Godzilla: King of the Monsters ★★THERE have been 35 films featuring the towering monster Godzilla.
I’m not sure where the latest, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, would rank amongst aficionados, but of the handful I have seen it’s definitely the weakest.
Hollywood spent more than $200 million making this film and it’s mostly a mess; a constant barrage of noise and visuals with little advancement in meaningful character or plot.
It’s meant to be a sequel to the 2014 remake, which was quite good, thanks mainly to the skill and vision of director Gareth Edwards, but the new approach seems to be just built on having more and noisier monsters.
At the end of the last film Godzilla and some alligator thing had laid waste to San Francisco during their final mega-smackdown.
The World in general wasn’t too happy about sharing with Godzilla who was handy in a scrap but tended to destroy everything in the process.
At the start of this sequel Godzilla has gone to ground but there are other so-called Titans, re-animated versions of massive creatures that used to rule the world, in existence.
Governments want them killed, but a secret agency called Monarch has been tracking them down to various remote locations.
Monarch wants them kept, claiming if they can be controlled they can have environmental benefits.
I forget what those benefits are because it’s the kind of film that includes random exposition blurted out between action scenes with little time to digest any of it.
Vera Farmiga plays a doctor who has invented a machine that may be able to control the Titans. Millie Bobby Brown plays her teenage daughter, who always seems to be in tow, while Kyle Chandler is the estranged husband and father.
In China, Monarch has been rearing a giant larva in an underground lair. At the same time as it hatches into the winged Mothra, a group of eco-terrorists, their leader played by Charles Dance, coincidentally raids the lair.
This group wants the Titans to run riot and in some way restore a ‘natural balance’ by wiping out a fair whack of civilisation.
What Edwards was able to do very well in the 2014 film was show the scale of the monsters and therefore the size of their threat.
But the sequel constantly shows the monsters either too far away or too close. When interaction does occur with humans, the tight camera, fast editing and constant noise doesn’t create emotional impact.
The best sequence of the film is the only one that does capture the scale – the rise of the Titan Rodan from a volcano in Mexico.
if you’re a big fan of the series, in addition to Goldzilla, Mothra and Rodan, you also get a three-headed Ghidorah. If none of this makes any sense to you, stay well away.
There are times when the film is impressive, but very few. It seems to have been a mountain too high for director Michael Dougherty whose only previous films of some note were Trick ‘r Treat in 2007 and Krampus from 2009.
Dougherty was offered the reins after Edwards declined. Dougherty is currently marked to also direct the next film in this series, Godzilla vs Kong, but I would be giving Edwards a try again first.