Was rewatching Thor The Dark World which was on TV last night. Despite its flaws it's still a much better movie than BvS or Justice League. Because all of these movies suffer from the common flaw of having terribly forgettable villains - and it's true, Malakai... Malakith... I've already forgotten his name. That Dark Elf dude... he is a pretty lame villain, but he's loads better than any of the villains churned out from DCCU! Heck, as much as I really enjoyed Wonder Woman, I gotta admit that Ares is still a pretty cardboard villain. He's nothing more than a walking/talking plot complication for the protagonist to overcome. Okay, every villain is basically a complication for the protagonist(s), but a good villain is more than that. And as Stan Lee has often said, a hero(ine) is only ever as good as his/her villain.

And while the characterisation of Thor wasn't as strong as in Thor Ragnarok or Avengers Infinity War - he still had more character growth than the entire Justice League put together, and that's pretty sad. Although I think one very valid criticism of Thor 2 is how Loki had more character development than Thor. Watching it again this was abundantly obvious.

Then I switched channels and watched the late night movie - 新ゴジラ (Godzilla Resurgence). Yyyyaaaaaaaaaaawwwwnnn OMG... most of the movie is just a series of meetings where people talk about how they're going to deal with Godzilla. Yeah, I get the political statement that the movie's making, but uh... seriously... not nearly enough to make the movie remotely entertaining. The actual scenes with Godzilla in it were really super well done. You can tell that it's the same director as Neon Genesis Evangelion as the way that Godzilla tears up Tokyo is reminiscent of an Angel attack, and it visually has that rather apocalyptic theme to its action. And that ending was pretty brilliant.

Being late at night I was literally falling asleep on the couch watching this. And the story/plot is almost identical to the original 50s movie, only with the use of online social media and the political commentary added in. Basically the same story as the original but updated for today -- nothing terribly new or fresh though aside from Godzilla's ability to rapidly mutate and reproduce. Oh, and the scenes involving foreign dignitaries... cos whenever foreigners appear in Japanese movies they're often really, really terrible actors. Sometimes I wonder if they just approach random White people on the streets of Japan and ask if they wouldn't mind making a cameo appearance in a film or TV series. But to Godzilla Resurgence's credit, the White people in this film actually did an okay job of acting. They didn't sound like they were performing in an excruciatingly bad school play. But the really terrible parts were when the Japanese actors were trying to act in English. Make it staaaahp!

To be fair, most actors really suck when acting in a language that they don't actually speak. And at least she's trying to string sentences together and is delivering them with attempted speed as if she's fluent. It's better than say Tom Cruise's horrific attempt at speaking Japanese in The Last Samurai where he would take forever just to speak a few words (but the subtitles would have you believe that he's saying much more!). Don't these people have dialogue coaches? Peter Jackson had dialogue coaches on the set of Lord of the Rings for the fictitious languages of Middle Earth! (although I wonder if - hypothetically speaking - native Middle Earth speakers existed, would they similarly shudder at the way that their languages were spoken in the films). I wonder if it would've been easier/better to have a fluent or native speaker just dub over these actors/actresses? Meanwhile, Vin Diesel dubbed himself as Groot in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and French!