Go-Go-Godzilla #32: Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)

Director: Michael Dougherty
Year: 2019
Length: 132 Minutes

The Gist: Monarch Dr. Emma Russell has invented a device dubbed the "Orca" that can emulate sounds of the Titans. Not only that, it can manufacture the sound of an Alpha Titan. This could be useful in non-violently warding off Titans who are coming close to populated centers. It's certainly useful when Mothra hatches in larval form and staves off an attack on one of Monarch's many, many massive Titan research compounds. Only an extremist faction interferes, kidnapped Russell and her daughter, and are using the Orca to awaken more kaiju around the world. These extremists want the Titans to return to dominance of the Earth and put man in its rightful place in the food chain.

Monarch needs the help of Emma's ex-husband, ex-Monarch something-something Dr. Mark Russell to help locate the Orca (and his family, I guess). Mark has been out in the wilderness studying animal behaviour and avoiding dealing with his feelings over the death of his son in the 2014 disaster in San Francisco.

Using the Orca's unique signature they trace them to Antarctica, where the extremists are setting Monster Zero, aka King Ghidorah free from his icy cage. History speaks of Ghidorah, an alien titan who, only through to good graces of Godzilla back in cave-drawing times, was put in his place.

Emma later awakens Rodan within a volcano, which endangers an entire village at the base. Monster Zero arrives and nearly kills Rodan, just as Godzilla arrives. The US Military have a new weapon, the Oxygen Destroyer (no explanation necessary?) which they hope will destroy both creatures at once. Unfortunately Ghidorah survives and Godzilla is near fatally wounded. The creature swims off and disappears.

The Monarch team, tracking Godzilla, discover the much theorized wormholes to a middle Earth (which Monarch: Legacy of Monsters implies the organization has known about for decades, so why is this one such a surprise?) and set off in a submersible where Dr. Serizawa sacrifices himself to set off a nuke to help big G recuperate faster. It's a success.

Godzilla returns to take on Ghidorah, while Mothra runs interference on Rodan. Mothra defeats Rodan, but is barely able to help against Ghidorah. She sacrifices herself to infuse Godzilla with her radiation which supercharges him, and he is able to defeat Ghidora.  The humans do some human stuff to make it seem like they matter including Emma using the Orca to distract Ghidora and sacrificing herself to give Godzilla a few precious seconds in the fight.

The age of Titans has arrived.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
Fearsome friend, and force of nature.

The Samesies:
The monster fighting is a big budget CGI version of what we used to see in the Showa era, where Godzilla would be up against a bigger, badder foe or two, and he would get help from another kaiju. This is fairly common Godzilla filmstuff.

Mothra, bless her, is ever the ineffective defender of the earth. She tries her best, but, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, is more powerful in her death than in life. She bestows her life force on Godzilla. This is not new either.

Monarch isn't the first time the Godzilla films have tried to build an agency around tracking Godzilla or other Kaiju, and it's not even the first one to carry through an entire series (there was the group Miki the psychic girl belonged to in the Heisei era).  Just like with the various JSDF and multinational organizations of the prior films, I wish there was more lore to Monarch in the foreground of these films but it's mainly a place to center human characters and exposition around (sounds pretty familiar to Godzilla). Monarch is not *really* explored as an agency until the Legacy of Monsters series on AppleTV+ (which may or may not be loaded with contradictions in the movies).

Rodan leaves sort of a devastating sonic boom and wind wake in its trail that truly made no sense in the suitmation films, and makes just as little sense here, but it's visualized more effectively. 

The Differences:
This is the most bloated of all the Godzilla films, and it really feels it. 

If this were a Toho film, it would probably be revealed that Charles Dance's extremist factions were actually aliens in disguise tricking Emma Russell into joining their side. But no, just boring, thinly caricatured humans doing evil in their misguided quest of zealotry.

Anyone worth caring about?
This tries to establish family drama around a giant monster fight film, and does not succeed. I dislike Vera Farmiga as an actor (I'm sure she's a lovely person), and she's in prime unlikable form here. I also dislike Kyle Chandler as an actor, and he's just as unlikable as Farmiga in this (but I'm sure he's a nice guy too). They're both gratingly pious as characters, and the fact that they both seem like bitter people makes them direly un-fun to watch. Chandler's Mark steps into Monarch like he owns the place, and begins dominating the conversation like he's the only smart guy in room and that his daughter is the only important thing in the world when millions are at risk every second the Titans are on the loose. Farmiga's Emma never seems to waver in her conviction to side with Dance's extremists, so she's a total villain, but you can tell Farmiga wants you to be sympathetic towards her, but I just can't muster any sympathy.

The worst part is, we could have had Ken Watanabe's Serizawa and Sally Hawkins' Dr. Graham be the creators of the Orca, and have bonds with the kaiju and have a very personal rivalry with Dance's Monarch defector, but they kill Hawkins off unceremoniously, sideline Serizawa as perhaps the most important person in Monarch, and don't give Dance any characterization at all.  

Watanabe and Hawkins would have been easily likeable leads, and they could have beefed up the military tracking of Dance (giving O'Shea Jackson Jr. more to do), and leaned into Dance's role as more of a Bond-villain (rather than a big nothing).

I haven't even talked about Millie Bobbie Brown. I like her in this, but her character is extraneous. It really tries to find something for her to do in the third act but it seems empty.  The story uses her as the motivating factor for the two characters who we don't care about, and at one point one of the tertiary military characters says about Mark and Emma, "If these two were my parents, I would have run away too". Yes, run far, far away.

The Message:
Humans have fucked up the earth, we need gigantic radioactive creatures to set it right.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZz
Honestly, I really hated this when I first saw it. I was very, very, very mad at it. But this time around, I liked it a lot more, save for the Farmiga/Chandler of it all, which is pretty much 2/5 of the film.  The kaiju fights are awesome, I love the expanding of the lore, and there's a lot of intriguing (but ultimately underserved) secondary characters to keep the thing afloat.  I think watching this armed with all the recently acquired Godzilla history helped in consuming it as well. All the nods being made to Godzilla history help make this film make more sense.  I mean, they really, truly, totally, undercut the heaviness of the Oxygen Destroyer, and its significance from the original Gojira, which just shows how underbaked this script was.

Sleepytime Factor:
No sleeping in this one, but much eyerolling everytime Farmiga or Chandler were on screen.