"King of the Monsters" is a lot of fun, but not much else

 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Movie: Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Director: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe

Verdict:

Delightfully destructive and gleefully brain-dead, the newest arrival in Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse comes rolled up in an generous helping of mindless carnage and top-of-the-line action that's bound to keep you entertained for the whole 2-hour ride, if you can look past the monster-sized plot holes in this cookie-cutter blockbuster narrative.

In depth:

Nothing beats the freedom that comes from walking into a movie theater and knowing exactly why you’re there and what you're in for. Dramas, comedies, and the other broad genres can have so many layers these days, pretending to be one thing at face value, but soon morphing into something else entirely. Rom-coms can switch up to smart satire at the drop of a hat, while a supposed historical drama can quickly turn darkly anachronistic. But when you step into a theater and see Godzilla: King of the Monsters flashing at the top, you don’t have to guess; even without seeing any trailers, you expect a big, brawly clash of souped-up lizards, giant bugs, and other nightmarish nasties in a colossal clash for supremacy. And I’m pleased to say that King of the Monsters definitely delivers on that promise, fueling a special effects blast of brutal beasts even if the story itself proves but a flimsy front for the titanic on screen tussles.  

The film takes place a few years after the mutant showdown in San Francisco. Paleobiologist Emma Russell, played by Vera Farmiga, is a scientist under the employ of Monarch, the government’s crypto-zoology agency tasked with keeping tabs on the giant beasties - now dubbed “Titans” - distributed all over the world.  Still reeling from the loss of her son in the San Fran rampage five years earlier, Emma and her precocious 12-year-old daughter Madison (the talented young Millie Bobby Brown) work in the jungles of China, testing out the good doctor’s crowning achievement: the Orca, a sonic device that can communicate with, and potentially control, the Titans. After a tense but ultimately successful test against the larval form of Kaiju favorite Mothra, Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), a colonel-turn-eco-terrorist intent on using the Orca for his own nefarious purposes, crashes the celebration and kidnaps the mother-daughter duo. Word of the attack reaches ranking Monarch scientist Dr. Ishirō Serizawa (Watanabe), who with his team calls on the one scientist who could help them retrieve the Orca: Mark Russell (Chandler), Emma’s ex-husband and co-inventor of the little Pandora’s Box. But as Mark, Serizawa and the rest of the Monarch team track down Jonah, the reigning reptile himself seems antsier than usual, and all trails point to a Monarch outpost in Antarctica, where hidden agendas and a mysterious dormant Titan threaten to unleash a truly apocalyptic danger into the world.

King of Monsters is above all else a love letter to the classic Kaiju clashes of the older Toho films, while still sticking close to the MonsterVerse's grittier feel. Its tone veers a bit to the right of its 2014 predecessor, which felt more like a cosmic horror story cut from H.P. Lovecraft than a classic monster fight film. Godzilla sewed human insignificance into the fabric of its plot, with Godzilla and the MUTOs clashing before so many anthills disguised as skyscrapers. Though King of the Monsters hardly thrusts humans onto the stage as equals, their more active presence in the monster scuffles paradoxically drew more attention to the Kaiju action. The stakes felt more elevated thanks to Monarch’s hands-on approach to aiding Godzilla compared to the “watch and wait” mentality Serizawa and co. pushed in the first film, and the monsters themselves felt more threatening as a result. This elevated perspective proved crucial with the appearance of Mothra, Queen of the Monsters and probably Godzilla’s most beloved co-star. She has historically been portrayed as a benevolent entity, with a connection to the planet and dedicated to maintaining its balance and the life it contains. This adds another layer to the film and its protagonists - of whatever species - and moves it a touch past the obligatory Kaiju cage matches.

Still, let’s not kid ourselves: those "cage matches" are the reasons we’re parked in our seats for two hours and change, and thankfully, King of the Monsters delivers the goods in full. The special effects crew went all out in this one, giving Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, and the rest a fitting Hollywood facelift as they duke it out on screen. They even managed to nail each Kaiju’s personality down with effects alone, whether it’s Mothra's peaceful night floats complete with simmering lights and sparkles, or Ghidorah’s heralding in a typhoon vortex of lightning and chaos. The MUTOs and even Godzilla at times felt a bit too mundane as monsters in the last flick, or at least as mundane as 100-story gargantuans can get. But King of Monster's combination of fitting music, sharp effects, and narrative hooks elevated the Kaiju to the status of gods clashing on the big screen, and I hope Legendary maintains and develops this winning strategy for the creature features to come.

But alas, as the Kaiju light up on screen with their big fights and even bigger personas, the narrative flops around like a dead fish in their footsteps. The screenwriters didn’t just drop the ball here; they never picked it up to begin with. A deluge of plot holes makes untangling any semblance of a coherent story nearly unfeasible. Characters will wait until the last possible minute to reveal critical information; plot twists get telegraphed worse than finishing moves on a WWE special. The list can go on, but one particular gaffe stands out as especially egregious. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say it involves someone overhearing a conveniently sensitive conversation on an intercom, getting her hands on a valuable piece of equipment that should have been under lock and key, and then simply strolling out the front door - of a heavily fortified and well-armed terrorist base. There's coincidence, and then there's GTFO, and the plot’s heavy reliance on these and partial information withheld for no good reason breaks the suspension of disbelief worst than the giant CGI critters running loose.

But the only thing worse than a narrative scaffolding built of wet tissue and toilet paper rolls is a lack of compelling characters to swing through it. Okay, I get it - this is a monster flick, not Citizen Kane, and neither the first Godzilla, nor Kong: Skull Island offered up any Oscar worthy performances. But besides hosting more sensible plots, those films somehow managed to tease an ephemeral crap out of us for at least some of their characters, either through strength of acting (Bryan Cranston’s heart-wrenching performance comes to mind) or the pathos such a hopeless situation tends to inspire for its cast.  In King of the Monsters, the human motives became more a nuisance than anything else save for their aforementioned function of blowing the action to a bigger scale, and not even Ken Watanabe’s underrated performance can fix the lack of interest or chemistry on screen. Even the major character deaths didn’t really hit home for me, since they came about largely through plot-induced stupidity that looked more artificial than the CGI. A bad plot might be saved by compelling characters, but if you have a bad plot and weak characters, then you’ve got a problem, Houston.

But seriously, you should forget all of that - forget the flimsy characters, flimsier story, and the stupidity-induced plot holes.  Why? Because you’re not here for those. At the end of the day, the only objective criterion by which a movie should be judged is whether or not it has its intended impact on its audience. You don’t file into a movie titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters to experience compelling human drama or well-crafted story. You came to see a giant, radioactive, fire-breathing lizard and his friends smash faces and skyscrapers in equal measure.  King of the Monsters will never top anyone’s best of the year list, but I had a good time despite its many, many faults, and if you adjust your expectations and shed the critical glasses for a minute, you just might, too.

Score: C+