Godzilla: King of the Monsters Fights For Some Balance

I’m always down for a good monster movie, and Godzilla is one of my favorites.  After seeing the 2014 Godzilla and 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, the anticipation for the next chapter was excruciating. It’s been a long wait, but director Michael Dougherty has brought the radioactive kaiju back to us with some of his closest frenemies in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Animal behaviorist Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) has thrown himself back into his work after his family was shattered with the loss of his son during Godzilla’s epic San Francisco battle in 2014.  He is a former employee of The Monarch Agency, a cryptozoology outfit researching Godzilla and other animals they call massive unidentified terrestrial organisms (MUTOs) or titans, hibernating beneath the earth’s surface for millions of years. His estranged wife Emma (Vera Farmiga) still works for them and is devising a machine to communicate with the titans. An eco-terrorist group has different ideas for the device and kidnap Emma and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) to use the device to awaken the beasts so they can take back the world from the most destructive force on the planet: humans. Mark is enlisted to find his estranged wife and daughter and save the world.

I can’t say I enjoyed the story of Godzilla: King of the Monsters much.  With such a heavy-handed script, there wasn’t much to like. We have to remember Godzilla’s origins through his many iterations – to simplify, he is a creation of the post-nuclear attack fears of the Japanese. To make him and his nemesis monsters a global concern is of course important as nuclear threats have no borders, but I felt the fabulous Ken Watanabe as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa needed more Japanese backup, so-to-speak.  As far as diversity though, I was happy to see some familiar faces front and center like Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Elizabeth Ludlow, and Ziyi Zhang.

The theme of wanting to help rid the earth of us pesky humans was a concept I could get down with but it was conveyed in such a pedantic way it became tiresome, and the family melodrama seemed like saccharine filler. Director Michael Dougherty, the man behind Trick r’ Treat and Krampus, gave us plenty of eye-popping visuals but none of the substance of his previous films because there was too much talking and not enough monster time. Too much exposition, “‘splaining”, emoting and platitude after platitude; along with some aggressively comedic moments hammed up by Bradley Whitford of Get Out and West Wing fame. In fact, there was so much talking, some weirdo came into our cinema off the street and shouted at the screen.

Godzilla himself was simply glorious. The fights, animation and sound design created an immersive experience on the IMAX screen. The scoring by Bear McCreary payed homage to Godzilla’s epic theme originally written by Akira Ifukube, and Ghidorah, Mothra and Rodan all had their time in the spotlight. Godzilla’s concept design was true to his historically cranky “Hey, you kids just woke me up from my nap and I’m gonna whup your asses” look. With radioactive blue beams and his signature giant stomping foot, it was worth enduring all the human hot air to see him rise and fight his monster enemies.

There’s not much else to say except see Godzilla King of the Monsters for, well, the monsters. Pay the extra to see it in 3D and IMAX so you’ll at least appreciate the top-notch visuals amidst all the jibber-jabber, but don’t expect much more. Here’s hoping the next chapter has a better story and script when Godzilla meets Kong.