Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

What the makers of modern, Hollywood versions of Godzilla fail to realize is that audiences don’t enjoy the character’s movies because of the visual effects, the massive destruction, or the rational explanations of the existence of the monsters.  Most of the early versions are still entertaining to watch despite obvious use of people in rubber suits smashing miniature cities.  More or less, we enjoy the weirdness and campy qualities, willing to be entertained by the drama of rooting for a giant monster to persist in the face of its human adversaries, or going mano-a-mano against a more sinister giant monster, grappling pro-wrestling style across crumbling cityscapes.

Consider King of the Monsters to be a stepping stone from its studio, Legendary Pictures, to get to the inevitable film that finally sees Godzilla from the 2014 film and King Kong from Kong: Skull Island do battle in a future movie.  Kong doesn’t appear in this film with any significance, but Skull Island is mentioned and a news report briefly shows the giant ape for the briefest of moments, letting us know they share a universe.

As far as the plot goes, we find an ecoterrorist, Colonel Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), who has taken as hostage a paleobiologist under the employ of the Titan-research group known as Monarch, Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), along with her teenage daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), to utilize Orca, an experimental mind-control technology she created to try to control the Titans (including the newly hatched Mothra), the giant monsters of the Earth that he sees as protecting the planet from humanity’s continued exploitation and destruction, effectively by destroying most of human civilization as we know it. Emma’s estranged husband Mark, who is trying to get his life back together after losing his son in the wake of Godzilla’s 2014 rampage, is out to find them and save them from further efforts to destroy the world, or themselves. Mark soon hooks up with Emma’s team of scientists at Monarch, as well as members of the military, to try to find a way to thwart Jonah’s plans and to keep the escalating numbers of monsters, led by the invasive three-headed alpha Titan named King Ghidorah, from destroying everything we hold dear. Godzilla may be their last line of defense, but where is he?

Much of this sequel seems like a means to try to correct some of the criticisms fans had to the Gareth Edwards 2014 film in terms of the lack of compelling human characters to follow, and Edwards’ choice to cut away from showing the giant monster battles until the climax.  King of the Monsters makes a concerted effort to concentrate more on how the humans are involved in trying to manipulate and control the monsters, rather than just playing hapless victims or sending in the military, as is the custom in a Godzilla release. There is a decent collection of thespians to be found within the film. It’s all for naught. There isn’t enough of a compelling reason for us to care about any of them as individuals given no one has more than a quarter of the film’s screen time (even Godzilla himself seems like a supporting player, drawing more of the same criticism it was trying to avoid), and what we do learn feels superficial and trite.

It’s truly a terrible script, placing far too much emphasis on generating an excuse for resurrecting long-dormant monstrosities to come out and destroy major cities, but as humankind is on the brink of extinction, we care little about the billions of people that are surely dying. Why should we care about the family drama occurring between a mother, father, daughter, and their deceased son (who we learn died in the wake of Godzilla’s destruction five years prior) when people are presumably being slaughtered wholesale in the rest of the world? There’s an attempt to give the Titans some backstory, but the explanations as to what they are and how they’ve come to be, only raise more questions that probably shouldn’t need to even exist in a popcorn movie that seeks to just give audiences what they think they want.

While the sound and visual effects work are certainly commendable, it’s just not enough to get us to care one whit about anyone or anything that we witness on the screen. If there isn’t going to be any suspense, intrigue, or even a modicum of awe generated within a ramped-up disaster movie, it’s a complete waste of time for anyone who isn’t sated by just witnessing two-plus hours of giant CG creatures knocking CG buildings over, and over, and over.  Other than to have a movie to test out your rockin’ home theater system, I see little need for most people who aren’t completists to keep this one in their monster-movie collection. It’s a senseless sensory experience.

Qwipster’s rating: D+

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for sequences of monster action violence and destruction, and for some language
Running Time: 132 min.

Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Charles Dance, Bradley Whitford, Zhang Ziyi, Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn
Small role: CCH Pounder, Joe Morton
Director: Michael Dougherty
Screenplay: Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields