GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS: Beautifully Bombastic

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to say there are two kinds of Godzilla fans. The first kind of fan adores the thematic ideas behind Godzilla. Films like Ishirō Honda’s original classic, Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, and Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla explore the fallout of humanity toying with nuclear power and nature. They are not really monster movies so much as allegories of mankind’s nature for self-annihilation.

The second kind of Godzilla fan enjoys watching Godzilla beating the everlasting crap out of other monsters. The circumstances of how Godzilla faces King Ghidorah are not important. The important part is the fight itself.

I strive to be both kinds of fans. I believe Honda, Edwards, and Anno made the three best Godzilla films in the franchise’s 65-year long history. But I’m also a big fan of epic cheese like Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991), Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), and Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965). These are movies with time travel, aliens, and victory dances as plot points. Part of what makes Godzilla such a fascinating franchise is it consists of a wide variety of genres, tropes, and styles.

Director Michael Dougherty aims to make Godzilla: King of the Monsters a gigantic callback to epic cheese, specifically to the Heisei and Millennium era of Godzilla movies. What I got was something admirable, beautiful, bombastic, but in the way of itself too many times.

A Properly Nonsensical Plot

Like a proper Godzilla action movie, the plot of King of the Monsters is so nonsensical and complicated that it’s not worth writing out completely. Essentially, what we have is Monarch scientist Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) are kidnapped by a group of eco-terrorists  interested in using a sonar device she invented to awaken all the monsters aka Titans across the globe. Among the Titans are Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, and of course, Godzilla himself.

With Titans bringing utter destruction upon the earth, it’s up to Madison’s estranged father Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) to work with a group of Monarch scientists to retrieve the device… and potentially help Godzilla defeat the other Titans.

Fans of the Heisei and Millennium era will find it easy to forgive the plot and characterization in this movie. Really, the plot is an elaborate connect-the-dots game, where it finds the perfect excuse to awaken each monster. I couldn’t care less how King Ghidorah gets awakened. I just want to see him awaken and roar in his full glory on the big screen. In that sense, the plot manages to string everything together without ever falling apart.

Sure, none of it makes any logical or practical sense, and the movie never gives the audience a chance to reflect how stupid the eco-terrorists’ motivations are. But this is a franchise where we’ve had man-made black hole generators as part of the plot (I’m not kidding. It’s from Godzilla vs. Megaguirus). When graded on a curve, King of the Monsters is pretty standard.

Human Characters? Rightfully Heisei/Millennium

If you’re one to forgive the plot, you’d likely forgive the human characters too. Chandler and Brown show their full commitment throughout the film, giving natural performances to elevate their one-dimensional personalities. The triangular relationship among the father, mother, and daughter is one of the better explorations of character in the Godzilla franchise. The typical Godzilla movie makes little to no effort to help you care about the human characters. Here, at least we have solid performances to give them some sort of emotional weight.

The side characters, on the other hand, are reduced to your typical one-liners and expositional dialogue. Almost every scene with the humans is someone using pictures, maps, and diagrams to explain the plot to the audience. Hilariously, most of the explanations come from Chandler’s character, who essentially knows the answer to everything the humans need to know at the moment. Either that or he figures it out in seconds. Not only does the script explain the current situation, but it also feels obligated to explain all the mythology to the audience as well, as if Dougherty is trying to convert new fans to join the club. Anyone unfamiliar with the mythology would find the storyline to be a clunky hodgepodge of biology and fantasy lingo.

Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins return as their respective characters from the 2014 film. The former, to my surprise, is given a beautiful reverse-role callback that honors the 1954 classic, while the latter is frustratingly wasted in the blink of an eye. Then you have Charles Dance using his British voice to intimidate people, Bradley Whitford dropping hilariously bad one-liners (The “Oh my Godzilla” line is in the final cut), Thomas Middleditch being the unfunny comic relief, and Zhang Ziyi providing one of the best reveals in the film.

For an average Hollywood blockbuster, there are obviously too many human characters and almost none of them serve any purpose in the grand scheme of things. However, the Godzilla completionists are not going to care, and I don’t blame them.

Exquisite Monster, Sound, and Music Design

If there’s one reason to see Godzilla: King of the Monsters, it’s to see how Dougherty honors the original source material through the monster, sound, and music design. This is the first time Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah have been on the big screen since 2004, and man, all three of them look amazing. Not only does the film stay in line with the personalities of all three monsters, it does not hesitate in giving King Ghidorah more screen time than Godzilla himself. Certainly, the film gives Ghidorah a chance to earn that “bad guy” title.

From the middle head being the alpha to the roar clearly resembling how he sounded during the Shōwa era, King Ghidorah is fully realized in Dougherty’s vision and easily worth the wait. The same can be said for Mothra, who literally looks like her 1962 incarnation writ large on a $200 million budget. The monsters all look and sound amazing.

And if that’s not enough, music composer Bear McCreary bombards us with a loud operatic score. From the original Mothra’s Song by Yuji Koseki to the classic 1954 Godzilla theme by Akira Ifukube, McCreary brings all the classic tunes back to life in full force. Most of all, Dougherty knows the perfect time to queue those melodies in the film. If you’re familiar with these tunes like I am, you might find yourself grinning through a lot of the third act.

Overexposure, Iffy Camerawork, and Very Busy Directing

The most heartbreaking thing about King of the Monsters is how the monster action gets staged. As much as I can tell Dougherty loves Godzilla, he directs the action like a cross between the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla, where it’s raining all the goddamn time, and Zack Snyder’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, where the exposure, contrast, and saturation is so high that it makes your eyes sore.

Seeing Godzilla grab one of Ghidorah’s heads may be satisfying, but when the shot is obstructed by rubble, rain, smoke, and regular darkness, it’s hard to make out all the images. It’s even worse when the shot is framed as a close-up or a medium shot. Often times, a wide establishing shot is still the best choice.

Past filmmakers like Anno, Edwards, and even Guillermo del Toro for his Pacific Rim master the way we gaze at monsters. Almost all the shots in their films are done from a human perspective, where a tangible object is in the same frame as the monsters to help get a sense of how enormous they are. Anno would have the camera look up and let buildings, streets, and telephone lines obstruct part of Godzilla’s body. Edwards would sneak in birds flying around Godzilla or even look at a monster through a bus, office window, or from a building’s roof. Del Toro would use cargo ships and freight transports as obstacles or weapons during a fight.

These subtle artistic sensibilities are sorely lacking in King of the Monsters. Occasionally, Godzilla rams King Ghidorah through a building in a glorious wide shot or Rodan and Ghidorah tackle each other in the sky like something out of a gorgeous painting. When once the overabundance of close-ups come in, the lack of tangible objects and clever framing strips the monsters of their scale and majesty. It’s still awesome to watch, but there’s definitely something missing this time.

In terms of how the action is filmed on a technical level, I’m still a bigger fan of Edwards’ Godzilla and Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island. The fact that I still enjoyed King of the Monsters says a lot about my love and Dougherty’s love for Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah.

King of the Monsters: A Mess Made with Love

Godzilla: King of the Monsters, from start to finish, is evidence that Dougherty loves Godzilla –a dedicated fan who has supported every stupid idea in every era of the franchise. The callbacks in this film can only be done by someone who knows what he’s doing. Unfortunately, I wish he had a better artistic sensibility in how he stages the action. The context of what’s going on is jaw-dropping and entertaining, but what’s literally shown on screen on a technical level is short of perfection.

That being said, as a dedicated fan myself, I still support the film and Legendary Pictures’ efforts in building the MonsterVerse. Next year, we are getting Godzilla vs. Kong. For the average moviegoer, it may sound like yet another crossover, where studios are following what Marvel Studios have been excelling at for over a decade. For Godzilla completionists, however, we’re getting a remake for a 58-year old movie. This is a dream come true for some viewers out there, including myself. The only way you can hype this announcement even more is if you bring back Gamera.

My only request is for director Adam Wingard to stage the titular fight during the day.

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters was released in theaters in the US on May 31, 2019. For all international release dates, click here.