Why Godzilla vs Megaguirus over the others Mr. Shark?
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus started this weird ass trend in the next three Godzilla movies where the human characters would act really serious, angry, stern, stoic, or just plain vicious. This was not a thing LIMITED to Godzilla movies mind you, Syfy channel originals and horror movies (especially slashers that weren't remakes) were full of this in the mid 00s. Every character yelled their lines and treated every situation as the utmost seriousness. 9/11 is blamed for this, but for whatever reason it finally exited movies around the time the MCU became mainstream with Avengers 1. Unfortunately Syfy channel movies became too jokey after that (see also the Sharktopus movies, all 6 Sharknadoes, and Roboshark).
As for Godzilla specifically it was irksome in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus but tolerable and it was, for all intents and purposes, still a 90s Godzilla movie when you ignore the separate continuity and costumes. GMK hit and this is where the angry serious demeanor of all the humans started rearing something almost as ugly as the twist from that My Bloody Valentine remake and if you don't know what I'm talking about just watch it because the cringe needs to be seen to be believed. Yup, make the force of nature pure evil because... Some teens don't remember WW2? Who get punished by guardian earth spirits anyway? And Godzilla loses from swallowing a submarine rather than the creatures he fights? It takes too long to go anywhere and it adds ghost story minutia.... In a franchise loaded with space age science fiction technobabble. With a random atomic bomb cloud that is briefly scene but doesn't add much. And Godzilla's arch nemesis is a good guy for no reason even though he's normally a destroyer.
Okay, surely those Kiryu movies would be better, Godzilla has had mediocre movies before in the form of Godzilla Raids Again, King Kong vs. Godzilla, both Versus Mothra movies, and Revenge, surely it can't cross into bad terri- No, wait, both of those did. Ramping up the humans being post 9/11 super duper seriousness, this time making them as haughty as supervillains thinking they'll always win. And for the first time they gave a monster a legit stupid weakness: Running out of power. This wasn't bad in Godzilla vs. Kong because they were trying to find a way around this and eventually did, here it's a big design flaw. "Look at my one hit kill bullspit! Oh wait, I went berserk hur hur!" Top that off with the worst Mechagodzilla design in the franchise and the slowest of pacing and it's a smug mess. Tokyo SOS wasn't much better, this time they added that dumb webbing straight jacket from Mothra vs. Godzilla. It's cheap, like the Guren's radiant wave surger from Code Geass or when the mosasaurus kills the I-Rex in Jurassic World, it ruins every other action scene and cheapens the ending and by extension drags everything down a point.
Final Wars is one of the weirdest anomalies of any motion picture let alone a kaiju movie especially a Godzilla movie. Your first impression is never your final impression. Love it the first viewing, hate it every viewing after. Hate it the first viewing, love it every viewing after. There is no in between. When you take out the questionable color filter decisions (I always thought this was bad lighting for a few years until someone with a German release of the movie did comparisons and it looked so normal in comparison) and Godzilla not being in half the movie it's actually entertaining and still has the best Godzilla design in the franchise. That said this movie is beyond divisive, nobody knows what to make of it half the time and it tanked when it was in theaters. Also Toho Kingdom really has a hate on for it when it comes to power levels (which nowhere else on the internet agrees, but lets be honest these people think Wing Zero Gundam can beat Galactus or Armor Mothra could insta-kill Unicron or videya characters are unusable).
Fast forward 12 years to Shin, surely the guy that made Evangelion could save the franchise, right? Well lets see we had: The slowest pacing, more super serial characters that needed to be shrugged off and left in the 00s, none of the sound was ever updated (who thought putting in 1960s quality in a 2010s movie was a good idea?), barely any action, too many scenes in general, Godzilla loses to, of all things, a bunch of trains (they topped web jacket stupidity!), and it's too bureaucratic. It's like a parody more than anything and the joke is on us. I mean, he failed to name the new angels in the Rebuild of Evangelion movies for no reason, there's a reason the 90s timeline is liked more. Rebuild 4.0 just had to add not one but two horrendous pieces of music in it. Godzilla Singular Point kept all that and stretched it all out while showing in the ending theme Bones was more than capable of making something actually faithful to the franchise, but chose not to. Man, working on Hero Academia really tanked the quality of their work over time. The Netflix trilogy was pretty unique in its stupidity, I'd normally blame Gen Urobuchi for this, but it's been thoroughly documented that he was trying to keep it like the old movies but Toho execs kept screaming no so he had to do a long drawn out space exploration story with more ultra super duper serial humany human nonsense and find a way to shove Godzilla in and later King Ghidorah because sane people looked at that and went "how is this a Godzilla movie and why should I care?".
This is why people like MonsterVerse, it actually tries being kaiju movies and removes pedantic post-9/11 angry serious reinvent the wheel drivel (the 2014 version is the only time I've seen the angry serious noodle dialogue ACTUALLY DONE GOOD and didn't throw in bad comedy, well done Gareth Edwards). Those recent short movies were a good return to form BUT lets be honest, none of them even reach the 8 minute mark, they ain't movies. Notice how I call them movies and motion pictures, I don't call them films because film is what you print the damn MOVING PICTURES onto.
