Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Directed by: Micheal Dougherty 
Starring: So many I’ll just list the shorthand - the dad from Get Out, the girl from Stranger Things, the lady from The Conjuring, the girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an old guy from Game of Thrones, and the cool Japanese guy from Inception. Also, (briefly) the lady from that film The Shape of Water. They’re just everywhere.

Upon actual watching, the conclusion I’ve reached is that there aren’t that many monster movies that are actually considered good. About half are terrible, about a quarter are good if you’re willing to accept the goofiness of the premise, and only a select few are genuinely great as pieces of art or examinations of nature and humanity, or as just good old-fashioned spectacle. The honest truth is that a movie about giant monsters that by definition are likely to terrorize and hurt humanity isn’t really a good premise, in contrast to, say, superheroes fighting bad guys. There’s no figurative good guy, and even the guy who usually ends up helping (Godzilla) is usually at least as destructive to humanity as his opponent is, and often spends half the movie on a rampage before eventually getting sucked into helping. All this means is that a genuinely great monster movie that genuinely sucks you into the narrative and makes you happy about what you see and doesn’t just leave you scared of nature is a genuinely great thing.

And that’s what this film is. 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the most rock star, videogame, Hellboy-esque, leviathan-loving movie you’ve ever seen. It’s a better sequel to Pacific Rim than Pacific Rim’s own sequel was. It’s just two hours and ten minutes that refuse to let more than twenty minutes go by without some monster action ‘cause dang it, that’s what people paid for! It’s got the most interesting bunch of humans in a monster movie I’ve ever seen, and actually makes sense out of the confusing bunch of trivia you’ve tangentially heard of making up the Godzilla mythos. It is the The Avengers of its franchise, and I can only hope its upcoming sequel is gonna be as good as its predecessor, which I think it will be. 

On a human level, it’s about a divided family working with its world’s equivalent of S.H.I.E.L.D. to stave off monster attacks as they suddenly resurge. On a monster level, it’s about Godzilla and his buddy Mothra working to overthrow rival monsters. And on an audience level, it’s about that Disneyland, Colossus-esque wonder of looking at something so much bigger than you and wondering, “dang, how’d that happen?” 

There’s like six monsters in this thing, it’s awesome

This film is clearly trying to bring a bunch of elements and references together - there’s talk about underwater tunnels and ancient cities, things I assume long-time fans of Godzilla understand as references to such-and-such, but they didn’t bother me, because they knew how how to deliver it in a way that wasn’t annoying. I actually talked to someone who did work on the script for this, and they mentioned they brought in some uncredited writers. When asked how many writers, they off-handedly said, “fourteen.” And it SHOWS, ‘cause so much of this film could’ve just been the most boring stuff, but they found a way to make it exciting every time. They also came up with an air-tight plot. I know there are some critics - and you’ll probably find yourself wondering this as you watch it - who ask why it is there are some people in the story trying to UNLEASH the monsters, since that seems so counter-productive to humanity. But the truth is, this is just that kind of story. In the Hellboy franchise (really the most misleading name ever - the hero’s the most unhellish character you’ve ever met; he should be called H*ckboy), there’s ALWAYS some idiot trying to cause the end of the world, and it’s because they’re super short-sighted and spiteful people, and it’s the same in this story. If there’s a means to end the world that easily, there’s always gonna be SOME idiots who think it’s a good idea, and that’s how we end up with movies in the first place. 

Really, this movie hit the perfect sweet spot. It’s everything good about Transformers, everything good about Pacific Rim, and everything presumably good about Godzilla mashed into one movie. It’s got a massive cast of recognizable characters, so even if you don’t care for them, you’ll at least be popping up like, “hey, it’s that guy” every few minutes. It’s got monster battles every twenty minutes, and a lore that doesn’t make you wanna roll your eyes out. It.’s got that balance of having the monsters doing stuff, but never making you worried about all the people they might be killing because they show the people getting evacuated. It’s got intensity, excitement, and wonder, and it’s probably gonna be the best distillation of the Godzilla franchise you’ll ever see unless the sequel beats it. Like, subscribe, retweet, reblog. Go watch Godzilla: King of the Monsters.