I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
King of the who? I typically do not need a reasonable excuse to deploy a Monty Python reference, but in the case of this movie, it’s so very apropos. We’re told that Godzilla is *check notes* king of the monsters — ancient titans of nature that long predate humanity — which now, newly reawakened (oh shit), number *checks notes* 17 (and counting) roaming the Earth and doing their worst. And, like, I guess we need to just take the movie’s word on it that there are any monsters here at all. Cuz, I mean, I suppose I can just barely make out some indistinct gigantic-kaiju-ish forms moving around in the dark and the rain and the fog and the just generally awful CGI. We’re told they’re even battling at some point. Sounds exciting. Be nice to see that.
If there’s one thing Godzilla: King of the Monsters does well, it is this: It makes me long for the cheesy, badly dubbed Japanese Toho flicks I watched in my jammies as a kid on a Saturday morning on a crappy, staticky black-and-white TV. Guys in rubber monster suits awkwardly sparring! At least you could see them.
Now, being coy about the monster worked in Gareth Edwards’s 2014 Godzilla, to which this is a sequel, but that’s because there were some other interesting things going on. Not so much the human drama (though still better than what passes for that here), but at least some meaty metaphors about humanity at the mercy of a violent natural world, etc. No such luck here. Somehow even though King is literally about nothing more than how these monsters are destroying human cities, all subtext has been apparently surgically removed, and even the best glimpses we get of these titans are on TV news reports casually and randomly playing in the background while human characters squabble. Fine if a movie wants to be all about the monsters, and very occasionally about them fighting each other for supremacy, but then it has to actually be about the monsters. As in showing us the havoc they are wreaking. But this movie does not give good disaster. It’s no fun at all.
There’s nowhere near enough monster action in this unsupportably overlong (alleged) monster movie. And yet it also utterly fails to make us care about what dominates the screen. Which is a whole lotta kaiju researcher Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe: Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, Bel Canto) fretting and moping. (I adore Watanabe, but he’s a serious wet blanket here.) (Oh, and Sally Hawkins [Paddington 2, X+Y] as Serizawa’s colleague Dr. Vivienne Graham almost instantly disappears after a brief initial appearance, which is criminal.) Another kaiju researcher, Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler: First Man, Game Night), mostly rages about how his ex-wife and one-time scientific partner, Emma (Vera Farmiga: The Front Runner, Boundaries), and their teen daughter, Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), have been kidnapped by Bad Guy Jonah Alan (Charles Dance: Johnny English Strikes Again, Ghostbusters), because Reasons. It’s truly appalling that in a story that posits that the fate of the planet and of all humanity is endangered because of the rampaging titans, the putative protagonist — that would be Mark — is primarily concerned about the theft of his female property. I know, I know: this is probably meant to be a kind of metaphor for worrying about humanity and the planet. But fuck this shit all to hell. Men motivated by threats to their women is a cliché even older than the titans. And King of the Monsters doubles down on the misogynist bullshit by failing to realize — or realizing but not caring — that it didn’t even need Dance’s character. (I love Dance. This is not about the actor but the way the story is structured.) All the purpose that he serves narratively would have been better achieved without the whole kidnapping nonsense. The potential that Farmiga’s Dr. Emma Russell has for great and gripping narrative power is drained off into Dance’s villain, and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, except that male filmmakers are completely blind to what women can be.
I hate to be the one to say this again, but director Michael Dougherty has previously made a couple of low budget horror flicks (one of which is 2015’s Krampus). That’s it. Who the hell thought he could handle a $200 million science fantasy action blockbuster? (Spoiler: he can’t.) As a screenwriter, Dougherty — who cowrote the script with Zach Shields, who has even less experience — demonstrates a shocking lack of imagination. This is a movie that suggests that the entire evolutionary history of planet Earth is weirder than we have imagined, that the natural world is more strangely wonderful than we have believed. And yet they couldn’t come up with dialogue that wasn’t all awful platitudes and dumb one-liners. The plot — the straightforward depiction of the action — is an absolute mess, often lacking any context for us to understand what is going on. This is the sort of movie in which an almost random character will intone, “I’ll go,” when something dangerous has to be done, and we have no appreciation for the motivation for such a sacrifice. And other characters will repeatedly say things like “apex predator” and “hollow earth” because they sound cool, and little else. It’s all total gibberish, even compared to movies in which guys in rubber suits grapple awkwardly.
How does this shit keep happening? Why do male filmmakers with a bit of small success and a limited resume — if even that — keep getting handed the keys to big-budget movies, and keep cranking out such junk?
see also:
• Godzilla movie review: sympathy for Gojira
• Kong: Skull Island movie review: ape-ocalypse now
• Godzilla vs. Kong movie review: whole earth monster catalog (#HBO)
MaryAnn,
I could agree with various lines of criticism of this film (though I think it’s a very good “*Godzilla* movie”); but “insufficient monster action” isn’t one of them. And while I do wish that we had had at least one old-school, broad-daylight monster battle, I rarely found it difficult to see and understand what was going on (except inside the hurricane, which makes sense). And I’m someone who could barely make out about half of the Battle of Winterfell.
Is it possible that you didn’t have a very good projector?
No, I don’t think it is.
I had the same reactions as you, Allen. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but I’m definitely judging it on a “good for a Godzilla movie” scale, which may be a different one than I’d use for other movies. (On my kaiju movie scale, when evaluating the human part of the movie, the absence of a Kenny in short pants alone gives it a passing grade….)
But I really did see the problems with Mark’s character and his motivation. And did you notice the scene where Ziyi Zhang’s character starts talking to the Admiral, and Mark actually interrupts her and mansplains what’s going on. Now, it may be that his animal behavior answer is what was needed, but we’ll never know what Zhang was going to say….
I really get your point about Dance’s character and Farmiga’s, MaryAnn (though Dance does have a role, sort of – does being a bad guy in the next movie count?)
Given you were being cagey about spoilers, which I’m not going to do here….
Emma should have been the villain, right? It would make way more sense for her, being so close to both the science, to come to the conclusion that human civilization needs to be destroyed than for a random British colonel turned “eco-terrorist” to do so. She’d be the driving force, the person who hired HIM, and the source of all that kaiju DNA he was selling.
We can’t let a woman be the bad guy, even one who’s more-misguided-than-evil?
SPOILERS
Yeah, that other person could have been the villain… or even NOT a villain. Does this movie even *need* a villain? Better writing could have given us a movie in which decent people have reasonable disagreements over what is best to do. There’s plenty drama and narrative antagonism inherent in the monsters.
I suspect the filmmakers think they are being progressive and feminist in the “twist” that Farmiga’s character hasn’t actually been kidnapped, but all shaping the story like this does is remove her character’s agency and make her a pawn, not any real driving force in the story.
I don’t agree with your statement. While there is some monster action in the movie, for a 2 hour 15 movie it wasn’t enough. Especially not one that is billed as such. And if the human drama had been interesting to watch it might not have been such a problem, but the characters were 0-dimensional.
i seldom groan or complain while watching a movie in the cinema, as I consider it rude when others are talking during the show, but there were several moments in this movie that were so dreadfully conceived and/or written that I just couldn’t help myself.
And no, it wasn’t an issue of bad projection, it was a issue of bad writing/bad staging and/or bad directing.
While I still feel that there was enough monster action, I can understand (though still disagree with) the position that there was *also* too much non-monster melodrama.
Though: It’s my strong impression, unsupported by research, that GKotM has a similar proportion of monster action to human drama as does the average Toho Godzilla film (average, not something like Final Wars). And I dare say that GKotM did the human drama better than most Toho offerings did.
This movie was awesome. Dougherty is a truly underrated filmmaker (both this film and Krampus have been unfairly attacked by “critics” who are too stuck up to sit back and have fun) and I hope he continues to find success. I totally agree more female filmmakers need to be handed the keys to large franchises, but that doesn’t mean a I’m not allowed to enjoy a thrilling blockbuster made by a man. I did not find anything about this movie misogynistic; that is absolutely ridiculous! GO SEE IT!
Do you *really* imagine that critics don’t want to have fun at a movie? For most of us, this is a shit job with shit pay that brings us constant abuse like this. Why the hell would we do this if we didn’t love movies and want to have as much fun as possible with all of them?
No one said that, but nice strawman.
And I did. I explained why. Why don’t you explain how it isn’t?
Krampus has a 67% on RT by critics and only a 51% audience approval score, so no idea why you are suggesting it’s the CRITICS who “unfairly” attacked it. Everything about this movie was pretty awful except when the monsters starting fighting but even then I couldn’t help but be disappointed when comparing it to the 2014 movie. Aesthetically I thought the movie looked pretty good and I have no idea what the critic is talking about there. Like wow, you hated that the cinematography attempted to provide a little bit of atmosphere and tone to the movie instead of spotless, bright colored unicorn crapping look of Marvel movies? Marvel movies look like trash, this looked decent. The only reason this movie looked decent though was because it was attempting to poorly imitate Edwards’ tone and McGarvey’s fabulous cinematography of the 2014 movie.
I liked the movie, but I do wonder if some of the more questionable decisions came partially from the director being a horror guy.
In horror it’s pretty much assumed you’ll be showing the action at night. And not only because you want to hide a shoddy monster suit, but because a lot of horror stuff wouldn’t be scary in broad daylight.
To some extent that works here. The introductions of the Kaiju are, maybe not scary, but certainly ominous. I personally would have done the final battle in broad daylight though.
Yes majority of the time there was rain and fog and It was dark and the camera was shaky at moments but you could see what was on the screen for a lot of the shots and if you can’t you need glasses and if you have some already get better ones also you must really crazy cause not ONCE in this film did Mark the main character say his “female property” was taken and he needs it back and that’s not at all what the film was doing with his character its simply a husband who doesn’t want to let his mistakes of the past happen again and he doesn’t want his family to die he simply CARES for his wife and daughter he clearly does not view them as property stolen by him he just wants to make sure his family doesn’t die because he cares about their well being and if you are going to blow that way out of proportion and turn care into something else then great you can do that but you clearly cannot tell the difference between caring for a family member and someone stealing your personal pencil in 3rd grade
Yup, that’s how this all works. If a character doesn’t explicitly say a thing, that thing is not there in the movie.
It never once gave off that vibe he just wants to keep his family safe it makes no sense to me that you cant understand or at least slightly relate to that
I invited you to explore my Where Are the Women? rating criteria, which directly addresses the problem: https://www.flickfilosopher.com/2016/04/where-are-the-women-rating-criteria-explained.html#22
Commas — do you know what they are?
What? Not enough monster action? That and the rest is the exact opposite of most other reviews.
Tell ya what. Next movie, I will poll all my fellow critics afterward to find out what they thought, and then I will ensure that my reviews says exactly the same thing. Does that work for you?
No one wants you to say the same stuff but it is just simply wrong that there was not enough monster action unless you wanted a film that was only monsters fighting the ENTIRE time
Some people see monsters battling, and ask why. MaryAnn dreams of monster battles that never were, and asks why not.
You have two options here. You can either presume that I do not, in fact, believe that there isn’t enough monster action in the movie but that I’m lying about it for some nefarious reason. Or you can presume that I honestly disagree with you about this.
I’ll say the same thing here as I did when Alien VS Predator came out: Make a movie with all the monsters fighting but with no human characters, except as background extras who’re quickly stomped on, and with no spoken dialogue. The first half hour of WALL-E but with rampaging kaiju. I’d eat that movie for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. No studio is ever going to make it, but how much better would it be? It’d be distinctive and unprecedented and people would rave about how daring it was. Far too risky for franchise-obsessed, protect-the-brand Hollywood to even think of. Disney couldn’t handle a dialogue-free Dinosaur, so they changed it to have speaking to make it more commercial.
Pondering whether to see this. Really didn’t like the 2014 film, but the imagery in the trailers for this one looked promising.
I think there should be subtitles, translating all the roars. :-)
Isn’t that Mel Gibson’s Godzilla?
Godzilla: RRRRAARROARRRRGHH!!
[Subtitle: FREEDOOOMMM!!]
FYI they actually did that in a scene of Godzilla vs. Gigan, in the Japanese release. The monsters got comic book style speech balloons with monster-toJapanese translation.
Ah, but did the Japanese human dialogue get monster translations? :-)
Where did this feminist crap come from?
From a raging, spitting-angry feminist who is tired of seeing the same-old woman-dismissing shit onscreen.
What, you were expecting a different answer?
Reactions like your are why we need a lot more female film critics than we have now. Thanks for being That Guy. You’re a prince.
Lol….people like you make this world a terrible place.
You’re gone.
Sounds to me with your ending comments…you’re being sexist. All the throwbacks to the older godzilla movies are awesome. The plot and ideas from the other 2 films are in this movie enough to give you an idea with out over boring you. No monster battle action cause it was obscured? What the fuck are you watching? I’m done with this..no point in complaining to a moron. I’ll be seeing this movie a 3rd time asap. Do you not understand what the main monsters represent. LONG LIVE THE KING!!!
FYI to other readers and potential commenters: This is the sort of shit that gets you banned. Disagreement is fine. Abuse is not.
I was wondering why someone would bother creating sock puppets just to post a series of inane insults. It seemed sort of pointless, even if they get to “upvote” their own comments. Then I read this:
https://thebloggess.com/2019/06/03/betitted-its-my-new-favorite-word/
The human race is even more ridiculous than I thought.
Many people are very sad and lonely and desperate for human interaction, even if it is over the Internet and consists entirely of abusing a total stranger.
I’m not being sarcastic. The world is psychologically damaging to all of us.
Saw this today, and…wish I could provide a (polite and respectful) counter to this review and say I loved it, as happened with Alita: Battle Angel (still my favourite film so far of 2019), but, some amazing individual images and moments aside, sitting through King of the Monsters was pretty painful. I stand by my comment above that it should have had NO dialogue (except maybe monster subtitles – that’s gold!). There wasn’t one second featuring human beings in this movie that couldn’t be cut to instantly make it vastly better. The human cast made this as painful as any Roland Emmerich dirge. The nonstop quips! Tortuous. I’ll never understand why the makers think anyone cares at all about any of the human characters in movies like this. Am I just misanthropic? In my view, in kaiju movies people are only there to be stepped on. And how was the way they casually had several whole cities destroyed almost entirely offscreen? Are they really pretending to be sensitive to audience’s presumed feelings about seeing mass destruction… in a Godzilla movie? Isn’t that the point? Wow, is my thumb not on the pulse of popular taste. In other news, water is wet, bear denies pesky ‘shitting in woods’ rumour…
I lost count of how many times they cut to that goddamn family photo, but every time it did, I wanted to kick the seat in front of me. Kyle Chandler is one of those actors who I just want to punch, while pouring wet cement in his mouth. Don’t care what he says or does, just the fact that he’s there is…wrong. Get the hell offscreen already! Also, while it might be slightly lower on the bullshit scale for a movie like this, the way they perpetuated the myth that wolves have alphas was bloody annoying.
Ya know, I never thought I’d ever find Bradley Whitford intolerable onscreen, and yet here… yikes.
We could be made to care about them. The problem isn’t that the humans are in a monster movie. The problem is that the writers don’t give a shit about the humans. Awesome monsters battles and human characters we can invest emotionally in are not mutually exclusive.
Haha. Well, here’s one thing we can disagree on. His character was awful, but Chandler is gorgeous, so a chance to look at him for a bit was one of this movie’s small saving graces.
That was a bit nasty of me to say, but I couldn’t stand Chandler here. I’ll have to see him in something else to see if it was just my negativity around this movie that made him so unbearable.
I did genuinely love some of the shots of the monsters, but none of them were really held for long enough to truly become majestic and memorable. It would have been so easy to do that. On the way home I was humming Akira Ifukube’s original Godzilla theme. Thought that was a nice touch they threw in.
No, that’s fine, I get that! Everyone’s taste is different. I only found it funny because he was one of the few good things for me here.
I found Bradley Whitford intolerable just in the trailer, and I usually find him the absolute exception to my growing “middle-aged men who sound like Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon characters just by saying ‘hello'” intolerance.
I thought Thomas Middleditch was going to be providing the annoying quips, and instead he feels vaguely uncomfortable to be in the entire thing. I’m not sure which would be better.
you do you boo.
critics gotta critic,and yours is not exactly wrong,or even controversial.
you are actually right in the middle of the pack.
if you go into this movie with expectations of solid story telling,and fleshed out characters,whose motivations that make sense in context.plot lines that follow logical trajectories.
you are going to have a bad time.
but if you want to be transported to being a 10 yr old kid who has been waiting for five decades to see a monster battle royale could look like with the right budget?
this is your movie.
it is loud.
it is unabashedly campy and cheesy at times.
the love and care put into a homage to Japanese kaiju movies is so apparent,and when the movie breaks into godzillas original theme music I found myself giggling like a schoolgirl.i was literally grinning like a loon for the last past of the movie.
if you want monster battles…you got it.
you want loud and over the top auditory assaults?…got that as well.
you want easter eggs and hat tips to hardcore fans?..too many to count.
want kitchy and cheesy dialogue?..this is your movie.
did I mention monster battles?
but if you are looking for a solid story?
story?
there was a story?
hey! is that king gidorah on top of a volcano?
*squirrel!!
HOOOOOHA! I just watched the original 1954 Godzilla, and it breaks into this movie’s house and craps all over the place. The climactic Tokyo attack sequence is jaw-dropping. And sympathetic human drama is all over it. There’s a grandeur and awe-inspiring horror embedded throughout. I’d forgotten how great it is. I’ve no problem accepting an obvious man in a suit if the film takes it seriously. Going into my fifth decade I find suspension of disbelief in movies to be easier to indulge in than ever. Concerns about being ‘dated’ as far as production values don’t even occur to me. It’s a really good feeling to be able to eagerly accept — without cynicism — the reality that a movie presents, if it’s an engaging narrative.
Further to the above, I’m grudgingly grateful to Godzilla: King of the Monsters for prompting me to watch some of the old Japanese kaiju movies, including many I’ve never seen. Just saw the 1996 Rebirth of Mothra, which was everything I wished KOTM had been: big silly glorious unabashed FUN. The pure glee felt watching Rebirth of Mothra reminded me of one of Roger Ebert’s most salient and insightful comments from his review of Gamera: Guardian of the Universe:
“There’s a learning process that moviegoers go through. They begin in childhood without sophistication or much taste, and for example, like “Gamera” more than “Air Force One” because flying turtles are obviously more entertaining than United States presidents. Then they grow older and develop “taste,” and prefer “Air Force One,” which is better made and has big stars and a more plausible plot. (Isn’t it more believable, after all, that a president could single-handedly wipe out a planeload of terrorists than that a giant turtle could spit gobs of flame?) Then, if they continue to grow older and wiser, they complete the circle and return to “Gamera” again, realizing that while both movies are preposterous, the turtle movie has the charm of utter goofiness–and, in an age of flawless special effects, it is somehow more fun to watch flawed ones.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foP2macdobc
The giant monster movies of the 50s were cartoonish, but their reasoning was generally clear – along the lines of “beware nuclear radiation”, or “some forces should not be meddled with”
Compared to such lucidity, this new movie comes off as pretty psychotic
We’re told that there are giant monsters asleep all over the world, who at any time might wake up and cause unimaginable destruction – but it might be possible to destroy them in their sleep before this happens – and we’re supposed to believe we shouldn’t do this – because some of these monsters might be nice?
And that isn’t even the debate – both the good guys and the bad guys agree we should let these monsters do their thing – the actual debate is whether we should encourage all the monsters to destroy the world, or encourage some of the monsters to restrain the others – and this is what they’re forcing these poor actors to argue as convincingly as they can – when they’re not getting misty-eyed watching Godzilla have a NSFW moment with Mothra (?!)
The weird thing about this movie is the way it pauses and zeroes in on these actors’ emoting sweaty faces while they’re having these debates – as if there really is some important philosophical point here the audience shouldn’t miss – really, the movie was Ed-Wood level bonkers – I was expecting a sacrifice to the volcano god
True, the fights were murky and hard to discern, as if the monsters are blending with the elements – post-Pacific Rim this is the vogue – I did find those parts thrilling aesthetically, but by then my brain was short-circuiting anyway
kyle chandler should have checked his morning newspaper to see what was going to happen and checked the reviews.
I was just mildly curious as to why they used the music cues from “The Wizard of Oz” in the trailer. Did that pay off in any way at all?
I didn’t notice that, but there’s zero *Wizard of Oz*-ish in the movie. (That could have been interesting, though.)
MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS
I just saw this film of a mind that I was just going to see some giant monsters fight, and maybe have to ignore some bad acting for half the film. Instead, I emerged genuinely offended.
I may not be the closest to my Japanese heritage, but I do have an interest and respect for the culture. I’m also not a huge Godzilla fan, but I do have some knowledge of its history and have watched a few guys in rubber suits throw down.
Having the token japanese character, whose role in the 2014 film was to beg the US military not to use nuclear weapons then deliberately set off a nuclear weapon to wake up Godzilla while holding his grandfather’s watch, which was stopped by the Hiroshima bombing was a really, really bad look. I mean, Godzilla has sometimes been a pretty silly franchise, about guys in rubber suits slapping each other in increasingly strange contexts, but it’s always been pretty consistent on the central message. Nuclear weapons are bad. Having that central message being not only being betrayed by the film, but being betrayed by that specific character not only feels wrong, but feels deliberate. Like a thumb in the eye of the original films, their legacy, and the people who made them, and the culture who used them to express a grief and horror without an outlet outside the realm of science fiction.
And then on top of that, the same character then turns around and passes the torch to the unstable, unhelpful white guy. And then dies.
I’m pretty white. I’m only a quarter Japanese, and I don’t really identify as Asian. But that moment felt like a Snyder/Batman v Superman jab in the gut, a gross and deliberate attack on a cultural touchstone that looked genuinely deliberate, especially at the point of having a line of dialogue about opinions and times changing.
I was distressed enough about this “fun popcorn flick” to log in and let out my feelings someplace I thought they might be heard or listened to.
As always, love your reviews MaryAnn. We might not always agree, but I can always see your perspective and respect your opinion. But here I think we’re pretty close. Being about the people rather than the monsters ruined this film in the worst way.