Damn straight you want to go to the films, shove popcorn in your face and watch giant creatures from a digital lagoon kick each other’s ass. The title alone means most of us are in the tank for ‘Godzilla – King of the Monsters’.
Besides the jolly green giant lizard, we get Mothra, Rodan, the three-headed Ghidorah, AKA Monster Zero and the barest hint of King Kong.
What does arrive in the sequel to the latest of countless, pointless reboots of the ‘Godzilla’ franchise is a bloated and humourless script, lazy direction from Michael Dougherty and slumming actors who are forced to scream in terror when they’re not shovelling tonnes of mind-numbing exposition.
It is weird that a series that began in 1954 with a low-budget Japanese quickie featuring a dude in a rubber suit came still survives as primo kaiju escapism.
The monsters – called Titans – eventually show up and when they do, they’re a fun crowd. Scary? Not really. But they’re still technical marvels. It’s a shame the plot mechanics don’t have a whit of the imagination the FX team brings to the party. And the titans don’t have any lines. How lucky can a monster get!
The story, such as it is: Dr Emma Russell, a scientist played by Vera Farmiga as if what she’s saying actually makes sense, has an invention called the Orca. It makes sounds that can communicate with monsters and hopefully control their behaviour. Emma has less luck communicating with her teen daughter Madison, who correctly thinks that her mom has gone bonkers. Madison is equally sad to have lost her brother in the battle that ended the last movie. But Mark, her divorced dad, has it worse. He’s been drowning his sorrows in booze, but now returns to restore sense to the universe.
The monsters — called Titans — eventually show up and when they do, they’re a fun crowd. Scary? Not really. But they’re still technical marvels. It’s a shame the plot mechanics don’t have a whit of the imagination the FX team brings to the party. And the titans don’t have any lines
In short, the war comes down to those who believe humans should live in peace with the monsters and those, represented by the villainous eco-terrorist Colonel Jonah Alan, who want to blow the creatures off the face of the earth. For fun and profit, of course. The movie globe trots from Antarctica to Boston but rarely gets anywhere.
Do you care? Probably not. The chance to see giant monsters go ape shit – a few more are added near the end – is almost worth the price of admission. Seeing, however, is part of the problem. ‘Godzilla – King of the Monsters’ is often so lost in the shadows of digital muck that it makes the squinting chaos of the Battle of Winterfell in ‘Game of Thrones’ look like a lightshow. Still, when the Titans emerge from the sludge and go at it full tilt you may give in just to watch them let it rip. All that’s required is a mandatory suspension of critical judgment.
‘Godzilla – King of the Monsters’ is a 2019 American monster film directed and co-written by Michael Dougherty. It is a sequel to ‘Godzilla’ and is also the 35th film in the ‘Godzilla’ franchise, the third film in Legendary’s MonsterVerse and the third Godzilla film to be completely produced by a Hollywood studio.
The film stars Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr, David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe and Zhang Ziyi. It is dedicated to executive producer Yoshimitsu Banno and original Godzilla suit performer Haruo Nakajima, who both died in 2017. In the film, humans must rely on Godzilla to defeat King Ghidorah and other Titans who have awakened, and are causing destruction around the world.
The sequel was green-lit during the opening weekend of Godzilla, with original director Gareth Edwards expected to return. After Edwards left the project in May 2016, Dougherty, who had been hired in October 2016 to re-write the script with Zach Shields, was announced as the director in January 2017. Principal photography began in June 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia and wrapped in September 2017.
‘Godzilla – King of the Monsters’ is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on May 31, 2019. It received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the visual effects, musical score and action sequences but criticism aimed at the underdeveloped human characters and thin storyline.
A sequel, ‘Godzilla vs Kong’, is scheduled to be released on March 13, 2020.