Tuesday, August 27, 2019

'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' Offers Very Little Beyond Soulless Spectacles

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the sequel to 2014’s Godzilla, and the third entry in Legendary’s MonsterVerse shared universe franchise.  Set five years after the colossal battle between Godzilla and MUTO revealed to the world the existence of “Titans” (see Godzilla), the plot pits Monarch – the organization that has been studying these massive creatures for many years (as revealed in Kong: Skull Island) – against an eco-terrorist group who wishes to unleash the slumbering Titans into the world, so that it may be purged of humans and jumpstart the recovery of the environment.  As the Titans begin waking up and causing tremendous destruction all over the globe, Godzilla and Ghidorah engage in a battle of supremacy. 

In 2014’s Godzilla, the eponymous kaiju only showed up for 8 minutes of its 123-minute runtime – just about 7% of it!  Crazy.  But director Gareth Edwards did a magnificent job in crafting a taut, thoughtful, slow-burn drama-thriller that efficiently built up tension, emotion, and anticipation through a narrative framed from the human characters’ POV.  Thus, when the spotlight was finally put on Godzilla, it felt very rewarding.  It was a very well-earned payoff.
On the other hand, what director Michael Dougherty did with Godzilla: King of the Monsters is kind of the opposite.  We get to see Godzilla and the other kaijus quite a lot of times.  Now, the monster smackdown that comes off it can be fun.  But it also starts to feel saturated in the long run, and the substance of the story is sacrificed.  It’s evident that the spectacle is what was made paramount by the direction.

Nevertheless, to be honest, I would have been totally fine if this film has been all about “monster smackdown.”  But even in this end, I wasn’t quite satisfied.  Again, the monster battles can be fun at times, but none of them really struck me as memorably original or outstandingly gratifying.  At the very least, I wanted a set piece that would have given me a nerdy rush.  I found cool beats here and there, but no sequence truly delivered what I hoped.  Many scenes are also a tad too dark to see and absorb fully.
Moreover, it seemed to me that the film didn’t truly commit with taking the “dumb, popcorn flick” route.  There was a tang of it wanting to be “smart.”  But it fell flat at it.  It only made itself look a bit pretentious.  I believe that this would have been a much more pleasurable movie if it just went all in with being a feast of kaiju fights.

And for a movie trying to focus more on the monsters, Godzilla: King of the Monsters has more human characters than its script knows what to do with.  Despite of several recognizable faces in the cast, I never cared for any of the characters they were playing.  What was going on with their arcs even annoyed me a bit at times.  If I had a favorite character, it would be the snarky Dr. Rick Stanton.  But only by virtue of him being the least bland and actually being fairly charismatic.  I read later that the actor Bradley Whitford based his portrayal of Dr. Stanton on Rick and Morty’s Rick Sanchez, and the slight appeal that I found in the character finally made sense to me.
All in all, Godzilla: King of the Monsters entertains.  There’s enjoyment to be had with the monster throwdowns.  But it’s generally underwhelming as a whole.


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