Godzilla: King of the Monsters Review

May 30, 2019 at 6:30pm
By Jason Stettner

The MonsterVerse rages on with this latest entry that brings the king of the monsters back into the spotlight. That’s right, Godzilla is here and roaring as a pile of monsters come to fight. It’s an interesting way to intensify the franchise, and to expand it rather rapidly. The monster elements of this particular film are mostly excellent, whereas the human portions drag quite a bit.

This feels like a rather long film, often padded out by slow segments where people go on about a rather horrible plot. It really is just a weak narrative, that is incredibly cliché at this point and it just really doesn’t make much sense here. From the first trailer I thought it was a terrible idea, but they did seem like they were going to surprise us here with how things progressed. It then corrected course towards being just a face palming situation.

I got rather restless towards the later parts of the film, and while great moments were in this. They were just slowed down and didn’t have enough impact. Those huge battles were purely epic, yet other things felt rather silly and I laughed a fair bit at some of the more serious situations. Still, Godzilla is one charming monster that just does whatever it wants.

There needs to be more emotion behind these creatures, or even an explanation. There were way too many monsters in this as you see a pile, but honestly have no idea who they are. They introduce the main ones well, but then there are others that can magically cross the oceans with no issue. The motivations of the villains are rather odd, and some of the key plot points are luck based I suppose. I don’t know why this core group of leaders keeps getting flown around everywhere, doesn’t make any sense from a strategic point.

Godzilla is definitely one badass creature, and the other ones were amazing. Mothra was a beauty to behold and I wish there was more with her. King Ghidorah also looked incredible, those big action scenes were just crazy. It’s almost worth it for those stunning situations, if you can get past many poorly set up human situations. It just seemed like too much was going on with them, sometimes it’s better to just take in these creatures and have something that’s shorter. Keep it more focused as this felt insanely bloated.

The Conclusion

Godzilla: King of the Monsters unleashes too many monsters and is dragged down by boring humans that you just can’t get behind. A lot of the motivations were weird and there were so many cliché elements in this. From the terrible balancing the world situation that makes no sense, to the bringing the failed father into the mix. Mark (Kyle Chandler) is the father in this situation, and he was fine in his performance. It was just the setup around him that was silly.

Millie Bobby Brown was also in here, doing some wild things. I also suppose that Rick (Bradley Whitford) was somewhat funny in this. There’s a large human cast, and they focus on some weird things while all this crazy monster action is going on. There was just too much going on in this, and it was disappointing as I did enjoy Skull Island. I really don’t know where things are going, but I look forward to King Kong coming in and teaching some of these monsters a lesson next year.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by Warner Brothers

Rating Overall: 5.2