acid reflects

Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Directed by Michael Dougherty
Based on Toho characters and series of films

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Legendary and Warner Brothers’ third instalment into their Monsterverse franchise and sequel to the 2014 Hollywood reboot of #Godzilla is pure kaiju fan service through and through – overblown, thunderous fun.

Someone over reddit asked me if the movie’s story is anything silly. Considering the source and history that includes alien invaders, UFOs and an Ultraman knockoff robot that high-fived the Big G in 1973’s Godzilla vs Megalon, one can say the same for 2019 King of the Monsters. More on this later.

Five years after the events of Godzilla 2014, Monarch paleobiologist Emma Russel (Vera Farmiga) has developed a device that is able to determine the communication frequencies of the kaiju “titans” in the hopes of better anticipating their destructive behavior. The machine is of particular interest to a group of eco-terrorists led by former military man Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) who believe that releasing the titans is the best way to reboot the planet from human abuse. The group takes the machine – called ORCA because it mimics the way whales communicate – and abduct Emma and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobbie Brown) from the Monarch facility in China.

Alerted during a senate hearing on the roles of Monarch, Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) track down to seek the help of Emma’s ex husband and ex-Monarch scientist Mark Russel (Kyle Chandler) in finding Emma, their daughter and the machine.

First the eco-terrorists use the ORCA to wake up “monster Zero” the three-headed dragon Ghidorah in Antarctica. Next, the group wakes up the fiery pteranodon Rodan over Mexico. On both occasions, Godzilla appears to seemingly stop the rampage of Ghidorah. On both times, no success.

Monarch hatches a crazy plan to save Emma and Madison, stop the terrorists and enlist Godzilla in ending Ghidorah’s world-wide destruction.
It sounds like a wild ride, for sure. KOTM is an amalgam of many things Godzilla from the past, best played for fans of the king through the years.

KOTM is decidedly an action spectacle with a heavy emphasis on cheesy entertainment that’s not far from the Showa era Godzilla films after the serious 1954 original. We’re talking about those films that involved aliens controlling the kaijus, kaijus from space, mechanical versions of kaijus, and that version of Ultraman, Jet Jaguar, tag-teaming with Godzilla to defeat giant alien bugs. While there are no outright alien invaders in UFOs here, the human drama (and lame dialogue) are not far from what we’ve seen from all the Toho films, with the exception of the original. Seen on IMAX, the large-than-life kaijus are truly a sight to behold.

The bit about the eco-terrorists isn’t far-fetched in my opinion, if there’d be kaijus on the planet. Human-made climate crisis is just around the corner. Depicting Godzilla as a force of nature (here and in a few past versions,) the film retains Godzilla as a recurring reminder of how human technology and power have laid waste to the world.

Juxtaposed with the almost non-stop monster action is the Russels’ struggle to reform their family – a dramatic chapter that has no resonance with the subplots. Godzilla films usually throws in some family drama (sometimes with completely random characters) to humanize the narrative. But it is always Godzilla who’s the existential reminder for the humans. In a way, this drama with the Russels is weakly developed, but serves its perfunctory purpose just barely.

Bradley Whitford’s character – a Monarch scientist with a mouthful – drops inert nerd-level comebacks for the heck of it. The actor does a proper job delivering them, but these are superfluous since we already have giant monsters with radioactive beams from their mouths.

What human drama the film gets right is (to the actor’s credit) through Ken Watanabe’s Ishiro Serizawa, who threads the current plot and the events in 2014 with a sense of gravitas that the film almost does not deserve. Then again I’d watch Watanabe in anything – he even did the same thing to Detective Pikachu. But with Watanabe, the film pays tribute to the original 1954 Serizawa with some proper human drama.

Toho already made a serious version “grounded” in today’s realities with its 2016 reboot Shin Godzilla (2016) – the second time Toho rebooted Godzilla with a serious tone. That film became the highest-grossing Godzilla film from Japan and earned Best Picture and Best Direction from the Japanese Academy Awards.

Through breakneck pacing, that film spoke about human flaws (disrespect of the environment, the absurdity of bureaucracy and government, and its most-famous quote, “man is the true monster”) and retained many of the original film’s characteristics while presenting the monster in fantastic special effects blended from practical, miniature and CGI.

The 1954 original #Gojira (re-edited and repackaged as Godzilla: King of the Monsters for American audiences in 1956) had the destructive monster onscreen for nearly 9 minutes, and yes the movie was about the humans. Specifically, a reminder of the horrors of nuclear war that the Japanese went through just a decade before Gojira, with the monster representing American aggression. Godzilla teaming up with US military in 2019 against a greater threat isn’t entirely from the left field.

In that sense, 2019 KOTM exists within franchise legacy and its main fault is cramming a wave of references to its colorful past into this version. Definitely lots of monster fight action (probably an answer to the main criticism of the 2014 film.) That would be great for fans, but definitely befuddling to those who don’t know their Mothras from their Rodans.

Speaking of which, personal favorites in the film are the production’s reverence to Ghidorah’s design and (seeming) unstoppable might, Mothra’s majestic, breathtaking and pulse-pounding reappearance, and – despite having Ghidorah as main villain – Rodan’s emergence and action piece in Mexico as a jaw-dropping sequence. VFX catogory, don’t forget. There’s also the music by Bear McCreary that pays proper homage to the original themes by Akira Ifukube.

Stay after the credits.

Trailer here https://youtu.be/wvMLRwY2O-I
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures