The Monarch team is the only group with the technology and proper empathy to find a solution of saving lives and not destroying our giant friends. That team now includes Mark Russell, Dr. Serizawa, Vivienne Graham, Sam Coleman (Thomas Middleditch), Dr. Rick Stanton (Bradley Whitford), twins Dr. Ilene Chen and Dr. Ling (Ziyi Zhang) and military expert Colonel Diane Foster (Aisha Hinds). But, of course, the real hero is Godzilla.
I’ll start by just saying, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a really good Godzilla movie. It features a nice line up of monsters from the Toho film are here and the fights, effects, and story work for the most part. Godzilla is there to earn his rightful place as the king of the monsters, the humans are there to screw up his plan, and it all comes down to a kid to do the right thing. In the end, the film is good, but not great. Whether you’re a Godzilla fan or not, you’ll have fun, but you’re not going to walk away feeling like you saw something spectacular or memorable for that matter.
First, the film requires you to quickly sympathize with the Russell family, and for the most part, you do at a basic surfacy movie level. They had to fridge their son from the start, and they wisely did it without showing him die onscreen.
“…a nice line up of monsters from the Toho film are here and the fights, effects, and story work for the most part.”
Another problem is something the originals had too. You’re basically watching two movies. The first is the human story about the Russell family trying to rescue one another all throughout the film while dealing with the titan and environmental problem as well. Then there’s the story of how this radical science organization is going to help Godzilla defeat King Ghidorah.
"…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.