So I've Officially Forgiven The Orville for Not Being Galaxy Quest

As I've commented in previous posts, I don't have time to consume all of the content that might otherwise interest me. I'll catch podcasts in the car on my way to work, select first-run movies in theaters with family and friends, and various binge-worthy TV shows as my schedule allows. Since my wife will often defer watching these same shows until I'm available to enjoy them with her, what makes the cut can be a topic of intensive debate. Not surprisingly, I'm up to date on all of the MCU movies, the Star Wars franchise, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things and The Walking Dead. But beyond checking the boxes on those premiere geeky fandoms, I've had to skip much of--if the not the entirety of--shows like Gotham, Krypton, Cloak and Dagger, Runaways and more. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I find that some content I've not prioritized turns out to be better than I expected.

I recall having heard--now several years ago--that an adaptation of the fan-favorite comedic space opera Galaxy Quest might be coming to broadcast television. When I subsequently learned that Seth MacFarlane was developing a Star Trek parody for Fox, I supposed it was the same project. Once I learned that the show was going to be called The Orville, I held out hope that the series was being set in the same fictional universe despite the titular starship not being named the NSEA Protector. It wasn't until a few weeks before the air date of the premiere in 2017--upon my reading of some vague plot summaries--that those hopes were definitively dashed. And while I did watch the premiere, I will admit that I did so with a Borg-cube-sized chip on my shoulder.

Even at that first watching, I was grudgingly impressed--though a bit confused by what the show was trying to be. It clearly wasn't Galaxy Quest--arguably not in the same league (or federation or union) as the 1999 cult classic starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman. That movie had been a very clever action comedy that satirized Star Trek while leveraging a smart premise, decent pacing and effects, and charming performances. The core idea was that aliens could see a science fiction show broadcast from Earth and not realize it was fiction. In the movie, this would result in a group of actors finding themselves thrust into a real galactic conflict with life and death consequences. And while the movie was self-contained with a satisfying conclusion, I could picture an accomplished creative team--perhaps the minds behind HBO's Barry--finding much more to explore and unpack about this premise in a longer serialized format like TV. (I'd see it being more of a reboot than a continuation--a slower developing story that could dig into the foibles of the actors and their hosts.)

Aside from also being a parody of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, The Orville doesn't really share any conceptual details with Galaxy Quest. Because whereas Galaxy Quest was largely satirizing and fictionalizing the cultural phenomenon of Star Trek--the relationships among the actors and between the actors and their fans, The Orville parodies the internal premises of the show--its democratic federation of planets plagued by the repeated hostile incursions of neighboring space empires. The former is well primed for comedy; the latter--in my mind, at least--not so much. A group of actors acting neurotically while struggling through a colossal case of mistaken identity doesn't require a lot of defense, and I feel that Allen in particular does a good job of selling it. It requires much more suspension of disbelief to picture an advanced society of scientists and explorers bumbling their way in and out of peril. Nevertheless, I think Seth MacFarlane and his cast-mates manage to pull it off more often than not.


WHAT THE ORVILLE ISN'T

The Orville is an unusual adventure narrative. I wouldn't call it a comedy and I wouldn't call it a drama. Even trying to categorize it as a "dramedy"--the term I'd use for shows like M.A.S.H. or Sports Night--is a tough fit since those shows toggled deftly between light and heavy notes, usually leaning into the latter in the waning moments of an episode. The Orville doesn't have that kind of pacing or wit, nor does it really appear to have such aspirations; the creative team seems unabashed about switching gears very quickly, before a joke or emotional note can really take hold, while also sometimes lingering on either drama or comedy for what can be uncomfortable lengths of time. (This makes some of the weaker episodes feel longer than an hour.)

And you can't really make any fair apples-to-apples comparisons between Seth MacFarlane's Captain Ed Mercer and Tim Allen's Jason Nesmith (i.e., TV's Commander Peter Quincy Taggart) or any of the Star Trek captains (Kirk, Picard, Janeway, etc.). While I absolutely love some of the more dramatic moments in Allen's performance in the last 20 minutes of Galaxy Quest--including perhaps one of my favorite space combat gambits inclusive of the Star Trek movies--it's just 20 minutes of film. MacFarlane is navigating the ups and downs of now dozens of hour-long episodes--too much humor for comparison to Star Trek and too much drama for comparison to Galaxy Quest.


WHAT THE ORVILLE IS

What The Orville is, most of all, is an eminently watchable, unvarnished love letter to Star Trek The Next Generation (TNG). Seth MacFarlane and I are about the same age, and I know that I likewise loved the show growing up--being too young to have seen the original Star Trek series save for in syndicated re-runs. This was "our" Star Trek. And that feeling is quite evident throughout The Orville.

MacFarlane's show is an extremely sincere homage from a creator known for snark rather than sincerity. The cold open at the beginning of most episodes feels like it could slip seamlessly into the rotation of any season of TNG. The montage shown under the opening credits, the music, the videography--they literally all feel like they came from a Paramount backlot garage sale. I just finished the Season 2 two-parter called "Identity" and it felt like it was a tribute to TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds." And I like how the sincerity extends to MacFarlane's performances as well as those of Adrianne Palicki, Penny Johnson Jerald and others.


MY (OVERALL) TAKE

I won't lie and tell you that every joke yields a smile or that every intense moment elicits the level of emotional investment that the creative team is targeting. But when The Orville is at its best, it makes me remember exactly what I loved about Star Trek and the crew of the Enterprise. And that is a favor I'll gladly return with continued viewing.

Why I (Probably) Don’t Want to See John Krasinski as Reed Richards

Sometimes two great tastes don’t taste great together.

I’m a big fan of The Office and a decades-long devotee of comics, so you’d think I’d be ecstatic about the possibility of John Krasinski playing Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards. But I’m concerned that the actor’s charm and affability will lead filmmakers to recast the character as an everyman—and if there is anything that Mr. Fantastic is not, it’s an everyman. More than that, I’m also worried that one of the most important stories that Marvel Studios can tell using the Fantastic Four will end up on the cutting room floor since it doesn’t align with that interpretation of the character.

Interpreting the “First Family” of Comics

Long subtitled “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine,” the Fantastic Four has largely lived up to that hype through its many incarnations over the last 50+ years. The prototypical Silver Age comic, it was at the vanguard of Stan Lee’s redefinition of superhero stories in the early 1960s. And while there has been an understandable ebb and flow in its quality in the intervening years, the book has nevertheless delivered many of Marvel’s most iconic plots and character introductions—Doctor Doom, the Black Panther, the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, Adam Warlock and many more.

In my mind, there are really three great eras of importance when you consider the history of the FF: the Lee-Kirby days, and later stints by John Byrne (in the 1980s) and Jonathan Hickman (with artists Alan Davis and Steve Epting in the early 2000s). The Lee-Kirby era is easy enough to defend for its significance—not just in terms of Lee’s establishment of the characters and their family dynamic but also because of how it revolutionized visual storytelling. Much of the work that gained Kirby the moniker of “King Kirby”—with his splash pages full of “Kirby crackle” and sound effects embedded directly into his graphics—was published during this period. The Byrne and Epting runs would subsequently build on this foundation by evolving the relationships among the members of the family fantastic and between the team and its extensive rogues gallery—with Byrne focusing largely on Reed and Sue’s marriage and Hickman focusing on the relationship between the Richardses and their children.

And when I say the relationships “evolved,” I do mean that they progressed—as the interactions between the characters in the comic’s early days do come across as extremely dated. You have to remember that Lee’s original comics were comparatively progressive—but only in comparison to the social norms of 1960s America.  The portrayal of Reed and Sue’s relationship over the years is full of cringe-worthy moments of the patronizingly named “Invisible Girl” being taken hostage by the villain of the month, gaping in horror as her teammates fought off hordes of monsters or henchmen, or being coaxed into action by the barked orders of her husband. And while the team’s patriarchal bent slowly became more implied than explicit, Byrne accelerated what had been a gradual change by drawing Susan Richards out of her husband’s shadow—showcasing her powers and her leadership abilities while also changing her codename to the more palatable “Invisible Woman.” What emerged was a more modern family dynamic with two invested spouses acting as partners and joint decision-makers. And it’s out of this period that I feel the best version of Mr. Fantastic also emerges—the version that needs to be memorialized in the MCU.

You see, making Sue a more three-dimensional character required a change in Reed’s personality as well. A more assertive Sue was increasingly framed by Byrne and later writers as the yin to his yang, the worldly practical influence serving to ground a single-minded technocrat who might otherwise forget to shave or eat or shower for days while in the throes of scientific discovery. It’s this ethereal—almost haunted—version of Reed Richards whose struggles with marriage and fatherhood I want to see adapted on the big screen. And I just don’t know if that’s a job for John Krasinski.

Not Just Another Day at “The Office”

As I’ve already said, I’m a big Krasinski fan. My family and I binge seasons of The Office often—perhaps too often, as we’re able to quote a lot of the dialogue from memory. But while we’ve enjoyed the actor’s turn as Jim Halpert, my concerns about him playing Reed Richards don’t stem from any doubts about his ability to toggle between comedy and drama. Anyone who harbors such misgivings clearly hasn’t seen A Quiet Place.  (If you haven’t, you really need to do that right now. I mean, finish this article first—but then watch it immediately thereafter.) No, I’m sure he can be serious and intense—as shown in this film as well as his work in 13 Hours and the ongoing Jack Ryan series on Amazon Prime. So it’s not his acting abilities that give me pause.

Instead, I worry that fan expectations will likely push any John Krasinski-attached project to initiate Reed Richards’s story at the end rather than the beginning. One of the most notable aspects of the actor’s performance in A Quiet Place is how heartbreakingly relatable it is. He and wife Emily Blunt have as much as said that they viewed the project as a love letter to their own children—a dramatic portrayal of the lengths they’d undertake to protect their own family. With remarkably little dialogue, both actors make you feel the weight of their devotion. And where Mr. Fantastic is concerned, that sort of emotional connection needs to be the result of a long build-up—the result of hard-fought character growth rather than a starting point.

As I’ve mentioned above, the memorable Jonathan Hickman run on Fantastic Four at the beginning of the 2000s reshaped a lot of relationships within the team. In some ways, he deconstructed it—not as violently as Brian Bendis’s deconstruction of the Avengers in his “Avengers Disassembled” story arc, but every bit as impactful. Just as Byrne had evolved the characters that Lee had created, Hickman continued that evolution in a multi-layered sequence of overlapping arcs that included the death of a teammate and family member and the resulting reinvention of the team as something completely new. And while all of the characters got their moment to shine, it’s on the writer’s treatment of Reed Richards as husband and father that the story largely hinges.

By the beginning of the Hickman, Sue and Reed have two offspring—the soft-spoken but enormously powerful Franklin and the brash genius and sometimes precog Valeria. Franklin had been a fixture in the comics since the 1970s whereas Valeria wouldn’t join the family until the 1990s. But in typical comic book fashion, both characters are school-age when Hickman starts to weave his story. Being that these aren’t typical children, their education poses an unusual challenge—one that Reed ultimately addresses by turning the soon-disbanded Fantastic Four into a different FF, the Future Foundation, a school where he can interact with his children as a lecturer.

“What price a man’s mistakes?” asks the title of one story. As I said at the top of the article, Reed Richards isn’t an everyman and his mistakes therefore aren’t an everyman’s mistakes. He bargains with space gods, wields the power cosmic, and faces down infinite versions of himself and his greatest foes. But his familial relationships tether him to the mundane, to the questions we all must face—including what type of parent and spouse we want to be. Hickman essentially asks him (and us), whether the best path is to seek to make the world a better place for our children or to make the world a better place through our children.

The Struggle is Real Even When It’s Fictional

Though the struggle of balancing work and family seems to be most often portrayed as a mother’s burden, the reality is that it’s equally true for fathers. In real families, love and duty are often at odds—as the people we need to provide for, whose safety and well being we fight to secure, are the same people most impacted by the physical or emotional absence required by our responsibilities.

In the case of the Richardses, there is a clear tension in this regard—as Reed’s abilities as a renowned polymath leave him feeling an oversized responsibility to the world at large even as he endeavors to maintain relationships with those closest to him. And it’s often a conundrum he’s not emotionally or intellectually equipped to resolve—a social challenge that is paradoxically both outside of our everyday experience yet nonetheless humanizing. To paraphrase a line often uttered by his close friend and teammate Ben Grimm (a.k.a. The Thing), “he’s the dumbest smart guy I know.”

It’s this baseline social awkwardness permeating all of his relationships—this fugue-like, almost child-like, state of continuous wonderment—that defines Reed Richards and sets him apart from the bubbly Shuri or the cocksure Tony Stark in the pantheon of Marvel’s transcendent geniuses. He’s every movie scientist who ducks under the yellow caution tape to grab a sample or more closely view the accident scene. He’s Spock from Star Trek The Motion Picture attempting to make solo contact with V’Ger. And I think it remains to be seen if that’s in John Krasinski’s wheelhouse. I fear that Krasinski’s Mr. Fantastic would reprise his role as Lee Abbott from A Quiet Place when the Reed Richards we really need from the MCU, at least to start, would combine equal parts of Dr. John Robinson from Lost in Space (movie version) and Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead—perhaps with a dash of Mr. Banks from Mary Poppins thrown in for good measure.

While he’d be arguably the smartest guy in the Marvel cinematic universe, I need this character to be capable of learning and growing. In many ways, John Krasinski is the guy Reed Richards should aspire to be when he grows up. Let’s hope that—in the wake of this seemingly inevitable casting choice—he doesn’t do so off screen.

When "X" Doesn't Mark the Spot: A Spoiler-Free Look at the Challenges of Presenting X-Men Stories Outside of an Integrated MCU

I come not to praise the Fox X-Men movie franchise but to bury it.

I wouldn’t define myself as a hater, though I would have to admit that I’ve had a problematic relationship with the series since its inception. I’ve loved numerous moments and individual performances even as my enjoyment of the movies on the whole has waxed and waned. But I also have to acknowledge that the Fox Marvel movies—including the recently premiered Dark Phoenix—have labored under limitations that have prevented them from being everything they could have been. And so their most unforgivable sin—of not being the MCU—is nothing they could ever hope to rectify or overcome.

You’d think that the longer-tenure of the Fox Marvel universe would be an asset, however that’s not usually how things work where innovation is concerned. So while Fox may have been free to make hay (and money) for roughly a decade before the advent of Marvel Studios, the introduction of Iron Man changed the game dramatically in a way that they couldn’t counter.

It’s ultimately not about budget or effects. In the former category, the X-Men franchise did quite well and that gave its creative team plenty of money to spend—a fact reflected by what was often a stellar cast including literally dozens of critically acclaimed actors. And while the effects in the original X-Men trilogy don’t stand up to MCU movies, that’s understandable and inevitable given the rapid improvements in CGI over that same time period; on that count, you can only really compare the effects of the First Class-era movies to contemporary Marvel Studios films.

No, in the end, the Fox Marvel universe stopped being relevant as soon as the MCU showed what an integrated comics-inspired movie universe could look like. Because from that instant going forward, everyone inside and outside of that creative team had to know that the handwriting was on the wall. Don’t get me wrong—Fox still had access to a ton of mutants as well as many characters attached to the beleaguered Fantastic Four franchise. But what they didn’t have was the luxury of time—because now they were in an arms race they couldn’t possibly win. Fox may have held licenses to some of Marvel’s most prominent characters, but Marvel Studios had the comics company’s entire back catalog—as well as the will to gamble on lesser-known properties, something they could do given that they were essentially playing with house money.

For my part, I’d rank Logan as my favorite movie in the now-completed series, followed by Days of Future Past. Other people might mix in the original film, X2: X-Men United, or even X-Men: First Class in there, and I’d not blame them for doing so. (And Deadpool is just a phenomenon in his own right.)

So what do the three movies that most people put at the bottom—Last Stand, Apocalypse, and the horribly panned Dark Phoenix—have in common? They’re the stories with the most undelivered upside to them—the stories that suffered the most from the external size restrictions that circumstances placed on the X-Men’s cinematic universe. They were corn stalks growing in tea cups.

I should note here that Dark Phoenix was actually much better than the reviews I’d read would have suggested; its 22% freshness score on Rotten Tomatoes—the lowest of any X-Men movie—is simply rubbish, one of the reasons why I think it behooves us all to think for ourselves and not take the opinions of others at face value. However, I do share one of the core concerns of many reviewers—pacing and scale.

The rise and fall of En-Sabah-Nur (a.k.a. Apocalypse) and the entirety of the Phoenix Saga should each warrant trilogies of their own—or at least could have been multi-movie arcs stretched over a longer and more multi-faceted series. A character with the potential to be the Fox franchise’s Thanos, Apocalypse was introduced and dispatched from the X-Men universe in just over two hours of film—less than that, if we exclusively consider his screen time. And while Sophie Turner had marginally more time to develop Jean Grey over two movies, it was wholly insufficient to elicit the emotional attachment that her story of corruption and redemption requires of viewers. What largely makes the Dark Phoenix arc so poignant in the comics is that it comes on the heels of her saving the universe from the mad Shi’ar emperor D’Ken—an epic that takes the team from the Earth to the stars and back again. And while Last Stand completely (and unceremoniously) pushes aside the classic romance of Marvel Girl and Cyclops to focus on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, Dark Phoenix doesn’t really offer much to the (literally) star-crossed lovers either—offering them far too little visibility to warrant investment in their relationship.

The shame of it is that these stories—which we likely won’t see adapted again for a generation—are ripe for a MCU-type treatment. In many ways, Apocalypse and the Phoenix are both the Thanos-level threat that the X-Men universe deserved; he could/should have been the menace they’d spend years preparing for whereas she’d end up being the real omega-level threat that they never expected.

Ironically, with more time and a little more latitude, the Fox Marvel universe could have rivaled Disney’s MCU in terms of its scope and complexity. Disney has the Kree and Fox could have leveraged the Shi’ar. Disney has its Captain Marvel whereas Fox had the Silver Surfer. Disney has the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Fox could have leveraged the Starjammers—a band of misfit alien freedom fighters and wannabe space pirates led by a human captain who had been kidnapped from his homeworld. (Sound familiar?) Imagine if, instead of a Guardians movie introducing us to the existence of the Infinity Gems, we’d been treated to a Starjammers movie introducing the Shi’ar race and their connection to the Phoenix Force? It’s also notable that the Shi’ar Imperial Guard—one of the most powerful teams in the Marvel Comics library—would have made a great foil for the Starjammers before eventually confronting what would be a hopelessly overmatched X-Men team in the climax of the saga. (Think Thanos’s Black Order only with some more internal politics and moral ambiguity.) So the pieces were always there to create an expansive and interconnected movie franchise using the properties they had licensed.

You can argue that the market couldn’t have handled an expansion in the Fox offering—superhero fare already having saturated cinema in the last 10 years—and that would be a reasonable assertion. If so, then that just confirms that the die was cast the moment that Marvel Studios released its first feature—the first shot in a war that Fox couldn’t win. Because many of the stories that fans would want to see adapted from Fox’s portfolio can only be done justice through a slow build-up—time that the franchise was never going to have.

Prior missed opportunities notwithstanding, I think the best way that the franchise could have ended would have been in making the Phoenix Saga a two-part movie—ideally with a cliffhanger. I can think of one particular scene that could have served as a gut punch for audiences if placed at the end of a Part 1—evoking a similar emotional response to the ending of Infinity War. And while I did actually very much enjoy some of the significant deviations from the source material in the comics, I could picture the expanded run time accommodating the introduction of one or more of the absent plot threads mentioned above. But given that I’ve heard it rumored that late reshoots actually reduced the scope of the movie’s final set piece—to avoid potential conflicts with another Disney property—the chances of Fox’s merry mutants getting that kind of send-off were likely slim to none.

Would I suggest you go see Dark Phoenix? If you’ve enjoyed the First Class-era movies and if you’re a completionist, then you’ll likely want to see this one. In particular, I liked several of the scenes in the final moments of the picture that help to bookend the full series going back to 2000—so worthy of a watch from that perspective. But if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool comics fan who won’t be satisfied by anything other than an ideal treatment of this classic story, then you’re going to walk away disappointed—as you’ve presumably been disappointed by several other installments in the franchise. And given that the potential to fall short of expectations—the distance of the fall—is greatest for this most iconic of X-Men stories (and perhaps all Marvel Comics stories), your disappointment might likewise be greater here.

However you’ve viewed Fox’s stewardship of these characters, I think this final film in the core series is an earnest attempt to bring this MCU-adjacent pocket universe to a close. And whatever rises from its ashes, we can only hope it’s delivered without some of the handicaps that sometimes kept the original run from meeting or exceeding fan expectations. It’s hard to say how long that process will take, but you can be sure that the X-Men’s own phoenix-like return will be as anxiously anticipated as it is inevitable.

Saturdays on the Couch with Godzilla: Memories of My Long-Running Friendship with the King of Monsters

I’ve known Gojira for so long that I can’t even tell you exactly when we met. Growing up in megalopolis in a small community nestled almost equidistant from both Philadelphia and New York, I was fortunate to have a veritable cornucopia of entertainment available to my small, dial-tuning hands even in a day when TV revolved around broadcast networks. The major cities had numerous independent stations continuously churning through syndicated content that had either been spurned by or long since left the major networks.

I think I probably first encountered kaiju through kids’ shows like Battle of the Planets, Ultraman, and Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot—all of which I remember faintly but fondly. (Is it my imagination, or did the flying robot essentially invent the dab? Check out his activation routine on YouTube. It looks suspiciously familiar.) This presumably put me on a trajectory to graduate to the feature-length kaiju movies aired on those same independent stations on Saturday afternoons—counter-programming to the sporting events shown on other channels.

Even at that time, you see, there was an implied self-segregation where Gojira/Godzilla and the other Toho Studios monsters were concerned. At least in the United States—where the popularity of these films wasn’t bolstered by national pride or viewed through a post-WWII Japanese cultural lens—watching kaiju movies was seen as a deeply nerdy/geeky pastime. Don’t get me wrong; a lot of kids my age fell into that category—as was evidenced by an influx of kaiju-themed shows (both live-action and animated) and toys. But there was an implied if generally unspoken consensus—one depicted fairly accurately in Netflix’s Stranger Things—that some things fell into the sphere of cool kids and jocks and some things belonged to the nerds. Godzilla, while a name recognizable in any household at that time, still definitely fell into the latter category.

So acknowledging that fact, I find myself somewhat bemused by assertions that the King of Monsters may be facing extinction based on the performance of his recent Legendary Pictures movie series. Simply put, Godzilla isn’t an acquired taste. Enjoying kaiju movies is an immediate visceral reaction to a science fiction fantasy that puts heavy emphasis on fantasy. It’s a fantastic, fun niche—but it’s still a niche.

To some extent, I fear that the Monsterverse and other science fiction and fantasy franchises will continue to suffer from expectations generated by the “Marvel Effect”—a belief that good writing, direction and storytelling can elevate almost any such property to a state of universal appeal. But Marvel Studios has a vast library of stories and characters to choose from ranging from the gritty to the absurd. So while there’s material in the Marvel Comics archives to inspire moments like the epic hallway fight scene in season one of Daredevil or the cat-and-mouse psychological turns of Legion, a Godzilla movie can’t take itself too seriously. Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy was recently quoted as saying that her franchise isn’t Marvel—that the movies and TV shows need to follow their own path that doesn’t try to follow the Marvel Studios formula for success. That’s even more applicable where the world of kaiju is concerned.

Every science fiction and fantasy world demands a willing suspension of disbelief—but some demand much more than others. “Hard” science fiction asks the viewer or reader to swallow one premise—one significant difference from life in the real world—and then (hopefully) weaves a believable tale stemming from how all the dominos would fall from there. Many more science fiction stories seek to create an immersive world that blends in fantasy to varying degrees—space operas, superhero tales, etc.—asking us to hold our questions a little longer. And then way (way, way) out at the fringe—waving awkwardly at us like a parental chaperone at the prom--you have kaiju movies.

Seeing Godzilla, King of The Monsters within the last week reminded me a lot of the first time I ever saw a kaiju movie in a theater. It was Godzilla Versus Megalon and I probably would have been around 10—as my mother was willing to let me watch the movie by myself. She was waiting at a small food court several stores further down the mall. The movie was already old at that point—having been released in Japan in the 70s—but it was showing as a Saturday matinee in a movie theater that has since been closed for decades.  The place wasn’t packed, but it was busy; I suspect there were a lot of other moms sitting on wrought-iron café chairs in the mall. This wasn’t their kind of movie, after all.

Inside the theater, we few—we happy few—were treated to what was for us the latest movie in a beloved franchise. I remember the air being full of cheers and groans. The now-infamous scene where Godzilla takes a gravity-defying running jump at his insectoid opponent probably got a mix of both, however no one felt gipped and no popcorn was spilt or thrown. Because we were the initiated. We knew what we’d signed up for. Godzilla may have been from the other side of the world, but we extended him a hometown discount on our incredulity just the same.

Without offering any spoilers, I can say that the crowd that watched King of Monsters with my family—at a 4PM showing no less—had a similar if quieter and more reverent vibe. Dads and their kids, grandfathers and their grandkids, high schoolers and college students—they sat there and got what they expected. Some of the action did even raise a few whoops and there was some light pre-credits applause preceding the now-common wait for a post-credit scene. When we reached the car, my wife shared that this was probably her favorite kaiju movie—perhaps rivaled by the previous offering in the series, Kong: Skull Island. It wasn’t until later that we learned of the modest domestic box office results ($48 million opening weekend vs. an estimated $200 million budget) and poor critical reviews (40% freshness score on “Rotten Tomatoes” in the days just following its premiere).

For my part, I’m not sure where to rank this one because I’ve seen so many and there’s a lot of understandable tonal discontinuity across the various imaginings of the characters. The original 1954 Godzilla movie was solidly and unforgivingly a horror movie—an obvious classic, even contemporarily. But I suspect that’s not the first one I saw. I believe I may have seen either Godzilla Versus The Thing (also called Godzilla Versus Mothra) or Godzilla Versus Monster Zero—two of my favorites—before seeing the heavier origin picture. And where you jumped on to the Gojira bandwagon likely has a lot to do with how you view the series on the whole. More often than not, I tend to think of Godzilla as the “good guy”—as that’s how he was presented through most of the original Showa series (through 1975) as well as, to a lesser extent, in the later Heisei (1984 to 1995) and Millennium (1999 to 2004) reboots. And the fact that, through much of his history, Godzilla has moved back and forth along a continuum from destroyer to protector says a lot about how the character and franchise need to be understood.

Not long ago, I remember my older child asking me—in a question containing a thinly disguised rebuke—why I would choose to spend 90 minutes watching men in rubber lizard suits stepping on scale model buildings. My answer at the time was that I was inspired by nostalgia, and that was at least partially true. To this day, even the mention of Toho’s most name-dropped of all monsters makes me smile. When I think of flying saucers, I can’t help but hear inside my head the tinny whirring sound made by the armada from Planet X and the loud buzzing created by its ships’ disintegrator beams. One time early in my marriage, when my wife and I were house shopping, I recall seeing the names Godzilla and Mothra scrawled in the basement cement in one property and suddenly feeling at home; while we ultimately passed on the house, I can’t deny how I was carried back to my own childhood or how easily I was able to picture my own kids thriving there.

But nostalgia only explains why I like watching vintage kaiju cinema—not why I continue to support the genre today. It’s a totally different ball game now, after all. Suit actors, as they were called, have been replaced by state-of-the-art CGI, as have the meticulously created scale model landscapes they so famously trampled. It should surely follow then that these newer films are demonstrably and irrefutably better, right? Well, yes and no.

Have you ever watched kids act out a giant monster movie? Whereas it is popularly supposed that we enjoy horror movies because they allow us to experience our fears in a controlled environment—zombies, for example, representing the existential horror of soulless consumerism or the depersonalization of society—kaiju movies flip that script. Kids don’t play the bystanders running for cover. They don’t assume the role of the helpless citizenry. They become—and I believe to some extent we all become—the monsters in a moment of transparent catharsis.

Godzilla has always been an irresistible force—whether standing in for the nuclear devastation Japan suffered at the end of World War II or for the power of nature in general. But unlike the monster in J. J. Abrams’s Cloverfield, he couples that force with a distinctive and often human personality. With the exception of his origin story and its subsequent retellings, he’s a relatable character even when he’s the antagonist—like the “heel” in a wrestling match. And that’s how you need to view this franchise—not as The Avengers but rather as Wrestlemania.

It’s not my place to say how much Legendary Pictures chooses to invest in its films. No one needs to drag the rubber suits out of mothballs, as I suspect that there are opportunities to size the budget of future kaiju movies to match the scale of their niche even as the studio tries to grow it incrementally. But either way, I think it would be unwise for them to judge their giant monsters with the same measuring stick used for other science fiction and fantasy characters—as someone is inevitably and understandably going to feel short-changed.