Godzilla: King of the Monsters is directed and co-written by Michael Dougherty (Krampus and Trick ‘r Treat), is the 32nd live action Godzilla film, as well as the third installment of WB and Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse. Years after the Muto attacks five years ago, Monarch has discovered more monsters, called Titans, beginning to awake, such as Mothra, Rodan, and Monster Zero aka King Ghidorah. When the latter takes reigns over the others to bring about the destruction of civilization, humanity’s only hope for survival is Godzilla.
Back when I started doing these Halloween movie reviews, the first to start off the celebration was the 2014 Garreth Edwards film, which also happened to be the 60th anniversary of Godzilla as a whole; I had quite a number of issues regarding the lack of Godzilla and bigger focus on the humans and Muto, characters killed off in favor of bland ones, and a lot of dark cinematography getting in the way. Luckily, I still thought the film was enjoyable in its own right, because there was at least enough monster action to keep me entertained. And while everyone else looked at that film as a remake, I saw it more as a sequel, due to the fact that it acknowledges the events of the first film in 1954 (similar to Godzilla 1985 and Godzilla 2000).
With the box office success of the movie, it gave greenlight to Kong: Skull Island (another box office success) and the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020. Kong: Skull Island was fine, and did solve some problems I had with Godzilla, but at the same time introduced more that hindered its enjoyment; but most audiences seemed please, so who am I to complain? I was still eager to see how they would bring Kong into this new Godzilla world, especially since we haven’t seen an attempt at that since the early 60’s. And unlike the DCEU or the X-Men Fox Saga, this franchise doesn’t have that deep or complex a source material to go off of, so it hasn’t been too hard to be faithful to them. Even then, all you would need to know with this film in particular is giant monsters are attacking, and Godzilla’s the one you root for.
So going into this film, I expected it to be an entertaining popcorn flick that was hopefully improved upon from the last two films. After all, Michael Doughtry is a great horror director, so I was hoping to see more tense and frightening execution. And while it does solve some problems the previous two films had, there were still a lot of issues that resurfaced twice as problematic as before, something that took me a while to come to grips with.
The strongest element this film succeeds in is the Titans; despite my gripes with CGI being used over practical effects, this is the best looking that any of these creatures have ever looked. Godzilla’s appearance looks more refined than last time, leaner and vastly detailed. They also added in a mix of his original roar and the modern one, which manages to work both in this film’s universe context and appealing to the nostalgia of the fanbase. Mothra has a magnificently grand entrance in this film, and Rodan (while the head does look a little silly) is twice as deadly as he’s ever been. However, the best updated execution was Monster Zero, aka King Ghidorah; the one positive to using CGI on him was that Doughtry was able to give each of the three heads a personality, such as the middle one being the leader that hates the dumb left head. I also thought it was clever to relate the conflicts of climate change and connect them to the Titans, as a fallback to the original Godzilla having a message on the usage of nuclear energy. As for the fight scenes, despite still being dark, they’re lit a bit more to see more of the action take place when it happens...WHEN it happens.
That’s kind of where most of my praise ends, because the rest of the movie felt like it was on auto-pilot. I’m not gonna lie, whenever it wasn’t a scene featuring a titan, the pacing of this movie fell drastically, to where I found myself half the time nodding off. As much as I appreciate the build up, they take way too long and the end result of what awakens them is too ridiculous to take seriously (especially with how they awaken Ghidorah or resurrect Godzilla). They also mention that multiple monsters have awoken at once (around 20), yet we only get to see about a mere handful of what we had. It also got annoying, when they kept name-dropping Skull Island, because it was like we didn’t know that Godzilla vs. Kong is the next one. It didn’t help that for a film that builds on Godzilla possibly dying, thinking we don’t already know a sequel was greenlit; it just takes the tension out of the whole movie, something that Sony and Disney did with Infinity War and Endgame, having Far From Home cap off Phase 3 instead of jump-starting Phase 4.
It wouldn’t be so hard to stomach, had any of the human characters been written well. Of the cast from the first movie, the only notable returns were Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe; however, much like any sequel that doesn’t have the entire cast return, they end up either having not as much to do or get axed off early on, just to make room for new people to not care about. Vera Farmiga’s character is another one of those “destroy to save” villains that attempts to justify their actions, but it’s handled to be the most predictable and poorly handled arcs I’ve seen for a character since Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. Kyle Chandler as the main guy was fine, but doesn’t really have much else to go off of. Then we come to Millie Bobby Brown as Farmiga and Chandler’s daughter, and she does fine with what she has, but again, there’s not much to say. Rest of the cast, I can’t exactly say they left much of an impression, which is kind of a shame, since they are talented people.
I will say this, the post-credits scene it has, does get me a little giddy for who they’re bringing to film next, because I can definitely see some strong potential with it...I just hope that Warner Bros. doesn’t repeat what they did with Batman v Superman, and have it be a complicated and depressing mess.
As much as I enjoyed the fight scenes between the Titans, the pacing and human characters make it a little tedious to get to. For Godzilla fans, I would imagine they would have different tolerability levels for it, but it doesn’t quite give it the total satisfying package in theaters. I still think it’s a fun time to watch, for the parts that are fun, but it’s definitely a rental pick, even compared to the last film.
Rating: C-
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