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A bit all over the place in its attempt to oversaturate with monsters in response to audiences feeling the first one downplayed the King. Effects are superb. Just wish the humans had something to do other than kill or be killed.
The sequel to 2014’s Godzilla has been a long time coming, but Legendary Pictures has been very slowly building a universe in the interim. Together with Kong: Skull Island and the forthcoming Godzilla vs. Kong, the MonsterVerse shows us just how crowded it can be in this first direct sequel.
After suffering a family tragedy during the 2014 stompfest, paleobiologist Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and animal behaviuoralist Mark Russell are estranged. When Emma andher daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) are kidnapped by environmental extremists for device capable of calming down the “titans,” the embittered Mark joins forces with Monarch scientists and soldiers to help track them down.
If Godzilla was frequently accused of not showing us enough of the monster, then GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS goes in the other direction. In an attempt to squeeze in as many of Toho’s famous kaiju as possible, the film’s MacGuffin (the aforementioned device known as the “Orca”) is used to revive and attract the heavy-hitters of the historic franchise: Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah.
To the film’s credit, it at least attempts to expand on the canon and give us a point of difference from the 34 films that preceded it. From alien influences to ancient civilisations and numerous references to Skull Island, here’s a franchise peddling as hard as it can to build an empire. Yet it does so at the expense of the human moments or the slow-building tension of its predecessor.
When it concentrates on several key characters, not least of which are the handful of beautiful climactic moments with Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Ishirō Serizawa, writers Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields show us what a human-centred monster flick could look like. Beloved characters are dispatched without ceremony, while others are barely developed beyond their introductory scene.
The film is naturally in its element during the massive monster clashes. Clearly previsualised and planned out to the Nth degree, some of these give us the film’s most visually stunning moments. There’s one moment where a beastie is visualised against a ruby red sky atop a kind of Bald Mountain. You can almost hear the Mussorgsky. In isolation, these digital backdrops are gorgeous.
Yet they also speak to one of the key issues with the film. Krampus director Dougherty is so intent on matching up as many monsters as possible that it all just becomes a messy and static series of storyboards brought to life. The post-credits show the way towards the future, but we’re not sure there’s anything left standing in Gojira’s wake.
2019 | US | DIR: Michael Dougherty | WRITER: Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields | CAST: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, Zhang Ziyi | DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 132 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 30 May 2019 (AUS)
