Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a follow up to 2014’s Godzilla, making it the 35th Godzilla movie and the 3rd instalment in Legendary’s shared MonsterVerse – which includes Kong: Skull Island (2017). With better lighting (so you can actually see), more iconic creatures pulled from Toho’s bestiary, and more location changes than adverts before the movie starts in the cinema, it remains to be seen whether Michael Dougherty’s clash of Titans is the true King of the Kaiju, or just another messy monster mash.
Set five years after the battle in San Fransisco (Godzilla 2014), an ecoterrorist group lead by ex-British Colonel and MI6 Special Agent, Jonah Alan, seizes a bioacoustic devise called the “Orca”, created by Dr. Emma Russel and her husband, to awaken the Titans – including Rodan and King Ghidora. In order to use the Orca efficiently, Johna kidnaps Emma and her daughter, Madison – who you might recognise as telekinetic Stranger Things fan favourite Eleven, who sadly doesn’t have her powers this time round. As Gidorah is considered Godzilla’s rival in strength and power, his awakening triggers the revival of Titans all across the world, threatening to destroy humanity. In response to this, Monarch conscripts the help of Emma’s estranged husband, Dr. Mark Russel, to track down the Orca, control the Titans, and save his daughter – leading to the inevitable showdown between the two Alpha Titans.
Sounds pretty epic in scale (quite literally), and some of the fight scenes certainly are: a little like watching a more mature version of giant Pokémon smacking each other around. Anyone remember that one episode from the anime with the island of giant Pokémon? Sadly enough, pacing issues and confused character motivations are somewhat of a hinderance.
Where as Toho’s Kaiju cinema revolved around giant titanic beasts duking it out over who gets dibs on the nearest inhabited city, Legendary’s take on the popular monster beat-em-up places more focus on the human characters, who are – shockingly enough – not as interesting. In fairness to them they are competing for our attention with giant lizards and moths, who settle their differences WWE style. In a way this is a similar issue that plagued Michael Bay’s Transformers series: why place so much attention on boring human characters when we’re really more interested in watching Optimus Prime wrestle Megatron, or Godzilla tear into Rodan?
“Our world is changing. The mass extinction we feared… Has already begun. And we are the cause. We are the infection”
Emma Russell tries to justify her actions with a somewhat preachy monologue…
Michael Dougherty attempts to use the emergence of the Titans as a means to preach about the state of the Earth’s ecology. We are told that because of the way we have polluted the Earth, used up valuable resources, and lead way to the extinction of many species of animals and plant life, the Titans have awoken as a ‘natural’ protective measure to defend Mother Earth – comparing humans to a virus and the Titans as a sort of combative fever. Despite Godzilla being a walking nuclear disaster, and despite employing a nuclear bomb to juice him up later on. While we can appreciate the sentiment behind this, the delivery often results in preachy, overstayed monologues that leads to an exhaustive exposition midway, with overly dramatic music. At times it feels as though the film takes itself too seriously, when really, we just want to see Godzilla shoot Hyper Beams at a three-headed Charizard.
“I’m sorry that Monster Zero isn’t exactly what we were expecting. But we opened Pandora’s box, and there’s no closing it now”
Jonah Alan to Maddison and Emma
On the subject of the monsters themselves, the designs are recognisable, if somewhat darker, and for fans of the Toho originals, you may recognise a few Easter eggs in the background. Mothra has shown powerful psychic abilities in past Toho films, which are hinted at, and there are pieces of Monster Lore dotted throughout that diehard fans might pickup on, including cave paintings and bestiary files.
It will come as no surprise that the best moments are the monster fights, so it’s a shame there aren’t more of them. Seeing Godzilla charge up his nuclear beam Super Saiyan style is always thrilling, and there’s plenty tried and true wrestling into buildings, blowing up of said buildings, tail swings, and an abundance of energy blasts that are surely bad for the environment. This is joined by that famous roar everyone will recognise and the infamous horns that alert you to his presence and overall dominance, which lead to a few minor jump scares that are bound to get a few decent reactions from cinema audiences.
Though admittedly it comes across as a bit distracting when you realise how frequently the human characters stand so close to the monsters during these fights throughout the movie. Good thing they equipped their plot armour, which must be pretty powerful to prevent King Ghidorah from vaporising them at any given opportunity – and there are many.
Whereas the 2014 Godzilla suffered from poor lightning which made it hard to see what was happening and made the monsters somewhat indistinguishable, King of the Monsters seems to have learned from this. One of the better scenes would be the first encounter between King Ghidora and Godzilla in the Arctic, which shows the ancient rivalry between the two beasts as well as their power and impressive stature. Mothra in particular is often the highlight of each scene she appears in, quite literally, too, since her illuminating wings give off a somewhat hypnotic light-show – affecting members of Monarch in a way that recalls her psychic powers from past Toho productions. Seeing as she has been consistently the most popular monster under Godzilla, it’s encouraging to see Mothra get as much screen time as she does with as much affection as she deserves.
In comparison, the human characters are somewhat uninteresting, with poor motivations, though there can be no denying that there are some pretty big names. The Monarch monster fans include Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe, who insist that Godzilla can be an ally, pursuing the possibilites of coexistence between man and beast – despite their tendency to decimate cities as if they were Lego. Charles Dance is the evil Brit (because of course the only Brit is an evil Colonel/ ex-MI6) who plans to use the Titans to bring ‘balance’ to the world, taking inspiration from Thanos: thin out the population and let nature do it’s thing, because humanity is evil, which of course goes somewhat out of his control. Shocking.
Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga, Doctors Mark and Emma Russell, meanwhile, have a history with Godzilla. During the events of Godzilla 2014, their family was caught up in the destruction of San Fransisco, resulting in the death of their son, Millie Bobby Brown’s younger brother. The fallout of this and their contrasting opinions on ‘zilla lead to the family separating, in typical fashion, with Farmiga believing the Titans could be controlled and manipulated using bioacoustics, while Chandler see’s them as nothing but monsters hellbent on carnage and destruction. Given the visuals of each feature, he’s not far off. Farmiga’s Emma Russell may be a source of frustration for some, thanks to her spontaneous motivation changes, while Mark Russell, though not a ‘bad’ character, and perhaps not the most imaginative, isn’t a substitute for more Godzilla scenes. Millie Bobby Brown is likely one of the reasons many of you are interested in the film in the first place, though. Just don’t expect her to use her X-Men abilities. While her performance is good, her character is sadly relegated to mostly tearing up and – at least early on – playing the naive child of a fractured family, that’s as nuclear as Godzilla.
“Long live the King”
Jonah Alan, referring to King Ghidorah
While Chandler, Farmiga and Brown are clearly more than capable of injecting feelings of anguish and affection, despite poor character writing, it feels as though King of the Monsters has fallen into the trap Michael Bay’s Transformers fell into, struggling to find the right balance between presenting the human perspective and giving the Monsters a satisfying amount of anarchic screen-time. Couple this with a massive cast of support characters who are largely forgettable, more focus on domestic drama than the giant monsters featured on the posters, and it’s clear that Legendary’s latest kaiju outing is far from perfect.
If you enjoyed 2014s Godzilla you’ll likely enjoy King of the Monsters, if you were perhaps more critical of it you’ll find some improvements here, though it’s flaws are hard to ignore. There are some good moments and despite it’s many flaws, it’s still fun, but the emphasis on human characters and dramas while traipsing around the globe leads to a good deal of exposition midway which severally hinders the experience. The monster battles are explosive, their size and scale immense, and to say cities get decimated would be an understatement. Arguably when there’s so much destruction it’s hard to be truly invested or care about the cities themselves, but the loss of a city or two is probably worth the sacrifice to see Godzilla lay the beatdown on his rivals.
The eco message could still have been told without the monotonous dialogue moments. An alternative recommendation that doesn’t take itself too seriously would be Shin Godzilla (2016), the 29th Godzilla movie to be produced by Toho, as well as Toho’s third reboot of the franchise. It’s fun and visually colourful, with a Godzilla design that better resembles the popular kaiju films before it, utilising familiar sound and music queues, drawing influence from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is certainly not King of the kaiju, but there’s still some fun to be found watching two giant icons of kaiju cinema battle it out, Pokémon Stadium style. Here’s hoping Godzilla’s long awaited smackdown vs. King Kong recognises the issues that have plagued recent entries.
