Godzilla: King of Monsters- A king with a lacklustre crown
With the apparent end to the history making marvel cinematic universe, the film public now wonder where the next big blockbuster franchise will take place and if I could possibly compare to the juggernaut of Stan Lees creation. However it seems like Legendary Pictures have already begun an attempt on this success with the latest in their newly titled "Monsterverse" franchise with Godzilla: King of Monsters. The sequel to the well received 2014 film simply titled Godzilla, King of Monsters takes place straight after the final battle of the previous film where the mysterious organisation "Monarch"(because monsters) are trying to uncover and communicate with the remain domant creatures which they have dubbed as "titans". This leads to the awakening of classic Toho giants like the majestic Mothra, the crafty Rodan and the arch rival to Godzilla, King Ghidora.
The first thing you realise is that the studio clearly understood that the audience wanted to see more monsters in this film since there is double the monsters and double the action set pieces. Rather than slowly setting up the king of kaijus reveal, he appears straight away in the first minute of the film. All in all the way they treat the monsters clearly shows that they are giving more personality and character to them rather than giving them an hint of mystery. For example the three heads of Ghidora seem to have their own sentience which plays in some visually interesting moments. Also Rodan as the smaller of the monsters seems to evoke the lowly second in command to whichever monster is on control. As for Godzilla himself, the awe-inspiring scale of the first film may have been depleted due to the number of monsters, but we still have moments of hard hitting combat when these kaiju collide.
However while the main attraction of the film remains the same, the human side characters are anything but polarising. The film chooses to take a Roland Emmerich style narrative with a broken family that comes together in crisis, in this case monsters. However the performances from Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga and Millie Bob Brown, seemed very lack lusted and forced with no real passion or understanding of their characters. The entire film had pointless forced conflicts which only served to bring the story to the monsters themselves. Even notable acting legend Charles Dance's character, a villainous eco terrorist, became obsolete after the introduction of King Ghidora, quickly becoming a waste of an otherwise very talented performer. The narrative is full of forced tension and pointless twists. There's even a point where during a titan fight, the military launch a futuristic nuke at Godzilla without telling anyone, clearly hitchcocks bomb under the table talk on suspense just flew over their heads. Its clear the creators of the movie knew that the audience wanted monsters, so they were gonna give them monsters. Its clear that the producers behind this flick wanted to create a franchise built around the spectacle rather than the plot, and it seems that spectacle has gone down the path of action figure sales rather than the intensions of the original creator of the Toho franchise.
Film Grade: E
The first thing you realise is that the studio clearly understood that the audience wanted to see more monsters in this film since there is double the monsters and double the action set pieces. Rather than slowly setting up the king of kaijus reveal, he appears straight away in the first minute of the film. All in all the way they treat the monsters clearly shows that they are giving more personality and character to them rather than giving them an hint of mystery. For example the three heads of Ghidora seem to have their own sentience which plays in some visually interesting moments. Also Rodan as the smaller of the monsters seems to evoke the lowly second in command to whichever monster is on control. As for Godzilla himself, the awe-inspiring scale of the first film may have been depleted due to the number of monsters, but we still have moments of hard hitting combat when these kaiju collide.
However while the main attraction of the film remains the same, the human side characters are anything but polarising. The film chooses to take a Roland Emmerich style narrative with a broken family that comes together in crisis, in this case monsters. However the performances from Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga and Millie Bob Brown, seemed very lack lusted and forced with no real passion or understanding of their characters. The entire film had pointless forced conflicts which only served to bring the story to the monsters themselves. Even notable acting legend Charles Dance's character, a villainous eco terrorist, became obsolete after the introduction of King Ghidora, quickly becoming a waste of an otherwise very talented performer. The narrative is full of forced tension and pointless twists. There's even a point where during a titan fight, the military launch a futuristic nuke at Godzilla without telling anyone, clearly hitchcocks bomb under the table talk on suspense just flew over their heads. Its clear the creators of the movie knew that the audience wanted monsters, so they were gonna give them monsters. Its clear that the producers behind this flick wanted to create a franchise built around the spectacle rather than the plot, and it seems that spectacle has gone down the path of action figure sales rather than the intensions of the original creator of the Toho franchise.
Film Grade: E
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