Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Film Review

Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Film Review

Cast: Godzilla, Ghidorah, roadan, Mothra, Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Thomas Middleditch, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Charles Dance
Director: Michael Dougherty

It's sound, fury and utter levels of stupidity which are the order of the day for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, a film that makes less of a case for a cinematic universe than Godzilla and his Kaiju ilk deserve.

Picking up five years after Godzilla stomped through San Fran, decimating the streets and killing indiscriminantly, the film wisely harnesses its focus on Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga's parents Mark and Emma. Separated after the loss of their son in the carnage, and with a daughter (Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown) living with her mother, Mark is a lost soul.

Whereas his former wife, Emma, has developed the Orca (a MacGuffin of the highest order) used to placate the Titans roaming the earth. However, when it appears that Emma and her tech have a breakthrough, it's stolen in a shoot-out at shadowy clandestine organisation Monarch, orchestrated by Charles Dance's baddie. Seemingly intent on raising the Titans from their respective global dormancy, Mark finds himself - along with various grunts and other one-note characters - thrust into the fight to save the day and prevent a repeat of the destruction of five years ago.

Godzilla: King of Monsters is a maddeningly average, and at times, awful film.

Muddy dark visuals mar what transpires on the screen (so much so, it's on a par with Game of Thrones' dark battle for Winterfell), terribly written human characters shout and do little to advance the story other than to bark exposition.

It exists solely to provide Kaiju carnage, as the film lurches as much through its 132 minutes as Godzilla going through a sea of treacle.

It's not what the Monsterverse wanted or needed; and while the parents-torn-apart trope is a well-worn one, the actors aren't given much to work with. With the exception of Bradley Whitford who relishes every syllable of lunacy dripping from his mouth, the main cast struggle through paper-thin motives and less than impressive character "arcs".

In terms of the monsters, the Kaiju and their subsequent fights are impressive - when you can make them out. Cast against dark backgrounds, and lit only to service storyboard outlines it appears, they work as forces of nature and destruction like they should. But the poor lighting of the film sees you straining, when you should be being doused in eye-popping action, not pondering if you need glasses.

Ultimately, in Godzilla: King of The Monsters, Dougherty and the gang try to have their Kaiju cake and eat it.

But by neglecting the humans to deliver only rote moments and by muddying the action, the film emerges as a gigantic bum note, a monstrous mess that does little to service the Godzilla legend and more to bury it in the sea forever.