But cut to five years later, and Legendary Pictures have used it as a springboard to a larger shared universe, pitting Toho's many monsters against each other across various films, including in spin-off Kong: Skull Island. Going back to the Godzilla well, and with Edwards replaced by horror director Michael Dougherty, this sequel, King of the Monsters, should be an improvement. In some ways it is, but otherwise it's all status quo. A lot of the same issues that plagued the first film make a return in this follow-up, but with unique blunders tainting the final product.
Five years after the battle of San Francisco, Monarch scientist Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) are kidnapped by a syndicate of eco-terrorists, led by former British Ops agent Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), who are intent on reawakening the titans sleeping in the earth, using the three-headed dragon Ghidorah as their reigning alpha. Emma's distant ex-husband and animal behavior specialist, Mark (Kyle Chandler), is soon approached by Monarch scientists Serizawa and Graham (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins), rallying together to track the giant lizard Godzilla, who is the only living competitor able to challenge Ghidorah, with the newly born titans Mothra and Rodan joining the fray as well.
To be fair, it seemed from the beginning like this movie was going to learn from prior mistakes. While a bit hasty, the emotional center of the movie, this family splintered after the San Francisco assault and the loss of their son, had me more initially engaged with the material than the families of the first. The split has affected the lives of Dr. Emma Russell and her daughter, the two living near a secret Monarch facility, where they preside over the awakening Mothra in her caterpillar state. This was a solid opening to the film, which seemed to address my concerns, and had me thinking "I may actually enjoy this more than the first."
It's what happens when the gunfire starts (literally) that the film takes a downhill dive. Once again, the main issue lies in the scripting and characterization. The original Godzilla had a starry international cast, with a slew of Oscar winners and nominees, but was disappointing for how it wasted them on cardboard stand-ins, save for Bryan Cranston as the one decently constructed character. Every other character in that movie existed either as a surrogate shepherding us to the destruction, or as expositional machines.
This sequel continues that trend as well, squandering a phenomenal batch of cast members both domestic and international, that it then offers nothing to. They exist for the same purposes, which is a shame, because there is at least an honest attempt at giving the humans more character and soul, especially with how much more energy is given to the performances by way of direction. And yet, many of them are so inconsistently written, or their cause and contribution to the story stretches any credibility thin. There's nothing quite as dull as Johnson's turn, but there's also nothing as gripping as Cranston's either.
Kyle Chandler, for example, has most of the heavy lifting as a father who was always absent, and whose marriage and life was thrown out of whack when he turned to alcohol in grief. He's presented as openly hostile to the titans, believing they all need to be destroyed, and so his arc is to overcome his hatred of them for a greater purpose. A neat idea, but that journey never feels earned on an emotional level. Instead, it feels more informed, and there's nothing really convincing about his eventual switch.
But that's nothing compared to Vera Farmiga. She's an amazing character actress, but she is suffocated by this film, which mainly comes down to how we're even meant to feel about her. With her character having invented the MacGuffin of the film, a machine that can channel the monsters' vocal frequencies, she's the more open-minded to the creatures' reign. But as it progresses, this character reveals some shady layers, and has a serious tonal crisis on its hands. The film tries to mine sympathy from her character, but that's upset because the film so often depicts her as a total villain of countless contradictions, and it's such a muddled portrayal made worse by Farmiga's aggressive flip-flopping.
Elsewhere, Millie Bobby Brown, in her film debut, contributes solid work as the daughter caught in the center of this crisis, but most of her most important scenes aren't until the third act. Until then, she's motivational tool for plot convenience, which is such a waste. Charles Dance plays the leader of the eco-terrorist syndicate, but is written and played in such one note fashion, without nuance or any sense of fascinating enigma. In fact, until the second half, I'd say he has less than ten total lines in the film. Ziyi Zhang is basically acting as Sally Hawkins 2.0, Bradley Whitford and Thomas Middleditch are brought on as forced comic relief, while O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Aisha Hinds are wasted as military stand-ins to give the army men a face.
We also have returning members from the first film, including Ken Watanabe's Serizawa. He's perhaps the closest the film gets to a fully realized character, pleading strongly for the co-existence of humans and titans, and for man's hubris to let nature put things back in perspective. He also gets the best acting moment of the film, but in doing so, that does add this "cute and fluffy" element to the monsters that feels jarring. But Sally Hawkins has it worse. who in the first film was a glorified background extra, with a performance largely consisting of worried looks, and could have easily been cut out. The same continues here, and yet they manage to make her feel even more irrelevant, and it's a disgraceful squandering of her talents. And David Strathairn is clearly only here out of contractual obligation. He couldn't seem less interested in what he's doing.
It's often joked that no one watches a monster movie for its story, but it seems even the screenwriters have checked out, as the narrative these human characters are tangled in dips into absolute nonsense. Between all the character "interplay," the movie suffocates itself beneath the surplus of plot details. Case in point being the film's clumsy environmental angle. In the years since the original, everywhere the monsters have fought have given off enriching radiation, as those cities become green and thriving again. And so that becomes the main end goal for the film's villains, as the monsters' freedom would also free the earth from pollution, overpopulation, and extinction. It's the most laughably hyperbolic faux-activism you can imagine, and yet strangely the film may actually side with that argument.
I'm not kidding. The film does seem to fall into that nihilistic view, because much of the movie's character writing and conflict is so out of control, it feels like the film is endorsing that destruction. That's the total antithesis to Godzilla, whose creation was an allegory for the manmade destruction with the atomic bomb. It's not the only flimsy narrative piece either, as the family drama that acts as the film's emotional anchor loses its footing, eventually becoming quite spiteful, and so any catharsis to be mined from it is wholly unearned. Even basic continuity is laughed off, as a character appears to be in two places at one point - and screams salvage job restructuring, but is explained away as that character "having a twin." Nice lampshading!
The trade-off is that we get more time focusing on the monsters, so at least they're willing to give us what we came for. Although Godzilla himself is largely kept to the sidelines until the final act, the action is more plentiful for viewers who simply want a good smash-em-up, and to its credit, the action can be very fun to watch, even if nothing feels quite as satisfying as Godzilla's atomic breath kill from the first. When the creatures start duking it out with each other, from both elevated perspectives, and following humans escaping the carnage, it feels massive. So much so that it borders on sensory overload, but the effects work and the great creature designs once again feature commendable visualization. Sequences specifically featuring Rodan and Mothra were some of the action highlights, that made the best use of the film's spectacle, and it had more than a few giddy action cappers. There's even some strong suspense moments, the best being an extended underwater section, with Godzilla making a show of intimidation towards the Monarch facility.
But even so, there's still a trade-off in that the technical build isn't always high caliber. There's a significant amount of action that's surprisingly tough to follow, one reason for this being the weak geography. So often, it's tough to even keep track of the players in a scene, and where they are in relation to the other main pieces. In one instance, a character dies, but it happens so abruptly and with such little clatity, it's practically blink and you'll miss it. Not helping is the film's lighting, which is consistently bathed in heavy blue tints, which is made worse by the constant inclement weather the action takes place in, varying from downpours to blizzards. Ghidorah especially becomes tough to watch anytime he appears, given that his energy warps the weather surrounding him (characters refer to him as a living category 6 hurricane), and he's always accompanied by yellow lightning strikes that create an intense strobe effect. It's an epileptic nightmare, and while I can withstand a good strobing, even I was getting disoriented by it. For all the flak I gave Edwards, his destruction was at least clear to follow. In fact, writing this down, I'm realizing this movie is worse than I initially gave it credit for.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters tries to remedy the shortcomings of the original film, but fails because it creates new ones to take its place. It tries to create a satisfying middle ground between the intimate human perspective of Edwards, while also giving the audience more of the monster fights they want. But on both counts, it leaves much room for improvement, which is a shame, because it starts with such promise, and yet that potential keeps getting stomped on. So, bewildering as it is to say, I may actually prefer Edwards' Godzilla. In spite of its flaws, and its constant teasing, at least Edwards had a stronger, more ambitious technical eye that escapes this sequel somewhat. In trying to course correct, they've actually gone and made things worse.
*1/2 / *****
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