3 Short Paragraphs: Godzilla: King of the Monsters

2019, Michael Dougherty (Krampus) -- download

OK, this one just pissed me off. It just didn't have the right to be this bad. The first new Godzilla movie may have been divisive, but it had a vision that it carried through on. It was grim and vast and on the scale a Godzilla movie needed to be. They expanded the Monster Cinematic Universe with Kong: Skull Island, a movie that knew how to stylishly do a boom bash squash chomp monster movie. I am not sure why they skipped the fight between Kong and Godzilla to go into the Monster Free For All, but I guess they want to leave the climax for the two kings?

King of the Monsters was jumbled, confused and constantly diving from explosive scene to the next, a stumbling expositional mess. Sure, the original Toho movies were dumb, but in that acceptable low budget rubber suited monsters kind of way. No current big budget Hollywood movie with this much behind it has any excuse for being this stupid. They have writers, for gawd's sake!! You want to know how to do BIG and BOMBASTIC ? See Pacific Rim, and if the only thing this movie wanted to do was set this franchise apart from the palatable colour scheme of del Toro's movie, then they should have at least embraced the disaster movie horror of what having a dozen giant monsters sitting on the doorsteps of major world cities would imply.

The whole conceit of this movie is MO MUTO MO MONEY. Right off the bat, we have to introduce Mothra. Oh, and not MUTO anymore -- they are Titans. And there are dozens of them all over the place, monitored by Monarch but fear & desired by the governments of the world. Then we introduce an eco terrorist who releases Mothra, and then King Ghidora (Monster Zero) and then Rodan and Godzilla has to defend the planet from all the nasty beasties, who just happened to be driven into Rage Mode by an Electronic MacGuffin that sings back to them. And then Godzilla goes to Atlantis. And then the guy who hates Godzilla, but sees the errors of his ways, feeds Godzilla a nuclear bomb. And then Mothra shows up to sing her pretty song. And then... and then... Oh I give up.

Bonus Paragraph(s) of Why's.

Why would anyone stop running from a 1000 foot monster to fire their hand held weapon at it ?

Why would King Ghidora be concerned with singular human beings? Just stomp on the lot of them. Oh wait, there are main characters inside.

Why would the Monster Squad (US based military chasing around Godzilla) be highlighted as attempting to save island villages before Rodan burns them all? They are a SINGLE Vertibird -- they can rescue maybe a dozen.

Why would a man who knows wolves think he can apply that knowledge to a creature that is millions of years old AND is A MONSTER ?!?!

If all previous knowledge has said they can blow Godzilla up with nuclear bombs, why do they then decide it's a way to feed/heal him?

Why was this movie so badly done?