Friday, March 21, 2014

Monsters Blu-Ray Special Edition Review

Since Godzilla 2014 is less than 2 months away, I decided to go back and revisit Director
Gareth Edwards first major feature. Actually his only feature that got him the job for Gojira.
I will break this down first by the movie itself with a time stamp so you can fast forward to 
the highlights since this is mainly a love story with a "Creatures from another Planet" wrapped
around it. The main complaint from many who saw this. But considering the Low Budget,
that was the angle of the story just to get this movie made.
Then I will break down the special features included on this disc. All 6 and a half hours of it!

For those who heard there is very little of the creature feature and action here is the breakdown:
Warning Spoilers: I'm posting this as many never wanted to see this in it's entirely. 
1. 0 to 3 minutes: Credits and opening sequence. This has to be seen as this is actually the ending
of the movie. It plays like found footage (which I hate) but it stops there and becomes a story.
Trust me, once you watch the whole movie you will be going back to make sense of it all.
2. 46:14 - 49:00: Their boat is going down a river and you see tentacles grabbing a jet fighter 
that was shot down that is floating there.
3. 59:00 - 1:07: Jeeps are going down the road only to have the creatures cross it. One of them
grabs a jeep then you what happened the next morning. Very Jurassaic Park influenced.
4. 1:23 - 1:30: The ending where you see the creatures in full blown CG.
*Visual Effects - Out of all features this is the one to see if you don't want to check out all the other features. You can see how he used a toy jet fighter in a bathtub to good use.

Monsters: 3 - Considering what no budget Gareth Edwards had to work with, you wonder 
how he got this made to begin with. But with he's technical background and doing the CG effects himself they needed a director who could make Godzilla with a decent budget, a lesson learned when Jan Le Bont (Speed) wanted almost $200M to make his version. Then Emmerich and Devlin told the studio they cold make it cheaper. What they got was a generic script which was a remake of Beast From 20,000 Fathoms which was the influenced for the original Godzilla to begin with. With all the interviews he has done for the new GZ 2014 we hope it's in good hands. Now the features.
Note: He got a Bafta Award (British Oscars) as pro

Commentary: Basically Edwards and he's 2 stars talking about how hard the shoot was, the different locations including Mexico, Costa Rica and others. Edwards also mentions the CG done in places. Mainly adding Helicopters, signs, wreckage and other parts to complete the picture.

1:09 minutes: Making of: Full blown documentary which was done by a second unit. If you only fast forward
to the parts mentioned above then see this, you will go back and see the film in its fullest to see
Edwards vision come to life. With no budget!

Interviews:
45 Minutes: Director Edwards talks about his background, film school backgroung, his love for monsters films and the idea for this. Also compares big budget filmmaking to small independent style. Good for those who wantto know how to approach your material for a creature feature. It also shows how down to earth and easy going he his. Likeable fellow. LOL.

28 Minutes: Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able talk about the shoot. They met on this film and got married after this. Scoot went to make Argo and 12 Years a Slave (don't remember him tho) and Whitney has done a lot of TV but best known for "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" a film that was sitting on the shelf since 2006!

Edting: 20 Minutes: How they cut a 2 hour plus down to 90 minutes. Shows the equipment, the laptop and software used to make this. A lot of this was done on location in hotel rooms. 

*Visual Effects: 35 Minutes: Done with Photoshop show he film the toy in the bathtub scene.
This shows is understanding of applying Special Effects. This will give you relief that Godzilla is in good hands on Edwards bringing Godzilla to life.

Deleted Scenes and Edwards at Comic Con rounds out the features. Which is more than enough!

*Wrapup to be added tomorrow.

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