Ahead of seeing Godzilla vs. Kong, I’m rewatching the three most recent films featuring these two, wrapping up with Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
{🚨SPOILERS🚨}: Directed by Michael Dougherty, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the sequel to Godzilla 2014 and the third installment of Legendary’s cinematic monsterverse. The story takes place five years after Godzilla showed himself to the world, and the existence of giant monsters (now dubbed Titans) is now publicly known, courtesy of the Monarch agency led by Dr. Ishirō Serizawa (Ken Watanabe). The governments of the world and the public wish for the titans to be destroyed after the fallout of San Francisco, but Serizawa and other members of Monarch are against this, saying they should be studied and that humanity should co-exist with them or risk upending the natural order of things.
However, things quickly turn to chaos when an ancient rival of Godzilla is awakened, the three-headed dragon King Ghidorah, who unleashes great destruction upon the world as well as awakening other titans, like the pterodactyl Rodan, to gain supremacy of the planet. It is up to Godzilla, with the help of Monarch, to find a way to stop Ghidorah and the other titans as the fate of humanity and Earth hang in the balance.
This film has had a negative-to-mixed reception upon its release in 2019, but despite this it still has a major following and gets a lot of love from many Godzilla fans, including me. Now the film does have its issues, some of which are carried over from the previous monsterverse installment Kong: Skull Island, but I think this is still an awesome film that has the best action and visuals of the entire monsterverse so far. It also feels like a film that was very much made for Godzilla fans, not only for the various references, easter eggs and iconic monsters, but also the way the story is structured and how it is crafted. This is an action packed sequel that offers a lot of thrills, beauty, and an interesting addition of lore that further expands the monsterverse and the history of the titans.
Talented director Michael Dougherty, who is most notable for making horrors, did a really great take on the beloved monsters and really added a lot details to this film that make things so interesting upon multiple rewatches. I love it and I’m not ashamed to admit it, although like many others I have my own grievances that come down to the same issues I had with Skull Island: the narrative and characters.
The story itself is written to be like a classic Godzilla film, which do involve more adventurous and less grounded plots. After Gareth Edwards had started with a mature and grounded tone with Godzilla 2014 it seems the filmmakers of King of the Monsters felt that it was time to have more fun by having more classic monsters join in, as well as pay tribute to classic Godzilla films in various narrative ways. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for people like myself who grew up with those types of cheesy plots, but I can definitely understand why people who haven’t may not groove with the idea.
My issue is that there are times where the narrative does suffer from being overstuffed, especially when it comes to the human characters. There’s just too many of them in this to keep track of, and while the performances are good from mostly everyone, a lot of them just don’t really serve a purpose and are very underdeveloped.
For me, the characters that stood out the most were Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler), Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown) and Alan Jonah (Charles Dance). For me they were the only ones of interest and who felt like they had an actual purpose, while the rest felt like they were just filler to pad out the narrative.
I like the fact that Mark is established early on as an expert of predators, which ends up being increasingly helpful for Monarch, and that was a cool way to show how the Titans are like natural animals and have various behaviors.
Emma Russell alongside Alan Jonah act as the human antagonists for this film; their motives are to awaken all the titans on Earth and let them reclaim their roles of balancing nature after humanity had been messing with it. This brings back the long running theme that started in Godzilla 2014, and the interesting part is despite the obvious dangers and immoral actions that their goals could lead to, they actually end up being right… or at least Emma does, in a way, by the end of the film. But they both end up accidentally releasing the worst among all the titans, which in turn makes them characters you’d love to hate.
There’s also an interesting detail about Emma that ties into the device she uses to awaken titans, the Orca. In one scene where Mark is trying to get his daughter Madison back, Emma uses a certain tone of voice to call Madison, which parallels how the Orca uses a certain frequency to get obedience over certain titans. It’s a certain detail among many other details I think some people missed on their first watch.
And then we have Serizawa, who probably has the best arc of all the human characters. He has strong faith in Godzilla being the only one to protect humanity and bring about balance among the rising titans. And that faith is so strong that when Godzilla gets hugely injured and needs help, Serizawa goes to him, sacrificing himself in an emotional scene that is actually a flipped callback to the 1954 film. The 1954 version of Serizawa sacrificed himself to destroy Godzilla, while in this film he sacrifices himself to save Godzilla. The scene is beautifully acted, beautifully shot and makes for one of the best moments in the entire monsterverse.
But other than those characters the rest didn’t need to be there and we did not need to cut back to them so often.
Now let’s talk about the beasts themselves and how Michael Doughtery did everything in his power to make them awesome. There are number of new titans we get to see through this film that all have very unique designs, but it’s the main four that get all the attention. Godzilla has a lot more screen time than he’s had before, and he is absolutely badass and still remains a very intimidating monster. He still has his epic entrances of course, but everything else has been greatly improved. His CGI looks amazing, his vicious primal action is awesome, and his atomic breath is far more deadly than it’s ever been. He’s got more of a presence as a character now, which I really liked, and he really lived up to the title of King of the Monsters. All his action scenes are perfect and are such visual spectacles, thanks to amazing effects and cinematography.
And as if it couldn’t be even more awesome, Godzilla’s old theme returns, remastered by Bear McCreary. It’s nostalgic on so many levels and still feels fitting for the king.
Speaking of kings, let’s talk about our main villain monster King Ghidorah. God damn is he amazing and terrifying. With Dougherty’s experience with horror he was able to bring Godzilla’s greatest adversary to life in a new way, giving us a truly deadly foe capable of such visually gorgeous destruction. And similar to Godzilla, he is a bit of his own character now, and it’s even established that each of his heads have a distinct personality and they help each other out or act horrible to one another. I think most people know the Kevin meme by now, and honestly it is actually hilarious how it’s always that one head on the right that gets picked on. I definitely love the visual humor some of the monsters get in this film.
But what I love most about Ghidorah in this film is how Dougherty actually uses Ghidorah’s alien origins from the old Godzilla films. Just like in this film, Ghidorah was initially called Monster Zero, and he came to Earth many years ago from outer space. In a sense he is an invasive species that has an unnatural affect on the world and is capable of many abilities that other titans don’t have. He seeks supremacy over the titans as an alpha as well as supremacy over the planet, willing to wipe out all of humanity in order to maintain it. This is why Godzilla steps in to eliminate this imbalance to the world as he did once before. Seeing the two fight again on screen after so many years is just so damn good and all the fights they have are epic.
The two other main monsters we have are Mothra and Rodan. Mothra is first introduced in her larval form and she looks great, but she also shows she can definitely be menacing if ticked off. But, of course, she eventually gets to form into her beautiful true self, and she is magnificent. Mothra has never really been that great of a fighter in past films, but here she actually kicks ass and gains the title of queen of the monsters. She was really awesome to see in proper action, and I love the fact that she also has her classic theme back in this film too.
And then we have Rodan, who next to Godzilla and King Ghidorah has some of the best sequences in the whole film. He awakens from inside a volcano and completely lays waste to a city in Mexico just by flying over it, which is a callback to Rodan’s original ability in the older films. His whole destructive flight scene and battle with the jets is incredible and again visually stunning. I also love the fact that Rodan ends up being a little bit of a slime when he switches sides between King Ghidorah and Godzilla.
All of the monsters were fantastic and had the best scenes in the entire film, whether it fighting each other or laying waste to cities around the world. The best action sequence definitely has to be the entire Boston battle for the thrilling fighting and incredible visuals.
This film looks so damn good in so many ways, I just don’t have any complaints about that. And as I mentioned before the score is epic, especially with the remastered themes, adding so much energy to the film as a whole. And I also have to give huge praise to the Serj Tankian’s cover of the song Godzilla, originally done by Blue Oyster Cult. It’s become one of my favorite songs of all time and I can never get sick of it.
The last things I want to bring up about this film is the reveal about the lore and the ending. I love the fact that we get to have some lore on the titans, revealing that there is more to them that just being animals from a bygone age. In something that is called “The Hollow Earth” we see what appears to be remnants of an ancient civilization that lived and worshipped the titans long ago, which ends up explaining some of the various cave paintings we saw in Kong Skull Island that also resurface here. This was something interesting that was never really done before in past Godzilla films and it’s shown throughout the later half of the film and is teased much more in the ending.
After Godzilla defeats King Ghidorah in glorious fashion he takes control of the titans and many of them end up healing the planet as opposed to destroying it. But more about this Hollow Earth gets teased, as well as the fact the titans are beginning to converge on Skull Island. And then finally a cave painting is found, depicting a battle between Godzilla and the mighty ape Kong.
This clearly sets the stage for Godzilla vs Kong, but I am very curious to see how this growing mythos in this monsterverse gets expanded upon on the next film. Where will this Hollow Earth story go, how will it be explored and how does it relate to all the titans? Is this where they came from? What mysteries are there to be uncovered? This is something I hope we get answers to because it’s such a new and unique concept for the iconic monsters. I know some people probably care more about the monster fights, but for me, I’d like to see where this established lore might lead to in Godzilla vs Kong and, if any, future installments.
Overall, this film has its issues and may be overstuffed but I still find it incredibly enjoyable and very well crafted in a lot of areas. Even if you dislike the narratives in all the films in the monsterverse you can’t deny the amount of effort everyone puts into these films. The acting is good even when there’s too many characters, the monsters look amazing, the action is epic as hell, the directing is great, the visuals are spectacular and the cinematography is gorgeous. And on top of that the music is also fantastic. If you are someone who is a hardcore fan of Godzilla and are ok with the style of older Godzilla films, this is definitely the film for you. I can understand why many others may not like it but I personally can never stop loving it despite its problems. I’m going to give Godzilla: King of the Monsters an A-.
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