Godzilla: King of the Monsters (dir. Michael Dougherty) is a sequel to the 2014 reboot Godzilla which was surprisingly fun. This film starts off in the aftermath of the previous film where Godzilla had just destroyed a city fighting another huge monster. All of these monsters, Godzilla included, are called Titan. Now the world is looking to find out if other Titans exist and struggling to figure out what they will do about them.
The film follows the family dynamic between Dr Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) and their opposing views on how to deal with the Titan situation. Caught in the middle of this is their daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown).
Dr Emma’s position is that they need to free all of the Titans and let them regenerate the earth, but in the process, they will kill many people, Mark’s position is that they should keep the Titan’s dormant and protect human life.
At one point Dr Emma pontificates about the virtue of environmentalism and that humans have been destroying the earth and so they don’t get to be in charge and the Titans are here to help resuscitate the dying planet. It felt very on the nose, like a propaganda video, then the film shifts to supporting nuclear power. It was a muddled and confusing position to take.
The film then travels all around the world going from set piece to set piece, which is just massive CGI monsters smashing each other and everything around them. And it looks great. The film is clever to put all of the fights in either, smokey, snowy, or rainy environments so you can’t get a clean crisp look at anything. It makes all of the Titans look more believable and real. The trouble is when they try to show the grand scale of the Titans in relation to the humans the digital effects let them down
While the Titans fight, the humans never do. They have conflict and differing viewpoints but there is no resolution of their conflict by their making. It happens despite them not because of them. This lack of agency makes it difficult to care about the characters as they are just along for the ride like where are.
So what do I think of this movie? I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it. It’s not what I would call a good movie, but it wasn’t terrible. Like a puppy, it’s sometimes aimless and gets easily distracted, it is loud and noisy, it lacks discipline, and causes a mess, but its fun for a short while.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
May 2019