Godzilla: King of the Monsters | Film Review

I still remember my first time.

I was 6, it was after midnight and my brother was shaking me awake. We made our way to the family room where the TV was and he promised me what we were about to watch was going to be cool. First came the Japanese characters, then that roar, and BOOM: I was watching Godzilla vs. Megalon. I’m sure some part of me knew I was watching people in rubber suits fighting each other, and model planes and tanks exploding with glee and abandon, but I didn’t care. I was transfixed, mesmerized, and my imagination was captured. The decades since have been filled with returning to the stock of movies that featured my favorite anti-hero, one comprised of a man, in a rubber suit, making quasi-Kung Fu moves, and making me believe.  

In 1998, Godzilla was released, starring Matthew Broderick. It was a monstrosity. I’m not even trying to be cute, the movie was terrible. Godzilla 1998 was so terrible, Toho films had that monster in Godzilla Destroy all Monsters, and Mean Green (the real one, not the American one) simply pile-drives it into the ground and kept moving. Yeah, it was that bad that it needed to be noted.   

So, as you can imagine, when the news broke that we would be seeing Godzilla in 2014, I was dubious but hopeful. When the news broke that Gareth Edwards was directing, I became even more hopeful. The final product was enjoyable and fun, but it forgot who the star of the movie was. In 2017, Kong: Skull Island (stick with me here, it’s in the same universe) dropped with arguably a better cast and story, plus a director who mostly knew who the star was. Then came the promise that we would be seeing more. More monsters, more fights, more Godzilla. Here we are in 2019, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters has finally been released. So, what did we get?

Monarch is back! For the uninitiated, Monarch is a cryptozoological group tasked with tracking and hunting these skyscraper-sized monsters. They call the monsters Titans. One of their agents (Vera Farmiga) goes rogue and with the help of an eco-terrorist (Charles Dance), and with her daughter (Millie Bobby Brown) in tow, uses a box to wake up and control the Titans. The box, called the Orca, was designed by her estranged husband (Kyle Chandler), who gets dragged into this mess when Monarch realizes that he is the only one capable of tracking the device, you know…because he made it. They wake up King Ghidorah – who they have dubbed Monster Zero – and Ghidorah uses his power to wake up the rest of the world’s Titans. From here all you need to know is that there are monster fights, people following monster fights, and a moment where a preteen does something they probably shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. Monster fights!  

By the rules of the Toho Godzilla movies, the story has one job; use not-so-thinly veiled social topics like overpopulation or ecological disasters or the use of nuclear weapons to get us to the men fighting in rubber suits. In this case, it’s CGI in CGI suits fighting in a computer, but you get my meaning. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the story does a serviceable job getting us from the beginning to a satisfying ending. For those of us who are well versed in the mythos of the original Godzilla movies, the story is layered with hits and nods we are all familiar with.  Some of the dialog may have been clunky, some of the characters’ motivations may have felt off, but if the driving force for you as a viewer to see this movie is to see the spectacle of monsters fighting, then I will tell you the story does a great job at keeping the viewers engaged and delivers a context to work with.

The cast is good, none of them seems to understand that they aren’t the star of the movie, but they are still good. Charles Dance uses his expressive face and very few words to deliver a fun villain in Jonah Alan. Kyle Chandler’s performance as Mark Russell leads me to believe that he was told that he needed to be Captain Ahab, only reasonable. Vera Farmiga’s performance proved that sometimes people just show up to work, and Millie Bobby Brown proves that you may be able to take the girl out of Hawkins, but we will likely keep seeing her in Hawkins wherever she goes (that’s a dig that references her wonderful role as 11 in the show Stranger Things). Bradley Whitford’s execution of Dr. Rick Stanton was probably the best bits of comedic relief, outshining Thomas Middleditch’s Sam Coleman, proving experience is better than new. I could keep going, but why? There are a lot of people in this movie, again why? Hopefully, in the next iteration of Godzilla storytelling, the production unit will realize that a loaded cast is unnecessary, but thankfully the distraction this cast provided didn’t take too much away from the real stars.  

When it comes to developing a look and feel for a whole world, director Michael Dougherty has the shine. Homage and respect are paid thoroughly to those old movies with the rubber suits. The looks for each of the respective monsters begs, borrows, and steals wherever it can. Make no mistake, Daugherty and the production team behind him lovingly sculpted these creatures from the ether of a computer landscape and executed this portion of the storytelling flawlessly. The recreation and adaptation of the original monsters gave them life beyond what we have ever seen before, somehow more believable, more alive.   

In a recent conversation, someone told me that they had trouble with shows like Game of Thrones. They didn’t understand the draw or love for such things of a fantastical nature. “In the end, I just know I’m looking at some dude who is looking at a green screen and I can’t help feeling sorry for how silly their life must be.” That kind of living must be hard, but I get it, I respect the stance.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a movie where actors are tasked with staring at a green screen and making us believe that skyscraper-sized titans roam the Earth, threatening to destroy random cities at the blink of an eye. The story is layered with nostalgia for some, and problems for others. At times, it mistakenly confuses its cast for the star of the show. All of those things said, when the Godzilla theme played – like THE Godzilla theme played – I was that 6-year-old kid again, grinning from ear-to-ear because Godzilla is king.

And now, I believe again.  

Story 6

Acting 5.5

Production 8

Over all 6.5