One of the biggest complaints about 2014’s Godzilla was the fact that there wasn’t enough Godzilla, who was hidden from the audience for the majority of the movie. And the team behind the sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, really took that criticism to heart, and made sure to double down on monster action. Not even ten minutes into the movie, there’s already one big set piece that consists of monsters wreaking havoc, and from there, the destruction only continues to grow.
And this winds up being this movie’s biggest strength. For anyone who wanted to see constant destruction via monsters constantly duking it out, this will be right up their alley. Joining Godzilla on the action this time around are the three-headed King Ghidorah, the dragon Rodan, and the giant moth aptly named Mothra, all of whom are longtime fan-favorite Godzilla characters. And the time these characters are on screen - whether by themselves or alongside Godzilla - winds up being a lot of fun.
Mothra winds up getting the least amount of screen time, which some will find disappointing, and some of the time she is on screen, she doesn't get to do as much as one would hope. Though her introduction is one of the film’s strongest scenes and she does have at least one other moment to shine. Ghidorah and Rodan, on the other hand, get much more screen time, along with the titular character, and not only do their fight scenes give the movie the much-needed adrenaline rush that this new Godzilla series needed, but there are some shots in this movie involving each of them that will be any longtime Godzilla fans’ dream come true.
Unfortunately, while this movie fixes the first film’s biggest problem, it winds up creating even more problems of its own that wind up being even worse. And this involves the story and all of the human characters. While the humans in the first movie weren’t exactly the most exciting to follow, nearly everyone here are much worse to watch.
There are a few returning characters, with Sally Hawkins, Ken Watanabe, and David Strathairn all returning as members from the organization Monarch that researches all these monsters. One thing that this movie does right is, despite the return of these characters, it doesn't rely on anyone having seen the first Godzilla to know what’s going on. The movie organically recaps any major plot points from the first film that they felt the audience needed to know, and manages to start and end the movie acting, for the most part, as its own independent entity.
Nearly everything else regarding the story or characters, though, feels like a chore to watch. While the movie does devote a lot of screen time to monster destruction, it also devotes a fair amount of time to these human characters and their explanations as to why all this is happening. At two hours and ten minutes, this runs way longer than it needed to, with plenty of scenes devoted to all the human characters standing around in a panic, reasoning out the very strange motivations behind what’s driving all this action.
This movie is very exposition heavy, and it feels like this movie contains an extremely complicated logic to justify why Godzilla and all these other monsters are around and fighting each other. And as much as certain characters try explaining some of this with as much emotion as possible, it never really becomes interesting to hear after the fifth or so cutaway to them still going on about all this. If anything, the logic feels forced, and makes things more complicated than they needed to be, still taking the time to explain backstory well over an hour into the movie. By the time it gets to the halfway point, given the fact that characters are still caught up in so much exposition, it becomes difficult to really follow what’s truly going on, and one may easily give up caring about the story by this point.
Meanwhile, none of the characters themselves have really any distinct personalities of their own, mainly being constricted to playing up one major emotion throughout the entire movie. Kyle Chandler spends nearly all of this movie stressed out and overly serious, constantly arguing with the Monarch scientists, and yelling at whoever will hear him. There’s a subplot involving his estranged wife, played by Vera Farmiga, and his daughter, played by Millie Bobby Brown, though the movie never really elaborates as to what the major problems are between all of them that drove them apart when they’re fist seen at the start of the movie, and not much is really learned about that throughout the movie, despite the fact they’ll constantly call back to this conflict that’s never explained.
Brown, too, spends most of this movie running around and screaming, and while her acting is fine, what’s frustrating is the fact that her character serves nearly no purpose to the entire movie. Outside of one major action that could have easily been handled by any other character, she really has no bearing on the rest of the movie other than to force some side conflict that wasn’t even needed. The same can be said for Charles Dance, who’s supposed to be the villain, yet is barely seen, and when he does actually make an appearance, is inconsequential to the rest of the film. The most entertaining of the bunch winds up being Bradley Whitford, who like everyone else, serves little bearing on the rest of the movie, but is at least enjoyable use to some of the quips and one-liners he spouts at various points.
Farmiga is given the most to do, though that doesn’t mean her character is necessarily interesting to watch. Much of the film’s convoluted storyline stems from her character’s questionable motivations. Her alliance constantly comes into doubt through this entire movie, and any time she tries justifying her actions, it never once comes off as believable, or at the very least, well thought out. The problem is the film rarely commits her character to one extreme. Her logic is insane, yet she’s supposed to come off as a more grounded, realistic character. If she’s going to have some twisted logic, she should have been more over-the-top. Otherwise, her motivations needed to be more believable if she’s meant to be taken seriously.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters trades in one problem for another and this time, it ultimately hurts the movie even more than it did the first time around. The movie is first and foremost a Godzilla movie, and it does a great job at monster-on-monster violence that longtime fans of the legendary character will be sure to enjoy. However, even action movies still need likable characters and a cohesive story so it can be enjoyable to follow, and this film has neither of those. The movie is more complicated than it needs to be, is too long due to its convoluted motivations and explanations, and contains a whole slew of characters that are just not enjoyable to watch, despite the sheer amount of screen time devoted to them. This isn’t a bad movie, but it certainly isn’t the new action classic that it could have been.
Recommendation: Proceed With Caution
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