Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters (2019)

The Low-Down: With Marvel raking in the cash and plaudits after creating the world’s most epic cinematic universe, every studio that can thread movies together – however tenuously – is hopping on the bandwagon. And so we have Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters: the third installment in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse, following Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017). It’s easily the most ambitious film yet, uniting several classic critters straight out of Godzilla lore and finding pretty much any excuse to have them fight one another. The final result is both bold and bonkers – good and bad, often in the very same moment.

The Story: Monsters break stuff, including people. It’s a fact of life that the broken Russell family must deal with after Godzilla’s epic battle leaves downtown San Francisco in ruins. Grieving and newly sober, Mark (Kyle Chandler) stalks wolf packs in another part of the world. Emma (Vera Farmiga), his ex-wife, continues to work on the Orca, a machine they created together that can emit soundwaves capable of calming or infuriating Godzilla-scale monsters. Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), their precocious daughter, is caught in between – especially when Emma’s decision to use the Orca sets off a chain of monstrous events that could lead to the end of the world as we know it.

The Good: The concept at the heart of Godzilla II, quite frankly, is off-the-wall wacky – so bold and audacious and weird that you have to give director/co-screenwriter Michael Dougherty some credit for effort, even if his execution of it is somewhat lacklustre. This is no mere story of monsters raining mayhem down upon mankind. Instead, the film moves its mythology quite firmly into the realm of faith; Godzilla, the film suggests, is as much god as monster. It’s actually quite remarkable to see a mainstream blockbuster movie embrace – rather than shy away from – religious iconography, folding in theologies and environmental philosophies from Greek myth to Thanos. As such, Godzilla and his arch-nemesis, King Ghidorah (a three-headed Hydra-esque dragon beast), aren’t just having their version of a bar-room brawl – their earth-shaking clash is a battle for the survival of humanity.

The Not-So-Good: It’s a shame that the film as a whole can’t keep up with its high-concept ideas. The writing ranges from inspired to insipid, with character motivations dancing ridiculously back and forth – dictated mostly by the rather demented plot. As a director, Dougherty exhibited some skill with subversive comedy in cult horror flick Krampus, but very little of that is evident here. It’s not just about sacrificing soul for scale – Dougherty occasionally struggles with telling such a massive story in visual terms. Some of the film’s action sequences are so choppy as to be downright confusing. It doesn’t help that Dougherty’s preferred aesthetic tends towards the grey and grim, which makes it even harder to figure out just what is going on while monsters are duking it out in frustratingly murky lighting.

The Monster Mash: The first Godzilla film in the franchise suffered for shoving its titular monster into the background, having him play second fiddle to human characters who weren’t all that well-written to begin with. Godzilla II tries to rectify that, somewhat, by flinging so many monsters at the screen that you’d be almost glad to get back to the human drama after a while. Apart from Godzilla and Ghidorah, fans will be glad to see old-school Toho favourites like Mothra and Rodan in action too. (If they could actually see them, that is. Seriously – the monsters are beautifully rendered, but the bruise-toned lighting does them no favours.)

God(zilla)-Level Casting: If Dougherty learned one thing from his predecessor, Gareth Edwards, it’s the importance of casting a bunch of top-notch character actors in an otherwise barmy creature feature. Veteran performers like Oscar nominee Farmiga, West Wing alumnus Whitford and Charles Dance (that’s Tywin Lannister to you) reel off awkward exposition and pseudo-scientific claptrap (“bio-acoustics”, “the Oxygen Destroyer”) like it’s actual real human dialogue. It’s quite remarkable to see Friday Night Lights’ Coach Eric Taylor in action anti-hero mode, but Chandler – just as Bryan Cranston did in the 2014 film – brings an everyman weight to a character whose narrative arc is muddled, to say the least. The MVP here, though, is Brown. She brings to Madison the same soulful blend of toughness and tenderness that made her such a breakout star in Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Recommended? It depends. Godzilla II is a hot mess… but it’s a fascinating hot mess, and surprisingly fun to watch and even think about.

Godzilla (2014)

In all likelihood, this brand-new incarnation of Godzilla would have been met with far fewer expectations if director Gareth Edwards had never made Monsters. Edwards’ ultra-indie, incredibly well-crafted creature feature – in which he magicked up creepy monsters and special effects on his own computer – served as so impressive a calling card that he was drafted in to breathe new life into this giant monster who hails from Japan. So great was Monsters that Edwards managed to amass a stunningly credible cast as well, from Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston through to indie darlings Sally Hawkins and David Straithairn. Alas, Edwards’ Godzilla falls quite far short of the mark. Ultimately, there’s neither enough story nor enough monster to keep the film going for as long as it does.

Ostensibly, the plot intends to focus on its human elements, and that works well enough at the beginning. We follow Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his assistant Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) into a cavern propped up by the age-worn bones of an ancient creature. So we know that something else is at work when the Japanese nuclear power plant overseen by Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) suffers a catastrophic meltdown. Joe loses his beloved wife (Juliette Binoche) in the accident, and effectively loses his son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as well.

Flash-forward fifteen years, and Ford is now an explosive ordinance officer – he detonates bombs – with a wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and son of his own. He’s healed from the loss of his mom, or so you think, when he’s forced to return to Japan to bail Joe out of prison. His father, you see, has remained obsessed for years with figuring out the real cause of the nuclear meltdown. And, as it turns out, the secret to that mystery is about to burst forth from the seas…

It’s evident with every frame what Edwards is trying to do: develop real, believable human stakes that can lend weight to the monstrous carnage to be wrought by Godzilla and the Mutos – giant, bug-like creatures that first emerge to lay waste upon Earth. Serizawa and Graham search for motivation and make appeals on Godzilla’s behalf; Ford must reconcile himself with the loss that transformed his father and his own life; Godzilla is the solution and not the problem. So on and so forth.

But the resulting movie frequently gets lost within its uneven, uninspiring script. The humans to whom we’re introduced barely have any depth to speak of, the most egregious offender being Elle – she seems to exist merely to look devastated and/or scream helplessly in the tumultous streets of San Diego. Cranston does some pretty incredible work with what little he’s given, but his screen-time is, unfortunately, limited. Taylor-Johnson looks good and occasionally elevates his material, but – especially in the second half of the film – is forced to lumber from action sequence to action sequence, barely registering as a fully-realised entity once the monsters have taken centre stage.

Just as unfortunate is the rendering of the monsters in Godzilla: not in a visual effects sense, but as characters. The titular beast barely gets a look-in. Even when all form of monster mayhem is unleashed in the second half of the movie, he’s quite literally the supporting player in his own starring vehicle – and we’re not just talking about playing second fiddle to the human cast. Godzilla stalks broodily in the wake of the Mutos, who effectively sideline the monster whose very name is in the title of the film. He looks great and moves well, but it’s hard to care all that much when his appearances are as relatively fleeting as they are.

It’s not that Godzilla is a complete mess; it isn’t. It’s perfectly watchable, there are some super-cool action sequences, and Edwards – as befitting his own not-so-secret past as a Godzilla junkie – laces the film with in-jokes and references that will please those well-schooled in the giant monster’s lore and backstory. But that can’t quite salvage the film from what it turns out to be: a competent if not particularly compelling monster movie, one which occasionally demonstrates but largely lacks the bite, energy and charisma of Edwards’ debut feature film.

Basically: An adequate monster movie that feels curiously characterless – a shame considering its impressive pedigree where director and cast are concerned.