GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

godzilla: king of the monsters (2019) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   132 minutes

Released         |   30 May 2019

cast

Vera Farmiga ... Dr. Emma Russell
Millie Bobby Brown ... Madison Russell
Sally Hawkins ... Dr. Vivienne Graham
Bradley Whitford ... Dr. Stanton
Charles Dance
David Strathairn ... Admiral William Stenz
​Ken Watanabe ... Dr. Ishiro Serizawa

director

Michael Dougherty ​

writer

​​Michael Dougherty ... (screenplay by) &
Zach Shields ... (screenplay by)
 
Max Borenstein ... (story by) and
Michael Dougherty ... (story by) &
Zach Shields ... (story by)

cinematographer

​Lawrence Sher

music

Bear McCreary

film editor

​Roger Barton
Bob Ducsay
Richard Pearson

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box office result

Worldwide               $​386,600,138

Australia                 $​4,300,000

North America        $​110,500,138

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the best dialogue

Dr. Emma Russell: Our world is changing. The mass extinction we feared... Has already begun. And we are the cause. We are the infection.
[pause]
Dr. Emma Russell: But like all living organisms, the earth unleashed a fever to fight this infection: Its original... and rightful rulers, the Titans. For thousands of years, these creatures have remained in hiding around the world. And unless all the Titans are found, our planet will perish, and so will we. They are the only guarantee that life will carry on.

Madison Russell: You're a monster.
Dr. Emma Russell: I'm sorry.

Senator: So you'd want to make Godzilla our pet.
[laughter]
Dr. Ishiro Serizawa: No. We would be his.

---

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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Posters

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Posters

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Members of the crypto-zoological agency Monarch face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah. When these ancient super-species-thought to be mere myths-rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity's very existence hanging in the balance.

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 29 May 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

​GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS…

Hmmmmm…

Really?

In the era of Mega Movie Franchises, five years is a long time to wait for a sequel...

If it weren’t for the appreciation of the sheer effort required to bring such a “Blockbuster” to the screen, GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS would - without doubt - have struggled to crack a two-star rating.

This film serves as a cautionary tale about the absence of a name star where the movie serves as an exercise in the execution of one set-piece after another, all doing the same thing and not really progressing anything in terms of theme or plot.

The 2014 Gareth Edwards GODZILLA was reasonably entertaining and was interesting enough for the audience to care how Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Ford Brody might save his wife Elle, played by Elisabeth Olsen, in the midst of the mayhem created by the arrival of Godzilla and his fight against the MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) creatures.

This new film picks up during Godzilla’s battle against the MUTO in San Francisco; the disaster-porn stage for the 2014 film’s finale. While Taylor-Johnson and his military colleagues were otherwise engaged, KING OF THE MONSTERS runs with a concurrent story centred around Scientists Mark & Emma Russell (Kyle Chandler & Vera Farmiga), who suffer the tragedy of losing their son during the destruction wrought upon the city. (It’s important to note, viewers don’t actually get to bare witness to this awful event, however, the multi-authored screenplay makes viewers work pretty hard to decipher what the blazes is going on …)

The movie jumps forward several years, following Farmiga’s Emma Russell to China, where she is now working for the secretive MONARCH; the organisation responsible for keeping tabs on all the MUTO that have popped up since the 2014 film.

Weirdly, Millie Bobby Brown, Russell’s daughter Madison, is also hanging out with her Mum, taking more than a keen interest in the elder’s little science project.
Brown’s presence feels like such a huge piece of “opportunistic casting”, done for no other reason than to see if the legions of STRANGER THINGS fans are prepared to shell out some bucks to see their favourite psychokinetic kid in this big screen Monster Mash. 

There’s no doubt that Brown can act, as she’s proven elsewhere...

Unfortunately, the Max Borenstein, Zach Shields story (with help from Director Michael Dougherty) uses her as a cliched “Wonder Kid” who, for reasons lacking in any common held logic, seems to be the only character capable of maintaining their relative cool and presence-of-mind amid the mayhem! 

It’s not Brown’s fault; she’s saddled with material that shatters breaking point into a million tiny pieces. It’s really bad writing.

Brown is not the only short-changed by some questionable writing…

Vera Farmiga also falls victim.

In an attempt to provide their story with some kind of environmental credentials, Dougherty, Shields and Borenstein labour Farmiga’s character with a completely unnecessary “switcheroo” that confuses the narrative flow of the film and makes her character seem a) naive and b) disingenuous throughout the film’s finale.

It’s not so much a confusing position; it’s the manner in which the change is helicoptered into the story and, later, just as arbitrarily abandoned for the sake of creating artificial drama to compensate for the fact that none of the characters in KING OF THE MONSTERS is especially interesting and the audience don’t really care about what happens to them.

No, the character the audience really cares about is Godzilla.

Despite the fact he’s big, ugly and says nothing, he offers more than any other character in the film…

The reason is simple...

Godzilla is selfless. All he’s trying to do is maintain the balance of nature. By virtue of his battle against Rodan and Ghidorah, humanity’s chances for survival are dramatically increased. Godzilla becomes the story’s default hero because no human can play that role given the size of the threats. 

The closest any human gets to being a hero is Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, returning to the role he played in the 2014 film. He is, again, extremely low key, but he must get pretty annoyed because no one ever seems to heed his warnings, despite the fact he’s right all the time! 

For example, the aforementioned writing team make the United States military out to be so stupid that, even after Godzilla has saved humanity in the first film, they still see him as a threat that must be destroyed. This is a clear case of the writer’s personal politics clouding logical storytelling…

By the end of the 2014 GODZILLA, everyone has seen the “Big Guy” take down the MUTO. Early on in KING OF THE MONSTERS it’s established that he’s not been sighted in years…

How can, upon his reappearance in this new film, it be assumed that he’s a threat?

For goodness sakes, Kyle Chandler’s character has a stare down with him at one point in the First Act and he simply swims off thrashing his tail around. (Godzilla, not Kyle Chandler.)

Where is the story logic in the military arriving at the conclusion Godzilla needs to be destroyed?

It’s a case of poor writing where the visual effects driven, set-piece extravaganza overwhelms even basic logic…

Poor writing lies at the very heart of this film’s myriad problems.

Perhaps the biggest problem for the film’s producers - Warner Bros & Legendary - to deal with is that the writing team behind GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS are credited with writing the next Monsterverse installment, GODZILLA VS. KONG, due to arrive in cinemas in less than twelve months time.

If the broad reaction to KING OF THE MONSTERS follows along the lines outlined above, it might serve as a wise move for the powers-that-be at Warner Bros and Legendary to have a good hard look at the rough cut of the next film that is currently being assembled off the back off principal photography, that has taken place throughout March, April and May of 2019.

To avoid the problems of GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, the next film must;
a) make sure it improves its depiction of the characters who survive to make it to next year’s film  
and,
b) release a film that has more than just a series of loosely related action sequences pretending to be a movie!

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019 film) - Wikipedia
​Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) - IMDb
​Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes​

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