By: Tiffany Scott
Exec. Business Manager
“Godzilla: King of Monsters” entertains with thrilling battle scenes, but is poorly written and lacks structure.
The film was directed and produced by Michael Dougherty. Produced by Warner Bros, the movie was released to theaters nationwide on May 31. Featured actors include Vera Farminga as Dr. Emma Russell, Millie Bobby Brown as Madison Russell, and Charles Dance as Jonah Alan.
The movie picks up a few years after the fight between Godzilla and various monsters in San Francisco in the 2014 film “Godzilla”. The film focuses on the Russell family who had become estranged after losing a child in a battle in San Francisco. One of the main characters, Emma, works for a secret organization called Monarch that tries to contain the monsters and creates a machine called Orca that can control the monsters. While visiting a lab, Emma and her daughter Madison are kidnapped by an eco-terrorist paramilitary group who wants to use the Orca to wake up all the monsters to destroy the planet (in order to save it). Monarch and Emma’s ex-husband Mark try to locate the Orca and save the world.
The movie established its visual tone early on with the awakening of Ghidorah, a three headed dragon-like creature who happens to be Godzilla’s archenemy. The two fight in a visually rich battle that maintains the old-school appearance of Godzilla, giving the monster a very human like nature. Sound and music is heavily relied upon for the film to pull through battle scenes without boring the audience.
Nearly all the scenes involve humans in a flying aircraft carrier or inside a submarine or in various control rooms. Despite the frequent appearance of dates on the bottom of the frame, where exactly the humans are and their relation to the time sequence is often confusing and unclear. Most of the exterior shots are dark and dull.
The amazing cast was unfortunately wasted with a limited amount of dialogue and poor writing resulting in surface level acting. There was not enough dialogue for any chance of on-screen chemistry between any of the characters. However, an impressive performance came from Charles Dance’s Jonah Allen with an exceptional portrayal of the antagonist.
The film fails to convince viewers to sympathize with the monsters and instead tries to make heroes out of them. It is unclear whether the writers wanted to portray the monsters as a problem to be solved or something humans should just accept. Either way, the lesson is clear: humanity sucks and family is really important.
The film is messy overall and the story is poorly written. For regular movie goers, this film is entertaining enough, but more hardcore fans of the series may be disappointed by the lack of structure and oddness of the script.
“Godzilla: King of Monsters” is rated PG-13 and is playing in theaters worldwide.
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