken, but, really, who can argue with that? While Farrell is wearing the character – and the fat suit that comes along with it – well, DeVito’s unique spin on the Penguin may just be unmatched in the Batman universe. I’d personally put DeVito and Ledger at the top of best Batman performances.
After delays caused by last year’s simultaneous WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, The Penguin will debut on Max in late 2024.
How would you rank the top three Batman movie performances? Give us your list in the comments section below!
For a short bit there, it seemed like Ezra Miller’s career was going to be torpedoed thanks to numerous controversies. Yet, Miller managed to stay on board The Flash. OK, so that was yet another flop for DC but it showed there was still (some) support for Miller within the industry in one way or another. But now, it might truly be over, as Invincible, has quietly removed Miller from the series. The actor had been previously cast as D.A. Sinclair. So where does that leave the troubled star?
While Ezra Miller voiced the mad scientist with a penchant for turning people into obedient cyborgian zombie soldiers called “Reanimen” in the first season, Eric Bauza has now taken over the role. Miller only voiced the character in one episode (“You Look Kinda Dead”) so it’s really not that big of a loss for Invincible. But it does perhaps point to another shift in how Miller is being viewed within the community.
There were plans for a sequel to The Flash – with director Andy Muschietti saying only Miller could fill the role – but its underperformance at the box office killed those. With their continuation under the studio’s banner now over and the Invincible gig cut, where does that put Ezra Miller? With all objectivity, it’s not looking good.
Miller has almost far too many controversies, arrests and downright odd behavior to list here (might we suggest their “WTF Happened to This Celebrity?!” for a refresher?), but when you have a sheet that includes choking, grooming, burglary, and demanding that Susan Sarandon bow at his altar, you might find it tough to continue working in Hollywood…at least we’d hope. While Miller had a unique 2023 with The Flash and Dalíland (playing a younger version of surrealist Salvador Dalí), the actor’s 2024 is looking quite free.
Ezra Miller’s Invincible replacement, Eric Bauza, is one of the most talented guys in voiceover work right now, with credits that include Woody Woodpecker in the 2017 movie, numerous Looney Tunes characters in Space Jam: A New Legacy and Coyote vs. Acme, although we’ll probably never hear his work there.
Do you think Ezra Miller will land another high-profile project? Give us your predictions in the comments below.
Rob Zombie has said that for every one film project of his that moves forward, there are five potential projects that fall by the wayside. We haven’t heard of quite that many unmade Rob Zombie movies, but we have heard of several over the years that never got off the ground… and unfortunately, most of them sounded pretty interesting. A little over a year ago, Zombie had said he didn’t know what his next movie is going to be, but he did know what it’s not going to be: he won’t be continuing his Firefly franchise (which consists of House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, and 3 from Hell), and he doesn’t want to make a sequel to The Munsters (which was poorly received). So while he figures out his next cinematic move, we we have put together a list of Rob Zombie Movies We Want To See!
DR. SATAN PREQUEL/SEQUEL
Okay, so this flies right in the face of what Zombie just said about not making any more movies in the Firefly franchise. But while we agree that there’s nowhere for the story to go after the events of 3 from Hell, there could be an interesting story that focuses on the bizarre character of Dr. Satan. A prequel set before House of 1000 Corpses could show how Dr. Satan got involved with the Firefly clan and set up his underground lair full of experiment subjects. A sequel could dig into what happened to Dr. Satan after he was taken out of his lair at the start of The Devil’s Rejects. Maybe the best approach would be a sequel that provides some flashbacks to the pre-Corpses days.
Zombie did shoot some Dr. Satan material for The Devil’s Rejects, a scene where the mad doctor attacks a nurse played by Rosario Dawson, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
THE PUNISHER
A while back, Thomas Jane mentioned that Rob Zombie was in the running to direct The Punisher 2 when the project was set up at Lionsgate and Jane was still attached to star in the follow-up to the 2004 Punisher film. Our minds have been swimming with the possibilities ever since. Jane’s time as The Punisher may be over (although you never know, in these days where Michael Keaton is Batman again and Hugh Jackman is playing Wolverine one more time), but it could be very interesting to see how Zombie would handle a Punisher story.
We know he can deliver the level of violence the audience wants to see from the heavily armed vigilante, but what sort of style would he bring to the film around the character and the violence? Would it be dark and gritty? Neon-soaked madness? Did Lexi Alexander already give us something along the lines of a Zombie Punisher with her Punisher: War Zone? We’ll probably never find out, but it’s fun to daydream about.
THE CROW: 2037
In 1997, it was announced that musician Rob Zombie would be making his feature writing and directing debut with an addition to the Crow franchise that would have been called The Crow: 2037. The story would begin in “2010, when a young boy and his mother are murdered on Halloween night by a Satanic priest. A year later, the boy is resurrected as the Crow. Twenty-seven years later, and unaware of his past, he has become a bounty hunter on a collision course with his now all-powerful killer.” What that synopsis doesn’t mention is that a plague has knocked the planet back into the Dark Ages by the time 2037 rolls around, so our hero wields a sword and gets around on horseback.
An unexpected mixture of medieval times and influences from the Universal Monsters movies, The Crow: 2037 would have been a very unique entry in the franchise… so unique that the producers seemed to get cold feet and decided to make a more typical Crow movie instead. For a while, Zombie considered turning his script into an original film called Black Rider X, but then moved ahead with House of 1000 Corpses instead. So all we can do now is read the The Crow: 2037 script (which is readily available online) and try to imagine what could have been. In the meantime, the new reboot of The Crow is due out in June.
WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE SS
Werewolf Women of the SS is a faux trailer Zombie made for Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant Grindhouse project, and while all of the faux trailers are a lot of fun in their short form, it would also have been amazing to see them all get expanded into actual features, like Rodriguez’s faux trailer Machete was. Eli Roth is currently in production on a Thanksgiving feature, Edgar Wright has pondered a Don’t feature, and in the past Zombie has asked fans if they would be interested in seeing a Werewolf Women of the SS feature. We would be!
An homage to movies like Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, Fraulein Devil, and Love Camp 7, Werewolf Women of the SS is set during World War II and involves Nazi mad scientists, the She-Devils of Belzac, and Fu Manchu working together in an attempt to create an army of werewolves.
TYRANNOSAURUS REX
Zombie had no intention of making Halloween II. He was going to hand that sequel over to Inside directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury while he made a different project for Dimension: Tyrannosaurus Rex, which was even given a 2009 release date. He started promoting the project with posters and concept art… but then Bustillo and Maury left Halloween II and Dimension roped Zombie into doing that movie for 2009 instead of Tyrannosaurus Rex. There was some hope that he would make the original film after Halloween II, but by the time he was done with his second Michael Myers movie his working relationship with Dimension had been damaged beyond repair.
Zombie revealed very little about what Tyrannousarus Rex would have been, but he did say it wasn’t a horror movie. Comparing it to Straight Time, Raging Bull, and a serious version of Every Which Way But Loose, he said the movie would be “about this washed-up prizefighter who’s got this self-destructive tendency, and he comes out of prison and the only way he knows how to survive is by fighting. But his boxing career is over so he gets caught up in this sort of underground fight ring.” Concept art revealed that, like Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose, this prizefighter would also end up running into trouble with a biker gang.
Thirteen years later we’re still hoping to see Tyrannosaurus Rex somehow, because Zombie making a “incredibly violent ’70s action movie” about a washed-up prizefighter sounds like a whole lot of fun.
THE NAIL
Some of the concept art for Tyrannosaurus Rex brought to mind The Nail, a comic book Zombie wrote with Steve Niles in 2004 that happened to center on a character named Rex. So it was erroneous reported that Tyrannosaurus Rex was an adaptation of The Nail and that really caught on, despite Zombie and Niles both saying Tyrannosaurus Rex was a different story. So if they are different stories, that means we need to see both Tyrannosaurus Rex and a cinematic adaptation of The Nail, because The Nail was really cool.
Basically a souped-up version of the 1975 classic Race with the Devil, The Nail had the following synopsis: “Small-time pro-wrestler Rex Hauser (a.k.a. The Nail) makes a living touring the small-town wrestling circuit with his family. Its business as usual for this close-knit bunch until they unwittingly cross paths with a murderous gang of Satanic bikers. But these aren’t your run-of-the-mill devil worshipers. In fact, Hauser and his family just might be up against the most un-Godly evil ever known to man.“
The comic was a fun read, and it would be a blast to see it brought to life on the screen.
BIGFOOT
Speaking of Rob Zombie / Steve Niles comic books that desperately need to be brought to the screen, the pair also made an awesome “cryptid run amok” comic book appropriately called Bigfoot in 2015. The synopsis is simple: “A monstrous ape-man is stomping around the woods of the Pacific Northwest, and he’s not happy with mankind.” If Bigfoot were ever brought to the screen, it would easily be one of the best Bigfoot movies we’ve ever gotten. The Bigfoot in this story is a terrifying beast that makes a bloody mess of the people who are unlucky enough to cross paths with it, and we’re dying to see this creature splatter blood and guts across the screen in a live-action movie.
THE BLOB
The week Halloween II was released in 2009, it was announced that Zombie would be writing and directing another remake, this one of the 1958 sci-fi horror classic The Blob, which already received an awesome remake in 1988 and was about a gelatinous creature falling from the sky and consuming everything it came in contact with, growing larger with every meal. Zombie immediately made it sound like he was the wrong choice for the job when he said his movie wouldn’t be about “a red blobby thing”, so not many people minded when he decided to walk away from the project… But years later, concept art from Zombie’s abandoned version of The Blob showed up online and made it look like he had been plotting something fascinating.
Just going by what’s shown in the artwork, it appears that an alien monolith would have shown up in a small town, and this mysterious object would become the centerpiece of an annual rock festival. After five years, some kind of energy starts emanating from the monolith that makes people melt down into hideous, disgusting “blob people”. Some of the imagery is a bit too much like Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse movie Planet Terror, but it still looks like Zombie’s take on The Blob would have been entertaining and delightfully strange. However, we are finally getting another remake of The Blob, which will be coming from the Hellraiser reboot director, David Bruckner.
BROAD STREET BULLIES
In 2012, we heard that Zombie would be branching out of the horror genre with Broad Street Bullies, which would tell the story of “the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team that evolved from a cellar-dwelling expansion team into a team that racked up victories and penalty minutes in equal measure during the 1970s.” Zombie initially said he had secured the rights to the team’s story, had the full support of the Flyers organization, and was ready to make a movie that was like “Rocky meets Boogie Nights on ice”. But Broad Street Bullies never made it into production, and Zombie would later say that it was a nightmare trying to get all the necessary rights together.
Aside from comedies like Goon, it seems to be very difficult to get a hockey movie into production, as Kevin Smith also ran into trouble when he tried to make his own hockey movie, called Hit Somebody. So we’re left wishing that we had both Hit Somebody and Broad Street Bullies to watch right now. It would have been very interesting to see Zombie make a hockey movie set in the 1970s.
MANSON MURDERS PROJECT
This wasn’t going to be a movie and the Manson Family story has gotten too much coverage over the decades, but Zombie has been fascinated by the story since he was a kid and when he started developing a limited series that would “revisit the people and events connected to the Manson Family murder spree in August 1969“, he had an intriguing collaborator: the script was going to be written by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis. Their aim was to “tell converging stories of people and events leading up to and after the murders, from shifting points of view.“
In general, it would be just fine if Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood turned out to be the end of Manson Family stories, but we are left quite curious to find out how Zombie and Ellis would have handled the material. The Manson Murders Project was set up at Fox in 2014, and was scrapped when NBC started airing their own Manson-related series Aquarius in 2015.
RAISED EYEBROWS
Zombie made it clear in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects that he had an appreciation for the Marx brothers, so when Broad Street Bullies started looking troublesome in 2015 it wasn’t too surprising that he shifted over to trying to make a film based on the memoir Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House by Steve Stoliar. This would have been “the bizarre story of the last years in the life of Groucho Marx, told by a young Marx Brothers fan who spent those years as his personal secretary and archivist. In addition to getting to know his hero, the author found himself in the orbit of Groucho’s brothers Zeppo and Gummo, Mae West, George Burns, Bob Hope, Jack Lemmon, S.J. Perelman, Steve Allen, and scores of other luminaries of stage, screen, TV and literature. The downside of this dream-come-true was getting close to his idol as the curtain was coming down, and dealing with Erin Fleming – the mercurial woman in charge of Groucho’s personal and professional life.“
For the first time, Zombie hired someone else – Oren Moverman – to write the screenplay for one of his films. He said he saw this story as “Groucho’s Sunset Boulevard“, “a sad, funny and very dark tale of a one of Hollywood’s greatest stars final years.” But once again, he found it too difficult to get a non-horror project into production. It’s a shame, because he chooses terrific material for his attempts to step out of the genre. If his version of The Munsters turns out to be a nice comedy like the sitcom source material, maybe it will open some non-horror doors for him.
Honorable Mention: C.H.U.D.
Some projects Zombie has been said to be involved with over the years were never actually happening. For example: there was a rumor that he was working on an animated adaptation of the comic book The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning. Not true, and we’ve already seen him do the homicidal family thing multiple times. In 2007, a rumor emerged online saying that Zombie would be following his remake of Halloween with a remake of the 1984 film C.H.U.D. It was just a joke… but not such a bad idea. There is something appealing about the thought of Zombie making a movie about creatures called Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, crawling out of the sewer to consume flesh.
Capcom’s new action-RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 is sparking a fascinating range of reactions from players, and we’ve got a few of our own. We’ve also got thoughts on why the new South Park game, Snow Day, is such a disappointment, more commentary on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s hotly contested ending, and more.
Capcom’s new action-RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 is sparking a fascinating range of reactions from players, and we’ve got a few of our own. We’ve also got thoughts on why the new South Park game, Snow Day, is such a disappointment, more commentary on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s hotly contested ending, and more.
It looks like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is roaring its way to a much better opening weekend than expected. The industry was predicting a $50 million opening (including us), but audiences are turning out in droves to this MonsterVerse epic. Deadline is reporting that the film is tracking towards a $75 million opening, with a good A- CinemaScore. It’s an interesting turnaround for a series that, before the pandemic, seemed to be totally running out of steam. Yet, when everything closed down, one of the few movies released theatrically was Godzilla Vs Kong, which also went day and date on HBO Max, and proved to be a big hit, grossing around $100 million domestically. While that sounds low, theatres were closed everywhere, so this was considered a big number (and overseas, it was a blockbuster).
Certainly, Adam Wingard’s movie won the series a whole lot of fans. This potential $75 million opening can’t be considered anything other than a triumph for a series that’s always made most of its money overseas.
However, the downside of Godzilla x Kong sucking up all the family audiences over Easter Weekend is the utter collapse of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire at the box office. Deadline is predicting a ghastly 68% drop, with it likely only to make about $14 million this weekend. This is a disaster for the franchise (read our rankings here). It’s not making all that much more than Kung Fu Panda 4 in its fourth weekend and Dune: Part Two in its fifth weekend, with both looking at grosses in the $10 million-ish range. In the end, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire may have a hard time even reaching $100 million domestically, which could well spell the end of this franchise on the big screen.
If you liked Godzilla x Kong, make sure to check out our MonsterVerse movie rankings right here!
This weekend sees the release of the fifth film in WB/Legendary’s MonsterVerse saga, Godzilla x Kong: The New Era. These films have attempted to somewhat reinvent the traditional Kaiju film for Western audiences, with our mighty monster heroes being called Titans. While the franchise arguably stumbled out of the gate with Gareth Edwards’ coolly received Godzilla, the saga has steadily grown in popularity, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is looking like a big hit. But how do the films stack up against each other? Let’s take a look with our MonsterVerse Movies Ranked List!
Godzilla:
Audiences were pretty hyped for Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla reboot, with awesome early trailers that used Ligeti’s Requiem II from 2001: A Space Odyssey, promising the most intense Kaiju movie to date. It didn’t really work out that way, with many complaining about how dull the film was, with Godzilla himself off-screen for endless patches of time. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who’s since proved himself a solid leading man, made for a bland hero, and the fact that two of the best actors in the film, Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche, were killed off early on, didn’t endear it to anyone.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters:
Luckily, the sequel (which was actually the third film in the franchise), which replaced Edwards with director Michael Dougherty (Trick or Treat), was more entertaining, with it packed with more monster action. However, it proved to be a costly box office disappointment, earning initially poor reviews because Legendary was trying to set up a complicated shared universe no one seemed all that interested in – yet. The box office results were disasterous, and had they not already started shooting the next film in the franchise, the MonsterVerse might have ended right here. Still, the movie is a bit underrated, with Kyle Chandler cast against type as our family man hero.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire:
The newest addition to the MonsterVerse saga is stripped down as far as its human characters go. Millie Bobby Brown’s Madison Russell was initially supposed to be the franchise’s anchor, but she sits out this entry. Instead, Rebecca Hall’s Dr. Ilene Andrews and her adopted daughter, Kaylee Hottle Jia, seem to be the new anchors, with Brian Tyree Henry also carrying over from the last film for comic relief. One thing this movie does is double down on the monsters, especially Kong, with many extended sequences focusing only on the Titans themselves rather than the humans. Meanwhile, Dan Stevens brings some welcome energy to the film as a cool new character named Trapper, who’s basically a veterinarian for Kaiju.
Godzilla vs Kong:
One of the smartest things Legendary and WB did for this instalment was bring in genre director Adam Wingard to take over the franchise. Reinventing the saga from the perspective of an action director, he made Kong our underdog hero protagonist and doubled down on the carnage. Audiences loved it, and this fun flick was a bright spot for all during the early dark days of the pandemic.
Kong: Skull Island:
As good as Adam Wingard’s additions to the franchise are, I have a soft spot for the Vietnam War-set prequel, Kong: Skull Island. For one thing, it has the best cast, even if the two heroes, played by Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston, are dull. There’s Samuel L. Jackson, Shea Wigham, John Goodman, and best of all, John C. Reilly, who delivers an acclaimed performance as a long-lost soldier from WW2 still fighting the war twenty-nine years later. Of all the movies in the franchise, this is the one with the most heart and style (from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts) and the one I judge all MonsterVerse movies against.
Do you agree with my rankings? Let us know how your list of MonsterVerse movies ranked would look in the comments!
This week’s gaming news was far-ranging in its nature and its implications. We got reports that Pedro Pascal has already wrapped up shooting on season two of HBO’s The Last of Us, heard rumblings that some publishers are unsure if supporting Xbox continues to make sense for them, and got our first look at Marvel Rivals…
This week’s gaming news was far-ranging in its nature and its implications. We got reports that Pedro Pascal has already wrapped up shooting on season two of HBO’s The Last of Us, heard rumblings that some publishers are unsure if supporting Xbox continues to make sense for them, and got our first look at Marvel Rivals…
