Godzilla: King of the Monsters

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2014's 'Godzilla' had people kinda split right down the middle. Despite it's title, there actually wasn't a hell of a lot of Godzilla in it, save for the end, which featured an epic fight scene between him and some MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), playing largely on the Kaiju idea left over from 2013's 'Pacific Rim'. The fight pretty much made the movie, giving us what we wanted to see - monsters fighting.

Going on personal opinion, that is what 'Godzilla' films are all about. No one watches these for what the humans are doing, and if you are, you're just plain doing it wrong. These movies represent fantasy titan wrestling matches, and not a whole lot more. Just look at some of the titles. Bearing that in mind, let's move on with my thoughts on 'King of the Monsters'

As the film opens up we learn that the Titans are just a thing now, and there are a known seventeen of them scattered across the globe. The main story line follows a family that lost their son, Andrew, after Godzilla's big fight from the previous film. The family splits over this. The father, Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) sort of never moves on, and develops a hatred fro the Titans, especially Godzilla. Meanwhile, the mother, Emma (Vera Farmiga) works for the MONARCH organization with daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) at her side. MONARCH researches these Titans, and Emma is working hard on developing a sort of communication device for them called ORCA 

When Emma and Madison are kidnapped by eco-terrorists, Mark is called in to try to rescue them. However, with a certain film twist that's really pretty dumb altogether, we manage to get to four major monsters from the 'Godzilla' collection going, and the fight scenes are absolutely epic. The main movie takes a back seat and you stop caring because of the sheer spectacle of it all. As I said in the beginning, the Titan fights are what we're here for. It doesn't necessarily excuse the bad writing, but it does deliver what I came for when it comes right down to it, putting it somewhere in the middle for yours truly.

This one seems to have listened to the audience from the 2014 film, including myself, who said something along the lines of "it was okay, but the monster fight was the only thing that made it good". Well, same idea here. Personally speaking, I still find 'Kong: Skull Island' the front runner of this new Titan universe. We're only three movies in, but it's about to pick up next year with the release of 'Godzilla vs Kong'. It makes me wonder if now that the 'Infinity Saga' is done, this will be the new big thing. Superheroes aren't going away anytime soon, but I get the impression this will at the very least parallel things in popularity as an eventuality. So not necessarily now, but a few years down the line. Time will tell.

Anyway, to simplify everything, if you're like me and came to see monsters just beating the hell out of each other with some pretty damn admirably gorgeous CG, you'll get it. But if you came to see a good story, you're not entirely in luck. It's funny, you love the monsters, but you hate how they get to the monsters. Still though, it's well worth the big screen experience to see these four biggies go at it. I'm giving this one a low 4, because it looks just awesome enough to warrant it.

4/5

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