Godzilla: King of the Monsters
First off, a disclaimer: I have seen most of the Godzilla franchise – 27 (and a half) out of 29 Toho movies, and all three American adaptations – and as such I recognise that I have a higher tolerance for some of the tropes and clichés that these movies rely on.
With that out of the way, this is a pretty solid Godzilla sequel. It ticks alll of the standard boxes – an over-complicated human plot, inexplicably advanced technology that provides humanity with no notable advantage, and frankly too many monsters.
As an American sequel, though, it has a few more things to ramp up from the previous entry: a more active, gung-ho military, a handful of pointless plot twists, and a near-apocalyptic level of destruction.
The plot involves Charles Dance's ex-army eco-terrorist outfit attempting to bring balance back to the Earth by waking the Titans, a collection of ancient, radioactive monsters who used to be worshipped as Gods by a prehistoric hollow earth society and who form the basis of many recurring human myths. Things take a turn for the worse when they release "Monster Zero" (aka Ghidorah, aka King Ghidorah, aka the best kaiju in history), a three-headed dragon who turns out to be an extra-terrestrial adversary to Godzilla, with the ability to mind-control other Titans; rather than bringing balance to nature, Ghidorah's just looking to take over.
Dance is a highlight of the human story, though he doesn't get much to do beyond growl at people in bunkers. Millie Bobby Brown and Vera Farmiga carry most of the complicated stuff admirably, involving tiresome family drama and a device that can emit sonar waves to communicate with the Titans. Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins reprise their roles from the 2014 film, but Hawkins gets even less to do here than before; at least Watanabe gets some decent lines this time around. The ostensible lead, Kyle Chandler's cliché-ridden recovering alcoholic (snore) ex-husband (snore) absentee father (snore) genius scientist with a grudge against Godzilla specifically, is tedious, utterly predictable and mostly forgettable.
There's at least one too many "Godzilla's dead! We're doomed!" fake-out along the way to an honestly pretty cool four-way showdown between Godzilla, Ghidorah, Mothra and Rodan, and I was as surprised as anyone to see Mothra actually do some useful stuff, instead of just singing people to sleep like she does in the Japanese movies. The attempts to replicate the finale from Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) suffer from not having 40-odd years of history with this character or an entire movie to come to terms with the stakes, but leads to a pretty incredible couple of shots.
The background kaiju – at least four others appear in a very limited capacity, mostly relegated to news footage – have interesting designs, but as near as I can tell they're not named for any existing monsters despite clear influences from Anguirus and Kumonga in a couple of cases. Which is weird, considering some of the relatively obscure references made to Toho movies past (including Zhang Ziyi's haircut, which I'm 99% certain was a nod to the character Miki Saegusa from the mid-90s movies), and outright references to the Oxygen Destroyer from Godzilla (1954).
I walked out of the cinema pretty happy with the film, though. It has some truly spectacular shots of kaiju battles, ticks along at a reasonable pace, and has a post-credit scene that could lead in a couple of very exciting directions.
7/10, which is about as good as Godzilla sequels get.
