Godzilla: King of the Monsters

2019 monster sequel

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Godzilla and a bunch of other monsters.

Me: When I say "God," you say "Zilla"--God!
Bradley Whitford: Zilla!
Me: God!
Bradley Whitford: Zilla!

When I saw that in the trailer, I should have known this would be bad news, but I thought the monster fracases would make up for it. Sadly, I was wrong. This is a movie that somehow manages to not be the least bit fun even though it's got Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah, some tall woolly mammoth guy I don't believe I've seen in any of the old-school Godzilla movies, and a few others. There are some large-scale fight sequences but unfortunately no dance numbers. The fighting is loud--indeed, the sound design might be the best thing about the movie--and the bad kind of flashy. When the shots didn't have the monsters submerged in this blueish haze, which was often, it seemed there was almost a strobe effect, and there were two times I had to squint because it was just a little too much for my old, tired eyes. It was often very difficult to figure out what was going on in most of the fight sequences, and I just didn't think they were much fun at all. It really made me miss seeing a couple guys stomping around models of Tokyo while wearing rubber suits.

Each of the monsters gets its own chance to pose for an iconic shot--Ghidorah perched on a hill with a cross in the foreground, a radiated Godzilla looking especially peeved, Mothra poised in the sky with spread wings, Rodan after busting out of a volcano. Director Michael Dougerty knows how to create a classic shot, but I feel like I could have wasted less time and not been as annoyed if was just given some postcards to look at or something.

Because the problem is that it isn't just the monsters and the cacophonous and dizzying fight sequences. No, there are a bunch of humans engaging in vaguely human endeavors in this thing, too. The aforementioned Whitford is there to crack wise, the sort of thing he's good at as an actor. But like all of the other characters, he's given the stupidest things to say. Vera Farmiga has some sort of fancy Speak and Spell to enable her to irritate the monsters with impressions of them. Her finest moment is when she gives this presentation to over-explain why she did something that she did to the other characters. It's meant to help the audience along, I suppose, but I was left with more questions afterward. Like--how did she throw together a fancy presentation like that with all those visual elements so quickly? Kyle Chandler plays a tough guy in ways that are simultaneously boring and generic. Anybody might look bland when they share screen time with Godzilla and that assortment of monsters, but I'm convinced anybody's going to seem less bland when they're in the same room as Kyle Chandler. The usually-reliable Ken Watanabe can't overcome this script either, and Sally Hawkins, who doesn't even get it on with any of these monsters, should have just focused on Paddington 3. Millie Bobby Brown, the actress who plays the magic girl in Stranger Things (I know--probably not magic. I'm not up on my Stranger Things), isn't terrible in this. Charles Dance, as the main villain who isn't humongous, probably isn't either, but the script isn't doing any of these actors any favors.

That includes Ziyi Zhang who IMDb tells me played twins, something that I didn't even realize while watching the movie. I didn't even know this movie had twins, probably because they don't sing a cute little song like in the old-school Godzilla movie.

The characters make questionable decisions, take up far too much screen time, jet around the globe at preposterous speeds, and somehow manage to escape certain death far too many times. If they weren't around to inject some logic and science into the storytelling, I don't think I'd mind too much. But the logic they're injecting is illogical and the science, unscientific. That kind of thing is easy to forgive in something fun, but this movie is taking itself so seriously and kind of demands that the audience does as well.

After the Skull Island movie, I looked forward to this one. And I would look forward to seeing Kong battle Godzilla in next year's movie, but with this bloated and joyless entry in the Godzilla franchise, it's a little hard to be excited.