Godzilla: King of the Monsters Rules with a Roar

The thing about legends, mythology, and, by extension fandom, is they require some buy-in from the audience. Mythic stories, while interesting individually, aren’t intended to function as one-off tales. The bulk of their power—whether it rests on cultural, Jungian, or nostalgic foundations—comes from the larger universe of story that encircles each particular tale.

Hollywood has understood this, to a limited extent, for almost a hundred years. But since the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the increasing competition of long-form narratives from cable and streaming platforms, there has been a noticeable pivot towards “mythic” franchises. For many fans, it was a great day when the kaijū-rich world of Godzilla (Gojira) found its home among the monster-sized studio franchises. I am one of these fans, and while I am not the type to regale you with endless minutiae, I can tell you I spent much of my childhood trying to convince my friends that Godzilla was real. This review might be some lingering argument from that evangelism.

King Ghidorah and Godzilla face off. © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC

This brings us to Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the latest entry in the “Monarch”-era Godzilla films. It picks up in the wake of both Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017) as well as all the impressive follow-on media around both of those films. In the time since those stories, Godzilla has disappeared, the world is grappling with the awareness of “Titans,” the Russell family has been dealing with the trauma of losing a son in the San Francisco attack, and Monarch has been fighting off militarization. This isn’t quite peace, but we are in something like a kaijū Cold War. That is, until a shadowy group enters the picture, hell-bent on getting the Titans all riled up again for its own reasons.

So that’s the plot, or what longtime G-fans call the excuse to get into the kaijū mayhem. How filmmakers have handled this over the years has always defined the strength of any given Godzilla film. The general rule is the more people talk, the worse the movie is. Notable exceptions might be Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster or Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, as they wove more science-fiction weirdness into the mix and managed some suspense for those inclined to pay attention to the humans in the movie. The original 1954 film, the 2014 reboot, and 2016’s Shin Godzilla also stand out from this rule in that they have a focus on the human element in a way that doesn’t feel like filler or distraction.

Vera Farmiga as Dr. Emma Russell and Millie Bobby Brown as Madison. © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC

Godzilla: King of the Monsters does as much as it can to set itself apart from what many saw as the weaknesses of the 2014 film, the first Monarch installment. Director Michael Dougherty and screenwriter Zach Shields wisely push the humans into a supporting role and make this a story first and foremost about the Titans. The result is that Godzilla and his supporting “friends” have among the most distinct personalities they have ever had, especially so with Rodan and Ghidorah being given character traits that have long been absent. For the first time that I can recall, each of Ghidorah’s three heads has a will of its own and can act independently. This may be a small thing for casual viewers, but it was pretty cool to see for this longtime fan. The filmmakers knew the Titans were the stars, and they finally got some personalities for the audience to latch on to. The fact these personalities are more interesting than most of the humans isn’t new and should be celebrated. Even the people in the movie spend almost the entire time watching and talking about the Titans rather than themselves—when they aren’t running for their lives, of course.

Ghidorah. © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC

But the single most exciting thing for me about Godzilla: King of the Monsters isn’t that it brought back the pure joy and excitement I had as a “monster kid” watching the classics at 3:00 a.m.; I still manage to get that when I watch the old movies available on streaming or in my physical collection. Rather, the thrill of this movie is the stream of gorgeous images, which are among the most amazeballs renditions of these kaijū ever presented in motion pictures. Some of the visuals approach divine ecstasy as far as I am concerned. Seeing these epic beings depicted with the reverence and love that all of the artists involved have brought to the film is something all G-fans should celebrate, and I hope it will also bring new fans into the fold. This movie isn’t just spectacle—it was made by people who on some level may, like me, have tried to convince their friends that Godzilla is real. Heck, this movie pretty much is an attempt to convince the whole world that Godzilla is real.

Besides the sheer number of really, truly awesome visuals, there are plenty of other things for fans of all levels. There are Easter eggs that reach all the way back to the original film, there are details in the Monarch worldbuilding that should delight kaijū fans, and there is a serious attempt to build and develop this Godzilla franchise into a consistent mythology. Through and through, it is clear these filmmakers were intent on making a movie in which the monsters weren’t just plot devices but the atomic heart and fiery soul of every frame of the movie. In this they succeeded.

© 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC

In the interest of fairness, at this point I should take off my Godzilla fan hat and slide into something a little more filmy-wilmy. As I said at the start, this sort of movie is best with a buy-in from the audience, and I think some of the best parts of this movie will be lost on casual viewers. For these moviegoers, the Easter eggs will be irrelevant, the fine points of kaijū character development may not matter, and the lack of focus on the human problems might in fact be a real problem.

Certainly, you don’t go to a giant monster movie and complain about the giant monsters, but this is a giant monster movie with serious mainstream aspirations. The lack of heft in the human part of the film may hold it back from being the total smash Legendary wants it to be. As awesome as it is, Godzilla: King of the Monsters doesn’t have that character spark that draws a wider viewership for projects like Jurassic Park or even Stranger Things. Likewise, there are plenty of things in the movie that just don’t make total sense or hold up to serious scrutiny. Again, this is a movie about monsters that are taller than buildings and feed off nuclear energy. If you want logic and realism, you are in the wrong theater by a distance equal to the swipe of Godzilla’s tail.

The humans: Emma and Mark Russell, Sam Coleman, Rick Stanton, Ilene Chen, and Ishiro Serizawa. © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC

It’s not as though the human element is totally disappointing, however. The Russell family drama is given some unexpected complications as Mark (Kyle Chandler), Emma (Vera Farmiga), and Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) negotiate their complicated feelings toward the Titans and Monarch. Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Drs. Ilene Chen and Ling (Ziyi Zhang) are given backstories that intertwine nicely with the Titans and echo their characters’ deep roots in the world of Gojira. The supporting cast of the G-Team is interesting enough, with echoes of the rogues’ galleries from Jurassic Park and Aliens, but also notable are the racial diversity and the number of women shown in this group and in the US military. This is not a small detail in a film looking to propel a global franchise into the future. As inessential as the humans are in this movie, it’s nice to see that someone put thought into who would be on G-Team and what it should look like. They may be supporting the main stars, but they are not entirely stock action-movie characters, either.

Madison Russell. © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC

Some folks say that the Old Gods derive their power from the number and passion of their believers, and that those same gods can only be perceived by those who truly know and understand their powers and desires. In this spirit, maybe it is best to consider the cinema house as a long-lost shrine rediscovered. Perhaps you will enjoy the movie the most if you enter not as a mere member of an audience but as an acolyte preparing to face the awesome power and majesty of gods older than any sense of human time. Let these ecstatic visions of the true Elder Gods dazzle and terrify you, feel the thunder of their steps in your bones, then lean back into your seat and wonder, if only for two hours, whether that mighty and ageless “Skreonk” might just be real after all.

Long live the king, indeed.

© 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Productions LLC