Review: GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS Was a Visual Feast of Awesomeness with Some Problems

Director Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters was one of my most anticipated films of the year. My expectations for it exploded through the atmosphere. The film has an incredible marketing campaign that gave us some incredible and emotionally moving trailers that lured us in, making us want to see more!

There were aspects of the movie that I loved and there were other aspects of it that I didn’t care for it. For me, the giant Titans were the best part of the movie. Seeing Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah brought to life in the movie and getting to watch them battle in a way we’ve never seen before was an absolute blast! You could tell that Dougherty loves and has reverence for these characters and he did some incredibly cool stuff with them.

The visuals in this movie were absolutely mind-blowing, the director and his VFX team did an incredible job bringing these monster and this story to life. I know we see a lot of great visual effects these days, but I want to point out that what I saw in this movie went above and beyond the other work we are seeing these days. I was just floored by them, especially when it came to those monster on monster battles.

Now, on to the parts of the film that I didn’t quite like. The human aspect of the story was the weakest part of the film. I really didn’t care for any of the human characters except maybe for the ones played by Kyle Chandler and Millie Bobby Brown. I just didn’t care for any of their stories. I especially didn’t like the story arc surrounding Vera Farmiga’s character and the reasoning behind unleashing the monsters on the world. All I’ll say is I’m over movies using environmental plot devices to drive a story forward or drive a character’s motivation. It’s a movie trope that has been done to death. I was really hoping it wouldn’t use this plot device, but it did.

There is a part in the film where this motivation to unleash the monsters to help save the world is laid out and it was done in a laughably bad way and it didn’t really make any sense! There were people in the screening I attended that laughed out loud during this scene and I found myself rolling my eyes. It felt like the dialogue for these characters was being written on the spot while they were shooting the movie. It didn’t feel natural. Watching giant monsters battle each other felt more real and more natural than the way these characters talked and interacted with each other.

There are a good amount of plot holes in the story as well and other things that just didn’t make any sense. They had so much money to spend to make this film the best that it could be in every way, you’d think they could have used some of it to smooth out the story and the writing and make it an all-around great film.

Regardless of my issues, I enjoyed the movie! It was a blast to watch and I know that fans and audiences are going to flip over seeing Godzilla battle some of his legendary enemies. You just have to look past the weaknesses and enjoy the movie for what it is, not stew over what it could have been.