Godzilla: King of the Monsters - Movie Review
1"Godzilla: King of the Monsters" (2019) directed by Michael Dougherty is nearly ruined by it's human characters but is still overall a very action packed high quality MonsterVerse film worth seeing. The biggest takeaway from this is that Kong is definitely not king as long as Godzilla is around.
Our throwaway forgettable doctor characters this time are Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) who has left his family due to grief of losing his son to collateral damage in the fight between Godzilla and the MUTOs in 2014, Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) who is in control of a device called the ORCA which is capable of controlling the Titans and is convinced that monsters are essential to Earth's ecosystem and survival. Their daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) gets brought into the mix and starts to see how wrong her mother is. Godzilla awakens once again to fight off an unnatural hydra Titan from outer space called Ghidora. Godzilla has Mothra, Queen of the monsters to back him up while Ghidora recruits Rodan, the Fire Demon.
King of the Monsters has only one major issue and potential deal breaker: the humans. They are so insufferably annoying and I dreaded each and every time the camera cut away from the epic battles to see their dumb reactions and their stupid jokes. The motivation and plan for Emma makes no sense and she is borderline a villain. Mark is one of the most forgettable and boring protagonists I've ever witnessed in a film.
The movie's strengths are pretty obvious but I'll tell you them anyways. It's the epic battles, the visuals, and sound design. The sound effects are particularly awesome and each and every time Godzilla performed his iconic roar I received goosebumps. Ghidora is an incredible Titan to go against and his design was also perfected here. While I despise every single human character, there is one exception: Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), all of his scenes and line deliveries were impactful and memorable.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is generally a super high quality film but I am forced to give it a somewhat mixed score due to it's inherent issues. This is a film that would unfortunately be best experienced for a rewatch through an edited version where all or most of the human junk is cut out; at the very least during the epic battles so we stop getting interrupted by their useless reactions and cringey jokes.
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