What's Good #15 (December 2025)
published 2025-12-31 | tags: #whats-good #godzilla
Table of Contents
Between the holidays and some personal struggles this month I wasn't able to finish as many things as I would like, so I don't have as much to share as I would have liked. Next month though I should check off a few half-finished projects so we'll start the year off with a bang.
Priestdaddy
I read this on the repeated recomendation of Jacob Geller, one of my favorite creators on the internet who I gladly support on Patreon. A beautiful narrative autobiography written by a poet, meaning the pros are so goddamn vivid and imaginative I had to stop and take a breather every few pages just to process what I had read. I laughed, I cried, a had a think. Good book.
Godzillas
This is it! We're done watching all of the Godzilla movies!
I am so happy to have done this project and to have shared it with some friends. I have enjoyed watching not just Godzilla evolve over 70+ years but seeing movies evolve over that time too.
I'll write a dedicated post about Godzilla before too long, so let's wrap this up.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Continuing where Godzilla (2014) this movie rocks. It's got tons of monsters even digging deep for kaiju like Rodan!? What a legend.
The writing isn't perfect, but as far as CGI spectacle movies go this is incredible.
Note: I think this gets a bad reputation because American audiences don't like the story structure -- but my hot-take is that this perfectly updates the classic Godzilla formula for a 201X audience and the old movies just also kinda sucked. In a lovable way of course.
Godzilla vs Kong
I'm not entirely sure why Godzilla gets top billing in this movie because it is clearly a Kong film. He's the main character and most of the story beats follow him. Which is fine, but you know... my boy is GZ, let's give him equal screen-time.
Godzilla Minus One
A wonderful modern echo of the classic 60's era Godzillas, calling back to many tropes like:
- A scientist has a long-shot idea for how to kill Godzilla that is only taken seriously after literally nothing else works.
- Godzilla is finally defeated when Japan builds some crazy long-shot industrial thing.
- There is a "boat guy".
If I were to re-watch the pantheon of Godzilla movies I would probably watch this after watching some of the 50's/60's era films before they got too silly. That seems to be the era most of the references/echos are from, but I watched them so long ago at this point most of it went over my head.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
I really wished we had ended with Minus One, but I guess we gotta end it with the actual latest entry, not just the one I wish was the latest.
Godzilla x Kong really is Godzilla vs Kong 2. A very similar cast of (human) characters with a bunch of new monsters that to my knowledge are not in any prior/older Godzilla flicks.
Similar to the current (?) run of American Godzilla films, it's a totally passable spectacle film but doesn't hold a candle to what Japan is doing with it.