Marking the five-year return of the lovable Godzilla is Godzilla: King of the Monsters. His return is a direct sequel to the 2014’s Godzilla and returning is Ken Watanabe as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Sally Hawkins as Vivienne Graham. Quite frankly, I forgot a lot about the 2014 film, which is a testament to how much seeing the first film really doesn’t matter. You just have to know, there are giant monsters and they’re about to crush popular cities across the nation.
After losing their son in the 2014 San Francisco disaster by Godzilla and friends, scientists/zoologist/knows-better-than-us couple Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) and Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) call it quits on their marriage. Mark heads out into the wilderness to take photos of wildlife and Emma takes their daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) to a remote laboratory, where Emma creates a device called Orca that uses the science of bioacoustics (apparently it’s a real thing) to communicate and control these titans.
Emma developed the Orca for an organization known as Monarch. Led by Dr. Serizawa, Monarch has located and currently monitors over seventeen hibernating titans. Their mission is to understand and one day co-exists with these super-extra-large creatures. The Orca device is successfully used to awaken and communicate with the titan known as Mothra. Just as the experiment is declared a success eco-terrorist Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) invades the Monarch facility, kills most of the staff and takes the Orca, Dr. Russell, and Madison hostage.
“…Emma creates a device called Orca that uses the science of bioacoustics…to communicate and control these titans.”
Alan’s motivations are quickly revealed, as he plans to release all the Titans and have them wipe humanity off the face of the earth and bring balance once again to nature. As you’d guess, Alan’s plan works as he releases the three-headed hydra known as King Ghidorah, the only Titan who can stand toe-to-toe with Godzilla himself. While the general plan of releasing the titans works, it is not without disastrous consequences.
"…you’ll have fun, but you’re not going to walk away feeling like you saw something spectacular"
You kind of point out the problem I had with this film. They don’t seem to get that we want to SEE the fight. Setting it at night and during rain and shooting it in a lot of close shots is not the answer. Where are the wide shots where we can see these monsters lumbering over the city? Any time they show them they cut away so fast you don’t have the time to take in what you’re seeing. These fights need to be shot like a boxing match on TV for them to be truly fun. How it is now just feels like a blur of images that are hard to decipher.