Review of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) by Areoseph — 31 May 2019

10/10: a near perfect representation of the Godzilla movies I had the most fun with over the course of my life.

It's no '54 in terms of tone and story, but if you average out Godzilla films over the course of 65 years, KOTM is far more fitting to that average than '54, 2014, or Shin Godzilla.

This is Invasion of Astro Monster, or Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, with a 200 mil dollar budget. They absolutely nail the feel of of what it means to be an action oriented Godzilla film. The Kaiju are represented with shocking (for Hollywood translations) precision and faithfulness.

There's been much gnashing of teeth by Esteemed Critics about the "human story" or lack thereof...

It's not The Dark Knight, but any fan of Godzilla films, or summer blockbusters in general, will be pleasantly surprised by the acting and overall story. Ken Wantanabe and a few others really stand out. The humans never get in the way of the fighting and Kaiju, which the first movie suffered from (according to many, myself included). I found the story more interesting than 2014s. That being said, it is FAR less grounded of a story than 2014, but it's relatively tame in terms of "out there" compared to many Godzilla films. It's very fast paced, thrown at you without much fanfare or explanation, and serves the point of getting us to the battles in some kind of sensible fashion. It's the weakest part, but not even close to weak enough to sour the film... Because...

The Kaiju battles are the best we've ever seen, in any movie, ever. It's not even close. I was smiling the cheering the whole time, like a child. I kept saying out loud "holy **** that's **** awesome". The Monster battles absolutely makes this movie what it is...

A classic, quintessential Godzilla film. Fans rejoice, the Godzilla you dreamed about is here.