G-Mania, Day 34: Godzilla: King of the Monsters

And here we are at last, the final day of our (probably far too long) journey through the Godzilla franchise. It’s led us to the newest entry, just come out this very weekend, the follow-up to Legendary’s 2014 reboot of the series for American audiences and the foundation for what will be a shared universe combining the worlds of Godzilla and Kong.

Now, I’ve gotta start by saying that my expectations for Godzilla: King of the Monsters were rather high to begin with. Following some re-evaluation, my enjoyment of Godzilla has really only grown over the years (in spite of the film’s flaws), and Toho’s Shin Godzilla absolutely floored me. At the same time, my appreciation for Kong: Skull Island has also grown (though I still have some strong issues with it), so this bridge between the two franchise entities seemed like nothing short of a slam dunk for me: plenty of kaiju to provide some opportunities for battling, the possibilities inherent in setting Godzilla on a collision course with Kong, and years to learn from the mistakes of the previous film.

I had taken the earlier train home from work, gone to the restaurant down the way from the IMAX theatre (gotta see the Big G on the biggest screen available, amiright?) for a filling dinner and some brews, then hitched up to the theatre, settling in for some good times.

Those good times never came, and my coming to full grips with that fact is part of the reason it’s taken me a few days to put my thoughts into writing.

The Godzilla film this one most reminds me of is Godzilla 2000, though a bit of Final Wars is mixed in there as well. So much nonsense is going on, and it’s executed so damn poorly, that it’s hard to take the film seriously, even as the film takes itself insanely seriously. Here’s what’s stuck since I left my seat: A couple working for Monarch (the shadowy organization introduced to us in Skull Island) lost their son in the San Francisco incident back in 2014. They’ve continued their work, studying other strange kaiju that have popped up around the world, but they’re interrupted by a so-called eco-terrorist, who kidnaps one of these scientists, the one who’s developed a way to basically control the various monsters. Insert many a monster and some action and battling and whatnot. To be honest, much of the plot’s sense – what little there is, anyway – is lost and/or watered down by the frenetic energy with which the film is presented at all times.

Indeed, this presentation is the first major problem I have with the film. Whilst I appreciate an interesting approach to camera work, rather than some dull, staid angles, there is far too much movement and close angles for anything to stick meaningfully in the eye or mind. This was apparently deliberate, with writer/director Michael Daugherty stating he had a fondness for Gareth Edwards’ slow-burn approach in 2014, but declaring that he would go more all-out, more balls-to-the-wall with his entry. I guess he succeeded there, ‘cause there is hardly a coherent scene in the film.

Then there’s the characters, and I use that term very loosely here. I’ll join the legions of haters in spitting some venom at Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen five years ago, as their roles were incredibly underdeveloped, yet still were given much of the film’s screen time. Here, it seems the only lesson learned from the earlier failure was that the human plot was fairly dull. We’re given precious little development to our expanded cast of characters, aside from their professions and vague philosophical leanings, but they’re also just thrown at us from the start: we are mere birds in the way of a Randy Johnson fastball. There are some solid actors here, including Vera Farmiga, David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, and Charles Dance, but they can only do so little with the threadbare and hyperactive script they were given. Most of the time these “characters” spout some gibberish about the monsters – ahem, “titans” – and something explodes or the camera just whizzes away to the next overblown line of vacuous dialogue. And we’re expected to give a shit, apparently, despite having no reason to do so whatsoever. Things seem to happen all the time, but it’s never anything of lasting consequence. It’s the action version of Us: when so much is being said at once, the din winds up amounting to nothing but noise. And noise was all I got from this film, both visual and aural. I was accosted every second I sat there, the film buffeting the audience with gobs and gobs of nonsense.

Possibly the worst aspect of everything, though, is the blatant setting-up of the shared universe. In this regard, the film plays out like an even louder version of 2017’s The Mummy: Replace Tom Cruise with Godzilla, Jekyll’s shadowy organization with Monarch, and all of those cheeky references to other Universal monsters (like Johnny Depp’s Invisible Man and Ansel Elgort’s Hunchback of Notre Dame) with Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah (and some other, lesser monsters put in because the filmmakers apparently thought there weren’t enough choices in Godzilla’s massive bestiary). Of course, it was too much to assume that Hollywood would learn from its terrible mistakes (even the ones made several times, like Warner Bros. fumbling the DC cinematic universe and Universal’s multiple failures in launching their own monster-based franchise), and we see this effort catch fire, nose dive, and plunge into the sea with the force of hundreds of megatons of TNT.

I wanna say the failure here lies in the focus on Monarch. In my eyes, it would have been pretty easy to connect Godzilla and Kong, even going so near as to just have the Big G happen upon Skull Island whilst perusing the Pacific. Instead, we get this overcooked and underdeveloped cloud of human chaos, plenty of people running around and yelling in earnest with little mattering and even less for us as audience members to care about in the slightest. The filmmakers missed the relatively simple underpinnings of Godzilla as a character and a concept and fell into the trap of overcomplicating matters in a hilariously manner.

I hated this film so very, very much, and that enmity hasn’t waned in the past couple of days. It still amazes me how Hollywood can be so short-sighted whilst looking so far ahead, and how they can learn exactly nothing from their miserable past mistakes. This film is a fucking trainwreck and the film I look down on the most out of the entire series. Maybe I’ll soften in the coming years, but I doubt I’ll grow to actually like the film. On a positive note, I returned to the restaurant’s bar later that night, and my howling about the film’s shittiness netted me a sympathy beer from another patron seated next to me. I was so surprised and pleased that I did my best to pay the gesture forward and pay for a nearby couple’s first round. I guess the night wasn’t a total loss after all, but it took quite a bit of pain to get to the payoff. Kinda like the film itself, just with more of a payoff at the bar. Suffice it to say, skip this one, kids, it’s a mess of the worst kind. I have no idea how next year’s reboot of Godzilla vs Kong is gonna go, but if this film is any indication, it’s gonna be a tough sit. Joy. At least there are other, better Godzilla movies out there, as this retrospective has shown, and there’s still the follow-up to Shin Godzilla somewhere in the offing, so this film’s failure isn’t the end of the world, it’s just massively disappointing. Such is the way of things sometimes. See ya, kids.