Godzilla II: King of the Monsters

The anticipated Godzilla sequel, after the riveting trailers, is ultimately a missed opportunity and another blockbuster that failed to live up to expectations this year. Michael Dougherty is the director of Trick 'r Treat and Krampus, two decent holiday horror films, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters feels like a big bite that he couldn't quite chew. The characters are absolutely uninteresting (though Eleven tries), the pacing is pretty much erratic, we only see four of the fifteen monsters mentioned in the action, and repeatedly at that. Perhaps the worst part of it all is that the film isn't entertaining at all, and if it's not exactly blazing on screen, it's rather boring. I was most impressed with Hydra, which is visually solid and I think the finale is satisfying, but the rest of it hardly works at all. Too bad. 60% (04/06/2019)

In his previous effort, Edwards handled the legacy of the Toho films much more deftly. He stretched the cues effectively and delivered a clear action set-piece with some iconic moments at the end. But this? This sequel has a fantastic, exciting trailer, with a wonderful musical theme “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that will make you swoon. Unfortunately, the film itself is not fantastic, let alone exciting. In every one of the 27 Godzilla movies I've seen so far (not counting Emmerich's crap that has nothing to do with Kaiju), I've had more fun than here, including the worst of them, the infantile Son of Godzilla, which was at least a pleasant guilty-pleasure. This film is just guilty, but without any pleasure. You don't care about characters who have a mouthful of family values, visually it's not great either. The golden-hued color filter is downright ugly and the action is cluttered, with a shaky camera that's often a clump of pixels you don't care about. It has a few moments, a few references to Toho's predecessor, which are nice (the woman is also the catalyst for plot twists, and we can hear about three times the notorious Godzilla arrival motif we know from Japanese Kaiju), but that can't be enough even for the most diehard Toho/Godzilla fans, among whom I count myself. It's a disappointment that I hope won't break the lizard's neck in the future. (01/06/2019)

Dougherty must be the only person on the planet who is approached by the people form Warner Brothers with a huge budget and an unmissable offer “to play games with Godzilla and all his fellow cult monsters in the backyard during their awakening and the end of the world", so he can't think “hmm, it could be from the perspective of people, as Edwards tried but failed to do, or bitter satire in the style of (Shin´s) Japanese Godzilla or a catastrophic B-movie full of ultimate monsters and titanic battles referencing the classics". No, what comes to his mind is “cool, I'll finally be able to shoot an interior conversational movie from the Avengers Helicarrier and satisfy all the scientists who have to say the weird nonsense with a straight face in similar movies, and I'll do it by not making them say that in a few sentences, but it will last tens of minutes and even the nonsense they talk about will be even more stupid than it normally is and I will intersperse it with dull CGI action, where everyone will constantly keep running out of collapsing buildings, and it will be full of such generic shots of falling skyscrapers that even the animators themselves won´t be able to tell whether this scene of a crumbling big city happened in the last Marvel or DC movie". And he did as he said he would. The childish quasi-scientific piffle and solutions meant to restart the civilization of Mother Nature are an integral part of the genre. But only If they form the background/prologue to the battles of the Titans, not if they are the cornerstone. No one gives a shit about monsters anymore. Except Dougherty. And when they just have mercy on the audience here and there and offer what the viewers are looking for, it lacks ideas, cool moments, dynamics and scale. The exception is a few moments during the decent ending, when the film almost becomes what it wanted to be (and should have been) the whole time. McCreary's music, paying one tribute to another, is the film's biggest asset. And yet it is very specific in every respect. At least he understood “what is going on", even if the director didn't. (28/09/2020)

An excellent start and a spectacular demonstration of different monsters, buried under a faint yet convoluted plot and underestimation of the viewer’s intelligence. Thanks to Gareth Edwards, with the previous movie Warner Brothers has managed to pull off a respectable relaunch of the Godzilla cult by successfully blending the motifs and the atmosphere of the original Japanese myth with the pomp of Hollywood blockbusters. But instead of meeting the audience’s expectations, they entrusted the next two sequels to creators of mediocre horror movies. Sure, pouring the high budget into first-class CGI should be good enough for the stupid target audience craving cool-looking monsters, but let’s see if this approach changes with the new CEO. (06/07/2019)

This monsterverse is a rare example of variable filmmaking techniques that result in considerably different movies. Godzilla, perhaps the most distinctive blockbuster of the decade, cleverly linked the events from the characters’ perspective and the futility of their actions, while Kong: Skull Island delivered straightforward and over-the-top adventure focused on human actions (and how they make everything worse). This sequel starring the fairy lizard is somewhere in between, it takes from the first one the serious attempts at fatalism and the portrayal of the insignificance of the human characters, while form Kong it takes the narrative drive, more space for the monster encounters and a more active human participation with the Titans. I don’t think it will be any surprise to say that the oscillation between two such different concepts results in a pretty impersonal approach that is often somewhat simplified, and that maybe even weakens both the nature of the clashes of the monsters and the fate and motivations of the human heroes. The catalyst of the story is a group of people, but their significance is gradually lost and by the end It’s pushed aside by contrived family ties and the helplessness in the face of the powerful titans. Though the protagonists try to act throughout the story, their actions (which fortunately aren’t stupid or naive but understandably motivated) only serve the purpose of delaying the climax (unlike the first movie, where the characters actually tried to prepare for it). On the other hand, the narration flows by quickly, rhythmically setting monumental action set pieces into a story that systematically shuffles between the subjective observation of the terrors and the havoc caused by the monsters and the admiration for Godzilla, whose iconic image the film develops and escalates. The twists are also linked smoothly and they basically make sense, though they are often simplified by the insanely fast movements through space and, of course, the indecision over which approach should take precedence. The individual scenes and their staging are great, it’s a shame that they were unable to build a more coherent story arc around them. In any case, it’s still an interesting approach to the extensive mythology of that world, to which I will gladly return. 70% (08/06/2019)