Or smashing together poorly-written, midnight deadline college papers, hoping for a A from the general movie-going public.
Let’s get this out of the way: I did actually enjoy a lot of this film. It gave me what my 10 year old inner-child needed, finally seeing some of Toho’s most popular kaiju brought to life on the big screen. After the misfire of Godzilla (1999), I started to doubt whether we would actually see a another American Godzilla film. And that definitely meant King Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra were not coming anytime soon. The success of Gareth Edward’s Godzilla (2014) certainly changed that and soon the Monster-verse was on track (not to be confused with Universal’s Dark Universe and if you have no idea what I’m talking about, count yourself lucky) with the release of Kong: Skull Island and the promise of Godzilla vs. Kong and King of the Monsters, it seemed Godzilla was going to turn a corner from just being the campy rubber suit fights it’s known for.
However King of the Monsters does nothing to further the artful direction of Gareth Edward’s reboot. While it does address a complaint many had of the first film (Not enough Godzilla and/or monster fights), I always felt that concern was overblown. Yes, we watch Godzilla to see him destroy things, that’s a given.
But this movie is essentially watching action figures get smashed together by a 4-year old child, which isn’t that great. Sure, I was glad to see Godzilla kick ass and go up against King Ghidorah, but it lacked the pacing and setup that Edwards did so well in the last movie. The glimpse of battles built suspense and created a greater sense of scale and impact to the way Godzilla moved and fought. When Godzilla finally fights the MUTOs in the previous movie, it’s about damn time in a good way. This film trades on that work and doesn’t earn the battles it wants us to enjoy. There’s no sense of awe or wonder with any of these creatures (except maybe Mothra) and it shows up most in the finale.
What’s even crazier is that until the fight in Antarctica, most of the film is fine. The setup is solid, the characters, while still too many to count, looks like it may settle down. And then Godzilla fights Ghidorah, the humans are running around doing mindbogglingly stupid things and they just shit the bed with a lack of focus and any resemblance of solid storytelling.
If you’re ever watched the original black and white 1954 film (Not that American remixed garbage with Raymond Burr narrating over everything), you’ll know that Edwards’ attempt aligns Godzilla closer to his force of nature roots linked with the folly and horrors of mankind.
That’s where the movie really stumbles. The whole unifying organization, Monarch, gets overdone in this film (despite some strong moments from characters at various points, like the ) and their goals becomes incredibly hard to follow and nail down. Sure, they’re identifying and containing these creatures, but you haven’t really nailed down a path to “Coexistence” as Serizawa keeps spouting. Next, these characters are boring as fuck and there’s way too many of them. It really feels like they went to back to watch Godzilla (1999) and said, “You know what we need? More nameless, expendable people who won’t actually die because we like the one-liners”. I mean, it’s not Michael Bay caricature bad, but it’s in the ballpark.
Which is a damn shame because there’s a really good story in the movie. Having one character (Vera Farmiga) hellbent on releasing the Titans (in order to counteract climate change and restore balance to the Earth) was a pretty cool idea. Granted, it’s insane and the other characters rightfully say so (Kyle Chandler and others). It was certainly one of the more interesting villain concepts I’ve seen recently (Reminiscent of Valentine’s plan in Kingsman: The Secret Service), but where they predictably go with the character is annoying and misses a real opportunity to hit a home run, which is what I could write for so many roles in this film.
Last fun things I will say: Despite the mediocre product, there were a lot of nods to classic Toho moments
- The two Monarch scientists who were twins as a call back to the Mothra twins
- Ghidorah’s codename in the film as Monster Zero and his space origins.
- Rodan’s gusts of wind nearly destroying a town.
- Burning Godzilla (Yes, the directors called it Fire Godzilla, but we all know what their doing)
- Bringing back the oxygen destroyer (which is what killed Godzilla in the original 1954 film)
There’s plenty more hidden in the film, but being a huge film score nerd, I have to highlight Bear McCreary (Composer of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica theme) and his choice to re-use the original 1954 score. I don’t know if I can communicate how happy that made me to hear Godzilla roll up, pounding on Ghidorah while his theme music was going, bravo good sir!
My word of advice: Watch it to have fun and enjoy some almost beautifully shot monster battles. But if you’re going in with the hope this will be thought provoking, you picked the wrong film.
Godzilla King of the Monsters: 4 out of 10
Kenneth “Commander” Shipp has had opinions on movies since he was a kid…even if that meant talking to himself. He loves tackling the issues involved with our modern blockbusters while still enjoying the deep dives into the films you may have glossed over. You may still see him comment on his other loves (video games and television) whenever he has time. You can catch all his movie reviews here and listen to him on our weekly podcasts when they start back in August!!
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