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Godzilla: King of the Monsters
USA / Japan / China / Canada 2019
produced by Alex Garcia, Jon Jashni, Mary Parent, Brian Rogers, Thomas Tull, Yoshimitsu Banno (executive), Roy Lee (executive), Dan Lin (executive), Hiro Matsuoka (executive), Kenji Okuhira (executive), Zach Shields (executive), Barry H. Waldman (executive), Keiji Ota (executive) for Legendary, Wanda Qingdao Studios, Huahua Media, Toho/Warner Brothers
directed by Michael Dougherty
starring Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Zhang Ziyi, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O'Shea Jackson jr, David Strathairn, Anthony Ramos, Elizabeth Faith Ludlow, Jonathan Howard, CCH Pounder, Joe Morton, Randy Havens, Lyle Brocato, Jimmy Gonzales, T.C. Matherne, Kenneth Israel, Justice Leak, Al Vicente, Rose Bianco, Gabriel L. Silva, Skylar Denney, Kelli Garner, Tyler Crumley, Lexi Rabe, Zac Zedalis, Tracie Garrison, Natalie Shaheen, Jesse O'Neill, Joshua Leary, Vince Foster, Shauna Rappold, Fiona Hardingham, Orelon Sidney, Paul Ryden, Laurie Dhue, Kevin Shinick
story by Max Borenstein, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, screenplay by Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, music by Bear McCreary, conceptual creature design by Amalgamated Dynamics, Legacy Effects, concept design by Weta Workshop, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), visual effects by Moving Picture Company (MPC), Rodeo FX, Double Negative (DNEG), Method Studios, Ollin VFX, Raynault VFX
Godzilla, American Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Rodan, Mothra, MonsterVerse
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Ok, the whole story of the movie's pretty much laid out in the first
five minutes, there's a family that has suffered a tragic loss due to a
giant monster attack, and while mother Emma (Vera Farmiga) is working on
something to do with monsters, dad Mark (Kyle Chandler), formerly her
partner in her work, has somehow fallen off the grid and is now
photographing wolves, and their daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) is
torn between them. So naturally something big will happen that will get
dad active again, somehow the girl will get into danger, and the parents
will finally work together to save her, hero's or heroine's death of one
of them optional. And wouldn't you know it, this is exactly what happens: A
new monster is discovered, Mothra, and mother has developed a device to
communicate with it - but while she tries to calm Mothra, the secret
underground lab where Mothra's studied is attacked by eco-terrorists led
by Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) and everybody but Emma and Madison are shot
dead, with the two apparently being taken hostage. This gets dad Mark back
into action as he wants to save his wife and daughter, so he gets back
into employ with the worldwide monster control agency Monarch as he's the
only one but Emma to understand the monster communication device. It soon
turns out that Emma's actually one of the eco-terrorists and wants to save
the world by awakening all the monsters, as for some reason she figures
only with giant monsters around, humankind will stop destroying the
ecology. Thing is though, while her logic is slightly off, at least her
motives are noble, Alan Jonah actually just wants to awaken all the giant
monsters to destroy everything because reasons - something Emma only
realizes late in the movie. Anyways, eventually the eco-terrorists
awaken King Ghidorah, a three-headed flying monster that seems to be
stronger than all the other monsters and is destined to become their
leader - well, enter Godzilla, who spars with King Ghidorah and does
rather good, too. But Monarch figures the safest way to end this is to
send in the oxygen destroyer, a super weapon that will desintegrate both
monsters. It doesn't work though, as it's revealed that King Ghidorah is
actually an alien from outer space so earth's laws of nature don't apply
for him. And Godzilla - well actually he hasn't disintegrated either, his
body has returned to his underwater temple, and all it needs is to
detonate an atom bomb to revive him. In the meantime, a whole plethora
of monsters has been awakened by Monarch - most of them are never really
shown, but the most prominent is flying monster Rodan - and they are
destroying all the cities. But Madison learns what she has to do to stop
them, so she steals her mum's monster communication device, flees the
eco-terrorists' layer to a nearby stadium with a pretty complex but
totally unattended computer system, and sends out a message to all the
monsters all over the world through the stadium's speakers. Then of
course, Godzilla and King Ghidorah meet up exactly where she is to duke it
out, and now mum Emma ditches her eco-terrorist buddies to save her
daughter, while dad Mark uses all of Monarch's resources to do the same,
and of course, they realize only by working together they can succeed. And
of course, time's running thin, as Godzilla is supposed to explode any
minute now, which of course will give him an advantage over King Ghidorah,
as alien or not, a good explosion knocks you out. But somehow mum has to
do something heroic here that costs her life to redeem herself, and then
Godzilla does explode, and King Ghidorah with him, only Godzilla somehow
survives his explosion unscathed - because one can't really kill one's
golden goose, now can one? Zhang Ziyi and Ken Watanabe are rather wasted
as Monarch crewmembers. Now the good news, this movie is better
than its predecessor, 2014's Godzilla,
though that's a low bar. And it really wasn't much better, as - as
mentioned above - by concentrating on the cookie cutter story of a nuclear
family the course of which is even laid out in the first five minutes,
there aren't really that much stakes, even in a movie about giant monsters
trying to take over the world. Also, the motives of the eco-terrorists'
motives become more and more muddled the longer this goes, to the point
where they seem to just have been thrown into the mix as a plot device, no
more. It really makes one yearn for the naive charm of films like Destroy
all Monsters (on which much of this one is based on), where it's
at least aliens (or sometimes beings from within the earth) who want to
take over the world, using monsters as a means of invasion - it at least
made some sense you see. And speaking of monsters - they do look ok in
this film, but not spectacular, in fact no better than your contemporary
video game, and many of them aren't even clearly shown. And as for
fighting and destroying cities, they do rather little of that, though with
the CGI feel to all their scenes, the sense of wonder is somehow taken out
of it all, everything seems just functional rather than fun - as is the
case with the whole movie, it tries too hard to be dead serious to deliver
good entertainment. Not a trainwreck perhaps as Millie Bobby Brown and
Vera Farmiga live up to their roles' demands and elevate them above how
they're written, and they lead a competent ensemble cast, but not really
worth one's while either.
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