Godzilla II: King of the monsters

Wow, I didn't enjoy it. Like, so very, very, very much. The other Godzilla shows that it cost a lot of money, and the monster battles are actually pretty good, at least the final one, which cleverly works with scale and alternates spectacular shots of two dueling titans with action with human characters running at their feet. But that's pretty much it. The new Godzilla has about fifteen human characters, but finding a single one among them that was the least bit interesting or likeable was a task beyond me. A few hours after the screening, I actually remember the names of about two of the protagonists. The trouble is that despite all the declamation and certain attempts to conceive Godzilla II a little differently, it is ultimately very much about those human characters, who of course are the ones who, by their dullness, flatness and absolute unwillingness to take themselves even a little bit less seriously (this is a film in which a giant lizard fights an even bigger three-headed dragon, dammit!) they get boring at first, and then just annoying. The grandeur and elegance promised by the trailers isn't there in the end, and while the fights are fun to watch, the rest of it really doesn't work. In fact, as a viewer, I'm not really interested in seeing another film conceived in this way. (30.05.2019)

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. (31.05.2019)

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)

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)

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% (03.06.2019)