Review of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) by Bertaut1 — 13 Jun 2019

Very loud, very dumb, and very entertaining.

The third film in the "MonsterVerse" franchise, King of the Monsters is a direct sequel to Gareth Edwards's 2014 Godzilla (sadly, he didn't return as director), and sets up Godzilla vs. Kong, which is scheduled for release next summer. However, whereas Edwards held Godzilla back and made the action feel smaller by focalising it through the human characters, new director Michael Dougherty inverts that formula, putting Godzilla front and centre and shooting the action in such a way as to make it seem as grandiose as possible. He isn't half the director Edwards is, but King of the Monsters works well in a braindead summer action movie kind of way. Sure, there are significant problems (all the best shots are in the trailer, the plot is laughable, the characters are so thinly sketched as to make those in the first film feel Shakespearean), but all things considered, I enjoyed it.

Five years since Godzilla defeated the MUTOs, many more creatures (now dubbed Titans) have been found in various forms of hibernation. In charge of studying and protecting them is Monarch Sciences (introduced in a fledgling state in Kong: Skull Island, which took place in 1973). However, when an eco-terrorist, Jonah Alan (Charles Dance) steals a bioacoustics device designed to communicate with the Titans, he uses it to awaken the only non-terrestrial Titan, a fearsome three-headed dragon known as King Ghidorah. Arguing that humanity has brought the planet to the point of destruction, Jonah believes that a global Titan conflict would wipe out most of human civilisation, allowing the planet the time it needs to heal. And so, as Ghidorah awakens the various Titans, Godzilla emerges to stand against him.

Godzilla was originally conceived as a metaphor for the destructive power of nuclear weaponry, and King of the Monsters has one eye on its themes too (eco disaster, biodiversity, co-existence with other species, military impulsiveness). But really, the sermonising script by Dougherty and Zach Shields is so badly put together that any thematic concerns dissipate into nothing. And yes, it does address the fact that through inattention and greed, humanity is on the brink of ensuring its own extinction. The problem is that the eco themes are so preachy, they come across as background irrelevancies at best, and distracting moralising at worst.

And there are other problems with the script. For example, not one, not two, but three characters sacrifice themselves for the greater good, resulting in none of the sacrifices really meaning anything. Another scene that doesn't work is the death of a major character, which happens so suddenly, amidst so much chaos, with the camera on even focused on them, that in the very next scene, the film has to show us their face on a monitor with the word "Deceased" written underneath. There are also far too many scenes of characters standing on the bridge of the Monarch flagship, the ARGO, spouting exposition at one another.

There are also some spatial hijinks going on. I get that the ARGO is supposed to be super-advanced, but it seems capable of flying from one side of the planet to the other in about ten minutes. Another issue is that Zhang Ziyi plays twins. Except I didn't even realise there were two of them until I read a few reviews. Sure, I noticed what I thought was a singular character appear to be in two places at once, but because the ARGO had already been globe-hopping, I just put it down to the film's lack of geographic realism. The fact that it's so easy to miss that there are twins is spectacularly bad writing.

But for all that, I thoroughly enjoyed King of the Monsters. Although the trailer did promise what the film can't deliver on (Claude Debussy and pensive apocalypticism), aesthetically, there's a lot to admire. The sound design is suitably deafening, and Lawrence Sher's cinematography has a well-judged sense of scale, especially in the 2.39:1 3D IMAX format. The film also does some interesting things with colour, coding the Titans in binary elemental shades. There are also some extraordinary individual shots (most of which have been spoiled by the trailer); Mothra spreading her wings, Ghidorah perched atop a volcano with a crucifix in the foreground, the reveal of Godzilla's lair. And the final shot is a goosebumps moment with which no Kaiju fan could possibly be dissatisfied. Purely at the level of craft, this is a hugely impressive film.

Citizen Kane it most certainly isn't, but who expected (or wanted) it to be. The key to really parsing it is to consider the context, looking at what it was trying to be. And in this sense, it's a success. Sure, the script is hideous, and Dougherty struggles to accomplish what Edwards did with ease; bring his own personality to the spectacle. However, if you approach it for what it is, a dumb summer blockbuster about large monsters punching each other, you'll like it just fine.