Godzilla 2: King of the Monsters quicky Review.

Alright trying something different, a current movie review of all things. This is going to be pretty quick and dirty, so sorry if I'm all over the place, hard to gather thoughts when you're going on the fly with a movie you just saw and can't re-watch.

I'm also going to get into some fairly big spoilers.


So wow, KOTM came out almost a week ago as of this writing and it is all over the place in reception.  Some people saying its the greatest thing ever, some people right the opposite, some just kinda eh. Too much monsters, not enough monsters. I swear it's like people watched completely different movies and I had no fucking clue what to expect because of all the conflicting reports.
As for where I stand... I think it's an okay movie. I wasn't necessarily bored. But I also thought that it wasn't nearly as good as many of the Toho films.

Part of issue with the US Godzilla movies so far has been an inability to have compelling human characters and a strange unwillingness to focus on the monsters fighting for any adequate amount of time.

Now, KOTM is a lot better than '14 was in regards to both the humans and the screen time the Kaiju have, but lets be honest, that's not a high bar to clear. However, I think more than anything it's about presentation. KOTM doesn't exactly cut away from the action the same way '14 often did, instead opting to have the human characters in the middle of the battle, usually cutting between the fight and occurrences with the humans in the middle of the chaos. This isn't a bad idea in theory, but I personally found the switches to be too frequent and the execution wanting. There's no real good solid action scene of just two or more Kaiju fighting. You know the scene in the trailer where Godzilla and Kind Ghidorah run at each other and collide? In the movie they immediately cut to the inside of an aircraft where we see glimpses of them wrestling through a window as characters talk.

I don't want to make it seem like every scene in like that, because there are moments that are very good and I enjoyed greatly. One scene particular has Ghidorah wrapping his heads around Godzilla like the classic '91 poster and constricting like a snake. Another scene has him lifting Godzilla off the ground and dropping him like a meteor, it's an awesome shot. But it really makes me wish there was more build up towards them and that they weren't so brief.
The best way I think I can articulate how this is an improvement over '14 but still lesser than possible, is to point towards an Ultraman series. Tsuburaya Productions understands how to choreograph and pace a fight scene within 3 minutes to a satisfying degree. You get a good amount of action in a 22-25 minute program, often times with really creative shots, something KOTM sorely lacks.
I do not think KOTM is bad, but it's disappointing to me that a multi-million dollar big budget movie doesn't really know what to do in a monster fight, which is weird because Kong: Skull Island got it down damn near perfectly in every aspect. From pacing, to the frequency of the fights, to the way they were shot, all tied together with some fun human characters. And Kong only had the Island and a few boats to mess about with, not an entire city. But I guess having a different team makes all the difference.

Also I really feel bad for you if you were expecting Mothra to do a lot. She basically has two major scenes for fighting, get tackled by and then wounding Rodan, getting bug zapped by Ghidorah. That girl deserved better.


If I do give KOTM anything for it's monsters its that's the introductions are incredible. Almost every time Godzilla shows up or Mothra, Rodan, etc. it's like an event with truly epic shots. I just wish that feeling could last. I supposed the phrase take a picture it'll last longer really sums it all up.
Special mention should be made for Mothra in particular because I really like how she's always presented as a divine light, very fitting. Ghidorah I have mixed feelings about because there are great shots like the Trailer's infamous cross shot, but he's also almost constantly covered in a hurricane. I get the symbolism, it just kinda sucks you can barely see him. In fact the movie never has any major shots of kauji in clear bright weather it's constant clouds, rain and darkness.
As an aside, they also have this weird habit of King Ghidorah charging up and then Godzilla attacking. It's not surprising the first time, even less a second and third.


I know I've kinda been dragging on the film thus far, so I want to give some positivity to break up the criticisms and I think the highest praise I can give the film is it's music and sound design. Sound design is an under rated aspect on film making and it's such an important one because it can evoke different emotions and set tones (Heh) not to mention hearing the freaking movie. Aside from two or three lines of dialogue being muddled, KOTM gets this so right. Every stomp, roar and explosion are incredible. I think the film very well may have the absolute best Godzilla Roar ever. It is so much louder than anything else in the film and the sheer power made me think the theater's speakers were about to blow. It was almost breathtaking and I mean that with completely sincerity.


Also, as previously mentioned the music is phenomenal. I don't normally buy movie soundtracks, but this is damn tempting. Bear McCreary's work on this soundtrack is frankly some of the best I've heard in a long time. Bear did such a great job taking established themes and compositions and arranging them in such a way to make them uniquely reflect his personal touch. His rendition of the Godzilla Main title and Mothra's theme bring me such joy. Old Rivals is also a piece I love, really like how a tiny bit of the Godzilla theme is incorporated just to let you know who it's for. Also finally get to hear Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla in a Godzilla movie, so that's awesome.



So about those humans... Again it's better than '14, but not saying much.
The plot is also batshit insane but in a good way.

Basically our plot involves the device called the ORCA which can communicate with the Kaiju, or Titans as the film refers to them. The ORCA was developed by Dr. Emma Russell- a paleobiologist and her husband Dr. Mark Russell- an animal behavoral specialist, both part of the Monarch organization. The two became estranged after the loss of their son during the 2014 battle in San Fransisco, their daughter Madison surviving. Emma resorted to her work while Mark became an alcoholic before cleaning up and applying his work to smaller animals after leaving Monarch. Emma and her daughter are kidnapped by eco terrorists who want to use the ORCA to wake up the titans and supposedly restore balance of the earth in doing so, Emma herself even coming around to the idea with honestly very little pretense to do so. Mark is brought in by Monarch in hopes that his work on the ORCA will allow them to track it's wave length.
Things get out of control for Emma when the original plan of waking up one titan at a time gets thrown out by King Ghidorah being able to wake and control them himself, causing mass chaos across the globe.
There's themes of titans being used to heal the earth and things of that nature having parallels with Mark and Emma coming to terms with their loss, Mark in particular who hates the titans due to that loss. But frankly they never really landed for me the way I think they were supposed to because I never found myself invested enough.


Emma's framing as a somewhat sympathetic antagonist is also really weird. It's been brought up that there's this strange thing of big studios like Disney and WB doing films that feature weirdos with big ideas to correct the problems of the earth actually just being psychopaths in their methods, which seems...almost propaganda-ish. But this one in particular in really weird because Emma is actually at least partly right. I don't mean that in like one of those bullshit articles like "Joker was right all along" from people who are mental, I mean by the end of the film we're shown that the titans are pretty much cleaning up our shit in a passive manner. Really the massive fault was, well, that adage of the ignorance of man in thinking nature is in his control, also the fact that Ghidorah isn't natural. Yeah, unlike the other titans, it's revealed that King Ghidorah is in fact a freaking Alien. That is awesome and surprising as hell that they would do that.

So my feeling towards the plot is that I appreciate how insane it is, but I also still didn't really care for the family drama. The best characters are still the side characters like Ken Watanabe's Serizawa. Which... I gotta bring up that they do a stupid with him and it is by far the dumbest move in the movie. They kill him off. They kill off the most likable character, learning absolutely fucking nothing from the last film.
Basically Godzilla needs to be revived at a certain point so they figure a nuke'll work really well. But they can't just torpedo it into the underwater cave he's resting in because of damage to their weapon systems from earlier. Why a multi-billion dollar sector can't simply get another goddamn sub is anyone's guess. So it has to be hand delivered and Serizawa is the one that goes, resulting in a really well done but completely unnecessary scene for an unnecessary death. Did Bethesda write this?

*sigh*

The other support characters are well enough. I enjoyed Zhang Ziyi as Dr. Ilene Chen and Dr. Ling Chen, I hope to see more of her in the future.
I've heard some complaints about Bradley Whitford as Dr. Rick Stanton in that the actor is really good but that the character wasn't great with bad one liners. Honestly I didn't mind him that much, a couple of lines made me groan but I was fine with him for the most part.







I can understand why this film is getting such mixed reactions, it is a very mixed bag of a movie with good concepts I've seen done much better elsewhere with a lot less fat. Go watch the Heisei Gamera movies, those are great and to be perfectly honest much better at the whole protector of the world worshiped by ancients thing they try to do here.
Or, Kong: Skull Island, that too is a better film.

As many complaints as I had, I still find that Godzilla: King of the Monsters isn't bad, just a resounding okay. I wish I could be more enthusiastic but I just can't be. This should be a better film than it is, but there's too much wasted potential and at the same time I can't muster up any anger for it. I will say KOTM is a step in the right direction from Godzilla '14, it just trips over it's feet while doing so.