The well-renowned Godzilla franchise is cult-classic’d for two main reasons: its creative practicality with its rubber monsters and its message on the dire consequences of nuclear warfare. 2019’s King of the Monsters not only has neither but goes the downwards-to-hell Transformers route in thinking that blitzing the screen with computer-generated action always equates to excitement and a superior adaptation of the source material. With this in mind, I can guarantee you if I saw this in the biggest IMAX screen upon release, my eyelids would have felt just as heavy as they did when I saw this with a cup of wine in me on a plane, still getting the urge to walk out. Thoughtless scripts that are so spontaneously cringe-worthy and soulless, characters whose motivations, developments and relations to the film’s monsters are nonsensically shifted under your eyes and treated with as much attention as a piece of debris Godzilla steps on, and action scenes (the film’s selling point nonetheless) that are unfocused and unearned without the slightest build-up. Safe to say that this film deserves to be shredded and discarded by the sands of time as much as Roland Emmerich’s reboot in 1998.
One thing worth noting was, before seeing the film, I noticed a general medium attack on critics’ claims of there being too much monster focus than human drama, stating that’s exactly what they were going for. So I went in wanting to like it and to be able to stomach poor character writing, thinking the reason for that area’s poorness lies in the characters’ focus and screen-time being sacrificed for a separate unique narrative world unfolding through the famed monsters’ eyes, bringing as much heart and character to them as their cinematic spectacle. Alas, nearly all the film is shown among our human characters, the monsters alas just being there for flashy trailer material, and by God do I have no sympathy or any remote sense of connection for them at all.
Milly Bobby Brown tries her hardest to bring life to a teen girl going through parent issues, with her mother being kidnapped by eco-terrorists set to free the 17 dormant ‘titan’ monsters to (lazy idea with stupid explanation) heal the damage humanity has done to the earth, while her divorced father works alongside military-organisation Monarch to exterminate them. But her bone-dry script gives no sense of chemistry, making me feel sorry to see such bone-dry scripts being dished to such renowned actors. What we have is a 2 hour ‘merica f**k yeah’ military boardroom discussion with the tension conjured from shifting character motivations equating to crunched-up test papers being flung around a primary school classroom while dull crash-bang-wallop monster fights happen outside to no consequence I’d care for.
If you can manage to ‘turn off your brain and enjoy’ this film, then by all means do so. But if I’m going to see monsters bite eachother for over 5 minutes, I’d expect some grand-scale weight to them. Gareth Edwards did this fantastically in his 2014 Godzilla instalment, with many scenes being shown from the human POV to bring out a more relatable sense of terror and more gripping perspective of the film’s behemoths. This film does nothing but wave you around medium-shot action, making it feel like a clunky PvP fighter game than something you’re supposed to be visually engaged with. Even the old low-budget entrees managed to grip you more over 30 years ago with their low-angle shots from miniature sets adding an illusionary dreaded human-eye view than a sludging inconsequential CGI fight. King of the Monster’s selling action is boring and holds next to no cinematic imagination.
This is where I get to my issue of fans of classic sci-fi films/shows thirsting for their beloved productions to be reinvented in ‘high-budget’ formats full of CGI, being oblivious to the fact this would undoubtably strip the originality they bare that stops them ending up as bargain-bin naffs to appeal to the current Marvel-incited western publics. Practically-marvellous franchises such as Thunderbirds have their own charm through their miniature sets, while adaption into the west would strip their heart narrative/effects values and would only incorporate their superficial flashy traits (watch the fan-made CGI Ultraman trailer to see the horror I mean). King of the Monsters is exactly this. You can watch an old Godzilla and find an escape from modern day’s reskinned cycle of filtering with CGI and pretend ‘gritty’ tones to find a whole new mindset of capturing a practical sci-fi illusion with heart. Here, seeing old favourite monster designs transitioning from suit to computer can be entertaining…..for about five minutes before you realise what’s truly missing when you’re forced to put up with agonising characters and sickly brown-dull formatting.
King of the Monsters is ultimately about generating flashy two-minute sequences to fool people with trailers and Youtube clips than being a well-made film. Stay away from this numb-skulled, empty lifeless 2-hour chore like a radiation zone. Because any short thrill you might get from a kaiju or two will soon plummet into a soul-sucking void of Transformers scripts and a narrative that is just about as coherent as Tetsuo: The Iron Man. It is bad. Really bad.