Apparently, I’m one of the few people who loved Gareth
Edward’s 2014 Godzilla. I saw it as a logical extension of his previous fine
film, Monsters (2010). Everyone seems to be of the mind that this new
film, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, is a drastic improvement over
the unsatisfying Edwards film. Obviously, I couldn’t disagree more. Godzilla
2014 was filled with beautiful tableau, a sense of wonder and
monumentality, and subtly compelling themes that the new film runs into the
ground within its first five minutes. A compulsive dependence on exposition is
indeed the film’s biggest problem; followed closely by an insistence on blowing
its load. It’s too much. It’s four or five monster movies crammed into one; a would-be
Justice League for kaiju. Not only is Godzilla present, but Rodan, Mothra,
Ghidorah and a bunch of others too. There’s no time to enjoy one monster’s
introduction, appearance and behavior because each one disappears as soon as it
arrives in order to get to the next one. But getting back to problem #1; the
incessant chattering of the human cast. There are numerous moments in the film
when watching the creatures do their thing in silence would make the scenes so
magical and even terrifying, but their homosapiens watchers never shut up for
two seconds, explaining everything to death lest the stupidest viewer in the
world may get slightly confused. We learn nothing about the massive “titans”
who are reclaiming the earth by observing them, (because there’s no time); we
learn everything from people spouting information every step of the way.
Hitherto unknown monsters emerge from the earth, only to be introduced with a
prepared name and backstory by some scientific expert or another. At one point,
someone preposterously announces that, on the basis of some ancient legends
she’s just deciphered, the reason Godzilla doesn’t like Ghidorah is because
Ghidorah is probably from outer space, even though she never proffers this potentially
useful intelligence to anyone until after Ghidorah comes to life, crawls out of
an ice cave, and kills a bunch of people. Hardly anyone is surprised by
anything. All the main characters are overflowing with so much monster data
that they have to take turns spoon-feeding relevant info to the audience since
the filmmakers don’t want to just let us watch the monsters toppling cities,
which is what we came for, I might add. And if that’s not enough, if the
message isn’t clear enough, they even repeat and rephrase each other’s
observations, just in case. Mothra never really made sense in the same universe
with Rodan or Godzilla, who are more clearly dinosaur-like, but she’s still an
interesting monster and deserves her own film, but the reason she and all the
other “secondary” monsters are given short shrift is because the genius
managers of Legendary Pictures’ “MonsterVerse” franchise were itching to hurry
up and get to the (supposedly) long-awaited King Kong/Godzilla death match, Godzilla
vs. Kong, already set for release in late 2020. In other words, King of
the Monsters is barely meant to be taken seriously as a worthwhile film on
its own; it’s just a rushed, obligatory segue between Kong: Skull Island (2017)
and Godzilla vs. Kong. It seems to me that if any of these people
actually cared about the Toho Studio’s famous “rubber suit” monsters of the 50s
and 60s, they would take time to at least give Rodan and Mothra their own films
first before turning them into day players and shoehorning them into the same
movie with a dozen other barely-distinguishable monsters. There are a handful
of great moments, a highlight being Rodan’s two or three minutes in the
spotlight, but the film is mostly about people looking at monsters while providing
running commentary, like sportscasters. This movie should have been called, Garrulous
Humans Pontificating About Monsters.
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