'Godzilla: King of the Monsters'-Strong in All the Right Places, Spotty in Most Others

The latest Monsterverse entry gives me everything I've ever wanted from a Godzilla movie...but not much else.

By: Josh McCormack

So I got around to seeing Godzilla: King of the Monsters yesterday, and you know what? I thought it was pretty good. 

Perhaps it was the low expectation set by the pretty negative critical response or maybe it was simply the fact that I'm a complete fanboy for Godzilla films, but I walked out of King of the Monsters pretty entertained. It's a good ol' fashioned summer blockbuster that doesn't need to provide much in terms of deeper meaning or character depth and is far more focused on hard hitting monster action.

Yet, even with these caveats out of the way, the latest film in Warner Brothers' Monsterverse still proves that the U.S. has a long way to go if they want to reach heights of the best Japanese Godzilla films.

Writer/director Michael Dougherty has been a filmmaker I've been following for quite a few years now. With screenwriting credits on the early X-Men films and Superman Returns, Dougherty has been working behind the scenes of big Hollywood films for a while now, but he really burst onto my radar with the 2008 direct-to-video masterpiece that is Trick 'R Treat. This wonderful anthology horror film is made with such love and admiration for classic horror flicks and you'd be hard pressed to find any movie that captures the spirit of Halloween like this one does. He followed this up with Krampus in 2015, an inferior but still wonderfully put together Christmas monster movie. So with this resume and a reputation for loving genre films and the strange creatures that inhabit them, Dougherty seemed like the perfect choice to take over for the Godzilla franchise. 

Dougherty's love and admiration for the creatures of the Godzilla universe is clear from the get-go. Giving each of these monsters incredible entrances with well composed shots that have them silhouetted against a thundering sky as if they are in a 19th century biblical painting, Dougherty basks in the sight, sound and fury of these creatures and it's here where you can feel the enthusiasm really shining through. While his directing prowess might not be as strong as Gareth Edwards' in the last Godzilla film when it comes to showing off scale, there's a way in which these creatures move and display themselves that's incredibly mythic and I really like that Dougherty delved more into the concept of these monsters being ancient "Titans" who were worshipped in centuries of old. 

The score by composer Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead;God of War) is also a huge highlight. Taking the classic themes of the original films and updating them with new orchestral sounds and an incredibly aggressive choir, it's really the score that makes some of these scenes hit as hard as they do. I've been listening to the soundtrack almost non-stop over the past week or so. 

As a kid, I only wanted three things from a Hollywood Godzilla movie; state of the art effects, updated versions of classic villains from the original Japanese films, and a version of the original Akira Ifukube theme song with a badass choir behind it. I'm happy to say I got all three of those things with King of the Monsters. However, it's the movie surrounding those three elements that stop the latest film from being the quintessential American Godzilla film. 

While the new film corrects a lot of the issues of the previous Godzilla movie, some problems still remain and in some cases King of the Monsters takes a few steps back. 

For example, while the human characters in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla were certainly one-note, their motivations were pretty clear and well laid out. King of the Monsters on the other hand has some truly baffling character motivation, especially in relation to Vera Farmiga's Dr. Emma Russell. I can imagine an entire draft of this script where this character doesn't exist. I had read in reviews prior to this that her character makes some head scratchingly strange choices throughout the film, but I had no idea just how nonsensical some of her decisions as a character would be. 

Shifting from hero to villain from scene to scene, this former MONARCH scientist is first kidnapped by Charles Dance's eco-terrorist baddie, seemingly against her will and as the film goes on, I guess it's implied that she planned this kidnapping with the villain herself and that she too wants to free monsters to see the earth "return to its natural state" or whatever. But then--like--it doesn't go like she planned or something and she just is a good guy again...it's-it's really stupid. 

The culmination of stupidity when it comes to her subplot comes in the form of a ten minute sequence in which Farmiga (looking incredibly embarrassed for an actress of her caliber) is projected on a comically large video screen and begins explaining her ridiculous plan to the other supporting players, and luckily the description of her plan comes with cute little powerpoint and video aids. It's hilariously bad and genuinely made me laugh out loud in the theater. The movie's pretty dumb, but not nearly as stupid as some critics would have you believe, so I wonder if this is the scene that colored many's responses to the nonsensical plot. I'd understand why. 

I'm also annoyed that it seems like we're getting a new villainous organization that seems to be the cause of resurrecting Godzilla's old foes in future films. The idea of villains down the line all being puppets for Charles Dance's evil terrorist group is just lame. It's okay to have monsters just kinda show up and start duking it out. There's no need to explain much or overcomplicate it. 

There's also a healthy dose of "levity" and most of the jokes fall with a heavy thud. There's not enough of it to spoil the movie, but it rarely works and in my personal opinion, it certainly seems like the product of reshoots. Be it Thomas Middleditch looking uncomfortable while making Kaiju sex jokes, Ken Wantanabe lessening the impact of an emotional speech by saying he read it off a fortune cookie, or the usually wonderful Bradley Whitford trying way too hard to be this film's comedic relief, all of it seems like a lousy attempt to capture the unique humor that has made the MARVEL universe so successful. 

On that note, the cast is full of wonderful actors and all of whom are kinda wasted. There's honestly not an actor in this movie I'm not a fan of, but you can tell that a lot of them just aren't into it, whether it was their contempt for the script, bad direction on Dougherty's part, or just thinking the material was beneath them, there's a real sense that a lot of these usually fantastic performers are on auto pilot.

The three exemptions to this, however, are Kyle Chandler, Ken Wantanabe and Millie Bobby Brown. All of whom deliver the goofy one-liners and relentlessly exposition-heavy dialogue with a sense of dignity and class 

I've been bashing the movie for quite a bit now and I do think it's impossible not to point out some glaring issues, but we're all here to see the monsters duke it out and on a pure entertainment level, King of the Monsters mostly delivers.

Dougherty does have a bit of an issue keeping the action in frame with his overly kinetic camera work (one battle in the water is practically impossible to see), but the action is certainly relentless and is impossible not to give any fan of Godzilla movies goosebumps. The first time Godzilla and King Ghidorah see each other across a stretch of ice with an ultimate stare down before getting in an epic brawl is when the film really starts to kick into high gear and from this point on it never lets up.

The battles are all exciting, but not incredibly well-crafted with the exception of one; a wonderful mid-air chase sequence with the infamous Kaiju pteradon, Rodan. It's a truly wonderfully executed sequence with our human protagonists trying to lure the creature out of city limits while also trying to avoid the movie's main villain, King Ghidorah, who is blocking their path. There's a "ticking clock" element and a real nice sense of geography with this fight sequence that some of the other action moments are lacking. All the while, Rodan is biting off the noses of fighter jets, flinging them around, and doing barrel rolls to knock out dozens of pilots at a time. One poor soul even accidentally ejects himself out of his aircraft and straight into the creature's mouth. It's fantastic. 

Overall, Godzilla: King of the Monsters isn't quite as awe-inspiring as those early teaser trailers would have you believe, but that certainly doesn't mean it's without merit. It's dumb, but it's far less groan-worthy than some critics would have you believe. If a movie as incredibly stupid as the first Jurassic World can get a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, then King of the Monsters certainly deserves better than a 39%. 

Like I said before, King of the Monsters gave me all the things I wanted from a Hollywood adaption of this material, but it kinda forgot to build a great movie around it. Yet, if you're a monster fan like I am, it's relentlessly entertaining.

We're at a point now where Hollywood blockbusters are starting to come back and be more than just "shut your brain off" fun and I'm very glad that franchises like MARVEL have put just as much emphasis on character building as they do action spectacle. So perhaps if Godzilla was released ten years ago, being the exact same movie it is now, it would've gotten a bit more admiration.

Whatever the reason may be, King of the Monsters has proven not to be the perfect Godzilla movie, even with all the elements that should make it a sure fire win in place. The critical response and mediocre box office results are proof enough of this. However, it really does have its moments and there's a sense of enthusiasm behind the camera that shines through in all the monster sequences that makes it far more enjoyable than one might expect. The best way I can put it is, for a fan like me, it's messily put together but it still gets the job done. 

Even if in the worst case scenario King of the Monsters is considered a flop and next year's Kong vs Godzilla can't reclaim any goodwill, the character of Godzilla will never truly go away. New filmmakers will tell the story in decades to come, either in America or overseas in the character's homeland of Japan. New adventures will be had, more monsters will be fought, and better stories will be told. 

No matter what, there is no stopping the king of the monsters.