Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’m out and about with my mother and sisters, going on our first family trip since well before the COVID lockdown. It’s refreshing to be out of my cozy den for once, though with my Playstation back at the apartment, I am now grappling with the agonizing question of whether I pick up Blue Prince on Steam just so I can keep shuffling through manor layouts. The game’s just too damn addictive! I’ve basically broken the economy through exploitation of experiments, I’m just one fortunate run away from defeating the chess puzzle, and my housemate is surely getting further ahead of me with every misspent hour. Still, I’m at least getting some solid reading done (just finished Michael Dylan Foster’s informative yokai index, and am now starting on Titus Groan), and my movie review buffer means there will be no disruptions in service regarding our weekly breakdowns. So let’s get right on that then, and charge through some fresh films!
First up this week was the recent My Hero Academia movie, My Hero Academia: You’re Next. Deku and the gang face off against an All Might doppelganger who dubs himself Dark Might, there’s a couple anime-original characters to give the story some sort of human core, Deku’s classmates all get their requisite panning cut of action… it’s basically exactly what you’d expect from a My Hero Academia movie, with the unfortunate caveat that Yutaka Nakamura’s show-stopping blockbuster cut is pretty much entirely undecipherable as physical movement, leaning into his “figures at warp speed look like they’re melting in slow motion” conceit so fully that he actually doesn’t convey a sense of speed or consequence.
That aside, I was mostly struck by how little I was invested in anything happening here. I read and largely enjoyed My Hero Academia for quite a few chapters, and ultimately just sort of fell off it after the thematically fatal Destro arc, but watching this film served as a frustrating reminder of how dedicated this story was to not really saying anything. Beyond the “heroism is the act of inspiring others” theme of its early parts, the story has basically no interest in interrogating its world or characters, leaning on tired redemption beats that were unconvincing back when Naruto was employing them. I don’t expect all shonen authors to be as curious about their worlds as Togashi or Oda, but given My Hero Academia’s direct engagement with how pop culture influences society and the fraying social net, it’s a little disappointing it had no higher ambitions than “Deku punch hard.”
Next up in the Godzilla canon was Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, which essentially serves as the first Avengers-style teamup of the franchise. When humanity is threatened by a terrible three-headed dragon from space, they must turn again to their reluctant savior Mothra, begging the fairies to send her into battle. However, Mothra informs them that victory could only be achieved one way: if she, Godzilla, and Rodan teamed up, that their collective power might overcome the celestial dragon. But Godzilla and Rodan, working together!? Nah man, ever since that thing in college they refuse to even speak to each other. Not happening.
So yeah, we’ve got Mothra getting the band back together to face off with Ghidorah, all while the film busies itself with a subplot regarding a princess who escapes assassination when she’s mind-controlled by a Venusian psychic, and who later goes on to predict the various emergences of different beasts while dodging further assassins. All this semi-sensical human drama mostly serves to furnish the film with a ground-floor action parallel to the kaiju battles; with the kaijus now quarreling amongst themselves, I can absolutely see the wisdom in giving the humans something else to worry about.
And yes, there are kaiju battles aplenty, and very much in the larger-than-life pro wrestling model of King Kong vs Godzilla. Gone is the implacable Godzilla who could not be understood, only destroyed – this film’s Godzilla has pride and humor and even jealousy, engaging in what amounts to a schoolroom squabble with Rodan before Mothra convinces them to cut that shit out. He’s our lizard now, and this film embraces the humanization of its biggest star with great enthusiasm, cooking up all manner of combo attacks and victory dances for Godzilla, Rodan, and Big Mama Mothra. Much like long-time slasher franchises, if you hang out with a monster for a certain number of films, you can’t really help but grow fond of them.
Godzilla’s rampages swiftly continued with Invasion of Astro-Monster. The film begins with the discovery of the mysterious “Planet X” hidden just behind Jupiter, which is investigated by our two intrepid astronauts Fuji and Glen. There, they swiftly encounter a race of humanoid aliens, who request humanity’s assistance in defeating the returning King Ghidorah. However, after humanity helpfully loans these aliens Godzilla and Rodan to help in their battle, they reveal their true intentions: to claim the earth itself, aided by their radio-controlled trio of kaijus!
Invasion of Astro-Monster is largely a retread of prior Godzilla films, combined with a circuitous alien invasion plot that never quite gels with the kaiju drama. It’s clear that Toho were scraping funds together for this one; there is far less outright kaiju mayhem than in previous entries, and what exists frequently avoids the expense of building full miniature models, instead simply contrasting fleeing humans in the foreground with monsters in the far background. Astro-Monster nonetheless demonstrates another small turning point in the franchise, with the central role of American astronaut Glen (Nick Adams) demonstrating Toho’s ongoing collaboration with United Productions of America, and their explicit desire to make Godzilla an international icon. The gambit clearly worked, and Glen is perfectly lovely, but Astro-Monster is not a particularly good film.
We then watched the 2022 Scream film, which is actually the fifth film in the Scream franchise (and yes, the film absolutely makes fun of this modern revival titling convention). New Scream features always have to manage the difficult task of finding some new vein of meta horror commentary to mine, and Scream Not-Five mostly contents itself with riffing on the concept of the “requel” (like the recent Halloweens, Nightmare on Elm Streets, and this film itself), as well as firing shots at the so-called “elevated horror” of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and our other modern horror legends
All of this is not surprising, and pretty much exactly how a modern Scream revival would have to play. What is surprising is that the film actually works, coming across as far more energetic and forward-thinking than its predecessors, and easily positioning itself as the best entry since the original.
A “requel” that brings the franchise back to its roots seems like the only way this franchise could go forward; the assembled lore detritus of four straight films was clearly bogging down its ability to tell any sort of original story, and so Scream 5 (I’ve decided it’s too annoying and confusing to not call it that) wisely pulls back as close to the original narrative as possible. What it does retain from previous entries is carefully chosen – our three franchise survivors do indeed show up, but they’re nowhere near as prioritized as in previous sequels, and crucially now seem capable of genuine growth and change (“our movie has stakes,” our Ghostface at one point declares, and they are not wrong). Meanwhile, the new crowd of teens are given the room necessary to develop compelling interpersonal dynamics and clear bonds, meaning they’re not just The New Meat, they are a sturdy foundation for future Scream adventures.
Alongside its conceptual successes, Scream 5 mostly succeeds because it’s a well-composed, well-directed horror movie with plenty of tension and genuinely shocking kills. Co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet have proven themselves masters of modern horror through films like Southbound and Ready or Not, and in their hands, Scream 5 proves to be the first legitimately scary film in the entire franchise. With new blood both behind and in front of the camera, Scream 5 somehow manages to restart the heart of this long-moribund franchise, making me genuinely eager for the next one.
