Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Oh shi... Faulting Godzilla for having stupid people in it is rather unfair. They have always been stupid and their behavior often illogical or just plain dumb. And it’s not Godzilla’s fault. The people who move the action along, especially the unpleasant scientist, are asking for a kick up the ass, but they manage to wake the monster, which then destroys the city and then they have a fight. Thank God for that, at least; otherwise there’s no point in even concerning myself with the cast. There are lots of battles and they’re much more monstrous than before. The alien dragon is a worthy opponent for Fatty. The caterpillar/moth seems really nice, not to mention Rodan the Pterodactyl (the aerial chase is incredible) and the mammoth. I think the sequel with Kong already has a clear winner, but I look forward to seeing it anyway. But with fewer people next time, please. (31/05/2019)

The anticipated Godzilla sequel, after the riveting trailers, is ultimately a missed opportunity and another blockbuster that failed to live up to expectations this year. Michael Dougherty is the director of Trick 'r Treat and Krampus, two decent holiday horror films, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters feels like a big bite that he couldn't quite chew. The characters are absolutely uninteresting (though Eleven tries), the pacing is pretty much erratic, we only see four of the fifteen monsters mentioned in the action, and repeatedly at that. Perhaps the worst part of it all is that the film isn't entertaining at all, and if it's not exactly blazing on screen, it's rather boring. I was most impressed with Hydra, which is visually solid and I think the finale is satisfying, but the rest of it hardly works at all. Too bad. 60% (03/06/2019)

Dougherty must be the only person on the planet who is approached by the people form Warner Brothers with a huge budget and an unmissable offer “to play games with Godzilla and all his fellow cult monsters in the backyard during their awakening and the end of the world", so he can't think “hmm, it could be from the perspective of people, as Edwards tried but failed to do, or bitter satire in the style of (Shin´s) Japanese Godzilla or a catastrophic B-movie full of ultimate monsters and titanic battles referencing the classics". No, what comes to his mind is “cool, I'll finally be able to shoot an interior conversational movie from the Avengers Helicarrier and satisfy all the scientists who have to say the weird nonsense with a straight face in similar movies, and I'll do it by not making them say that in a few sentences, but it will last tens of minutes and even the nonsense they talk about will be even more stupid than it normally is and I will intersperse it with dull CGI action, where everyone will constantly keep running out of collapsing buildings, and it will be full of such generic shots of falling skyscrapers that even the animators themselves won´t be able to tell whether this scene of a crumbling big city happened in the last Marvel or DC movie". And he did as he said he would. The childish quasi-scientific piffle and solutions meant to restart the civilization of Mother Nature are an integral part of the genre. But only If they form the background/prologue to the battles of the Titans, not if they are the cornerstone. No one gives a shit about monsters anymore. Except Dougherty. And when they just have mercy on the audience here and there and offer what the viewers are looking for, it lacks ideas, cool moments, dynamics and scale. The exception is a few moments during the decent ending, when the film almost becomes what it wanted to be (and should have been) the whole time. McCreary's music, paying one tribute to another, is the film's biggest asset. And yet it is very specific in every respect. At least he understood “what is going on", even if the director didn't. (28/09/2020)

In his previous effort, Edwards handled the legacy of the Toho films much more deftly. He stretched the cues effectively and delivered a clear action set-piece with some iconic moments at the end. But this? This sequel has a fantastic, exciting trailer, with a wonderful musical theme “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that will make you swoon. Unfortunately, the film itself is not fantastic, let alone exciting. In every one of the 27 Godzilla movies I've seen so far (not counting Emmerich's crap that has nothing to do with Kaiju), I've had more fun than here, including the worst of them, the infantile Son of Godzilla, which was at least a pleasant guilty-pleasure. This film is just guilty, but without any pleasure. You don't care about characters who have a mouthful of family values, visually it's not great either. The golden-hued color filter is downright ugly and the action is cluttered, with a shaky camera that's often a clump of pixels you don't care about. It has a few moments, a few references to Toho's predecessor, which are nice (the woman is also the catalyst for plot twists, and we can hear about three times the notorious Godzilla arrival motif we know from Japanese Kaiju), but that can't be enough even for the most diehard Toho/Godzilla fans, among whom I count myself. It's a disappointment that I hope won't break the lizard's neck in the future. (31/05/2019)

This film is in some ways the same for me as the previous one – knowing what to expect from it makes me enjoy it much more. Yes, I'm still sorry that it didn't follow the Gareth Edwards style, but the story itself isn't actually any sillier, it's just presented in a very, shall we say, straightforward way and looked at through a completely different lens. Last time, humans were in the lead while monsters were unleashing havoc that affected people's destinies, and Godzilla was there to help people at the right moment. This time around, the monsters are in charge, wreaking havoc on an even larger scale, with humans on the sidelines and helping the real main characters, Godzilla and Mothra, at the right moment. I was pleased to see that the titan fights are a lot clearer on TV at home than they were in the cinema, so I enjoyed some quite amusing close-ups and imaginative choreography (I absolutely love the moments when the digital monsters move as if they’re wrestlers in rubber suits), I never stopped enjoying Bear McCreary's Ifukube-themed music, and although I may regret it, I have to say I'm looking forward to the Kong fight. (30/05/2019)