The world’s longest-running film franchise goes off the rails a bit.
The original Godzilla (1954) was a straightforward metaphor for the horrors of nuclear war. In contrast, this iteration, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, tries to be too many things to too many people—a disaster movie, a horror movie, and a human-interest drama, with a touch of National Treasure hidden-worldness thrown in for good measure—and doesn’t quite succeed at any.
The movie’s huge cast starts with Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chandler playing Emma and Mark Russell, now-divorced scientists who lost one of their children to the destruction of San Francisco in the 2014 Godzilla film. They’ve since created a device called the Orca, which can communicate with so-called Titan monsters by mimicking their cries. Mark thinks it’s been destroyed, because it’s so dangerous, but Emma intends to use it in a “ThanoSnap”(TM) scenario to restore balance to the Earth. Too bad she doesn’t realize that one of the beasties called by the Orca is Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon monster that’s got its own agenda. Oops. Can Godzilla subdue the legions of monsters called to fight by the alien dragon? What do you think?
The best disaster movies use the specific to illustrate the universal. One of the problems with King of the Monsters is that it’s all over the place, both geographically and thematically. We get moments of pure joy, kaiju-wise, then beat over the head with an environmental message, then technobabbled at—there’s no coherent message. As another example, Godzilla’s underwater lair reveals an intriguing ancient, Atlantis-type civilization, but it’s not explored at all. It might be that the director, Michael Dougherty, didn’t push hard enough for a tight story; his only previous directing credit is Krampus (2015), a MUCH smaller movie in every regard.
Although the visuals are muddy here and there, there are many scenes that will make monster buffs giddy—Mothra, in particular, is gorgeous. And it’s nice to see Boston getting destroyed instead of the usual Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, etc. The music is wonderful throughout, as you’d expect from veteran Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, 10 Cloverfield Lane). The plaintive version of Blue Öyster Cult’s namesake hit playing over the end credits is a nice touch, as was the dedication to two crew members who worked on the 1954 film.
So far, the film has more than earned back its $170 million budget, and then some—the current worldwide gross stands at $295 million, and it’s been in wide release for only 2 weeks.
This is the third film in Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse, after the 2014 Godzilla and 2017’s Kong: Skull Island. Given the way King of the Monsters ends, I have no idea how the next planned picture, Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020, is going to make any sense. But I bet it’ll be pretty.
By the way, you might want to say for the end credits, or look up the scene on YouTube. The story continues…
Godzilla: King of the Monsters PG-13 132 min.
Directed by Michael Dougherty
Written by Dougherty, Zach Shields, and Max Borenstein
Featuring Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn
- Godzilla (Gojira) (1954)
- Godzilla (1998)
- Godzilla (2014)
- Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
- Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Gidorâ: Daikaijû sôkôgeki) (2001)
- Godzilla: Monster Planet (2017)
- Gojira no gyakushû (Godzilla Raids Again) (1955)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)