Godzilla King of the Monsters (2019)

2014’s Godzilla remake was Hollywood’s attempt to tell the famous story in a serious way. Ernest and emotional it turned Godzilla into a heroic figure and painted humanity in all its flaws. King of the Monsters director Daugherty described that fist film and this follow up in comparison with Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens. Seeing these two films now I understand. King of the Monsters builds on the story beats of the first film and the world building and takes it in a less cerebral more action packed direction similar to what happened in the Alien films.

And as knock down monster fighting film, King of the Monsters is great spectacle. The story is just enough to get us through from encounter to encounter without boredom. The narrative is economically told and focused on building the reasons for the set pieces and it does that well.

What it doesn't do well is the character building or believability. Characters act more like archetypes than real humans and they don't often make realistic choices, the kinds of choices that feel real and honest in the moment. Instead choices seemed put there to advance the plot in the way the film makers needed it to go. The story is a bit forced and not overly organic.

But what it does, big monster fight set pieces, is done well and the film remains enjoyable “for what it is” but it doesn’t go beyond that, doesn’t transcend its genre. That’s fine. It might have been nice to have it be something more, to use the story to tell something grander. There is an overly simplistic message about human folly and some skimmed over ideas about the methods used to address global problems but the film never gets into that enough.

King of the Monsters isn’t cringe or eye rolling despite a few plot and character moments which take us out of the film. For what it tries to do it does it well.

Godzilla King of the Monsters
Starring: Kyle Chandler, Ken Watanabe, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Zhang Ziyi, Bradley Witford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, O'Shea Jackson, Jr., David Strathairn, Joe Morton, CCH Pounder
Director: Michael Daugherty
Writers: Zach Shields, Michael Daugherty