"Monsters belong in B movies."
I guess I didn't know what to expect of this, it's reputation isn't great and the first thing everyone says about it is "it's sooooo long." (I guess you could say it's runtime precedes it.) But I really wasn't expecting this to be as goofy as it is. The tone of this certainly is a choice, maybe Peter Jackson thought it was one way of keeping a story that everyone knows from getting too stale…
"It's not a monster movie, it's a love story where monsters appear."
This is a very unique behind the scenes documentary because it's hyper focused on the special effects and very little time is spent on interviews or talking to the camera.
I appreciate that this has Anno's quick cutting style because it could have easily been much, much longer. Predictably my favorite stuff here was seeing the kaiju suit fabrication and all of the footage of filming on miniature sets.
"Who would have thought that weaponizing the youth and training them to kill could have turned out so ugly for so many of them?"
I genuinely believe that every not everything needs a gritty reboot, but this actually felt well thought out and well made and mostly worked for me.
The biggest issues here were hanging the whole thing on a surprise twist at the end, and the Skrillex-esque soundtrack. Also I know they probably didn't have the budget for kaiju/zord stuff but shouldn't there at least have been more martial arts?
"Are you really a Gamera?"
It seems like the whole point of this movie was this director saw Shusuke Kaneko's Gamera trilogy and was like, "BUT... wHaT aBOuT bEInG A fRiEnD oF cHiLdReN!??"
Which just feels unnecessary to me, but I guess this takes the Gamera series back to it's roots (or at least back to the mid-Showa era, because he wasn't always the "friend of children") and at least explains why he might be friendly to children? This is…
I don't think I fully "got it," but I really, really dug it.
How come other countries can do animated features for adults, and when America tries it we just get Sausage Party?
"I ate a baby there!"
Some things don't change much over time and that's exactly the way people like it. As far as tone and intent Invader Zim hasn't changed at all and fans are going to love that. The major change here is the art direction and design, and that's all greatly improved!
I'm not even a huge fan of this series and I was pretty into this: Some of the jokes are really great, there's some animation surprises throughout, and I never thought I'd say this but, I think I'd even watch another Invader Zim series if it continued from here!
