Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Crazy review title right? Well you might agree after watching this movie.

You'll probably hear a lot of opinions from people who aren't homegrown Godzilla fans - and they will have their own thoughts on this. I, on the other hand, am a big fan of the monster going years back. Finding a Godzilla movie in the TV guide, or a DVD for one of the Toho movies to rent was like winning the lottery when my brother and I were young.

Here are my thoughts plainly stated: Yes, this is a better Godzilla film than the 2014 movie. There are *aspects* of the latter that some might say make it superior, but that would only make it a better movie in general - as a *Godzilla movie* this new one is quite a bit better.

Don't listen to the people on RottenTomatoes talking about how "the special effects are overly relied on and can't make up for the bad characters and plot." No. Those CG monsters are the best part, and they almost singlehandedly save this movie. The solution is not to focus less on special effects and develop the characters better. The solution is to have every human character stepped on in the second act and have the last 45 min center the story solely on the monsters - which I guess would mostly be fighting.

The problem is this does not happen. Every moment you see the monsters battle, you enter a brief moment of bliss before you are ripped away to deal with people you don't care about doing things you hope they fail at. The first "clash" occurs in Antarctica, and that scene was actually quite good despite the focus on the humans. You're just now being exposed to these titans duking it out, so having people there witnessing the madness and trying to escape help play into how incredible this event truly is.

By the 3rd act, however, this tolerance has dried up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a movie titled "Godzilla" imply that he is the main character? Because he doesn't feel like one. Without a doubt, THE biggest problem that Godzilla (2014) and this film have is they place waaayyyy too much value on human beings. Everyone in the audience is waiting for them to shut up and go away, but the movie has its head up its ass and thinks what they're doing is somehow important and worth focusing on. It would be like two warriors facing off, and having most of the climax focusing on ants running around on the ground trying to save each other.

The only "characters" here that need development are the Kaijus. Have them be your stars. Have them be the focus. It doesn't just have to be mindless action like how snobby people will pretend that's all we want to see. Go ahead and tell a story, but NOT with people. They are not the reason we're watching this, and we don't care about them.

One exception to what I said in the previous paragraph: Ken Watanabe His big character moment was incredible. If you must have human beings involved, do them like this. He was amazing.

Ever since the perfection of CGI, Hollywood has come to the conclusion that if the special effects are good, then then movie is good. Thus, my 5 star rating. Half of the movie involved the monster battles and that gets 10 stars. The half of the movie where there is no monster presence gets 0. That averages out to a 5. Perhaps some day Hollywood will re-discover the lost art of screen writing and combine it with CGI to create a truly fantastic movie. But don't look for it to change soon. A lot of people came out of the theater visually dazzled by the special effects knowing that the story was awful but still thought it was a great movie. So they will continue make a lot of money creating these kind of movies and save on time & expense by not having to pay top dollar for a writer.

This film tells the story of Godzilla and many other monsters roaming free on Earth.

The story is just bad. It does not make sense, defies science and is simply unconvincing. Using a nuclear bomb to revive Godzilla does not make sense. People surviving nuclear explosions does not make sense. Dialogs are funny unintentionally. And the scene of monster zero radiating rays of fire made me laugh! I could not wait for it to end.

King of the Monsters May suffer from a meandering plot line but being that it's filled with interesting ideas, fun action, breathtaking visuals, and classic homages to the originals, any Godzilla fan will be adequately satisfied.

This is the second Godzilla film in the MonsterVerse series, a story about the crypto-zoological agency Monarch finding themselves facing titan monsters Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah, and their ultimate solution is letting Godzilla battle them all to save mankind.

The film is a little reminiscing to Toho Studio's classic 1964 movie, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, but this time featuring the monsters in the 21st century, with some neat special effects. You get to see each of the monsters' unyielding powers and characteristics, and them battling each other is nothing short of edge-of-your-seat monster excitement. However, the CGI on the creatures were too dark at times, making the monster battles hard to see. It is also difficult to see the creatures' faces and reactions - just a whole lot of head-spinning movements and swift actions.

The human drama was average at best, and the good guys vs. bad guys subplot was a major distraction from the film, I thought. Much of the evil doers' actions were overkill, and our protagonists were too preachy, save for Ziyi Zhang's duo doctor roles, which is a great nod to Mothra's tiny twin priestesses in the classic films. I also liked that the filmmakers incorporated Mothra's Song in this movie.

But, as with much of today's films, there is forced comedy to lighten up the mood, courtesy of Bradley Whitford's St. Stanton character. His humor was extremely annoying and distracting, very out-of-place for the movie.

With all the hard-to-see monster action to the distracting human drama, there is too much in the film to digest and makes it hard to appreciate the main point, which are clearly the monsters. It leaves little room to sympathize with the human characters and leaves you craving for more of the monsters.

Grade D+