Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Director: Michael Dougherty
Writer: Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields
Sequel to: Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island
Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn, Anthony Ramos, Elizabeth Faith Ludlow
Seen on: 4.6.2019

Plot:
Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) is a scientist working on a bio-acoustics device that is supposed to communicate and calm creatures like Godzilla. She has been testing it on a moth larva in China and it seems to work pretty well. Her research doesn’t go unnoticed, and so Emma finds herself and her daughter Maddie (Millie Bobby Brown) taken, and her device used to wake all giant creatures instead of calming them.

Just to be very clear: kaiju films are not my thing and I didn’t particularly enjoy the first Godzilla, nor Kong. But I agreed to see this one for my friend and for Vera Farmiga. But it didn’t come as a surprise to me that I didn’t actually like this one either (my friend, who generally likes kaijus did, though, so it probably is a good kaiju movie anyway).

My problem with the film was that I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about the characters, I didn’t care about the monsters (Mothra looked fantastic, though), I didn’t even care for the fight scenes. Although they were well done and looked good. But those fight scenes should leave you excited about those forces of nature, those monsters, clashing with each other. All they did was leave me shrugging.

And when you don’t have that excitement about it, you notice that the plot – that would otherwise just not be that relevant – doesn’t really make much sense. And, if you’re me, you also get annoyed at the constant patriarchal “battle of the alphas”, “king of the monsters” bullshit the film brings up every two seconds.

So, what can I say. The cast isn’t bad at all (I am still all heart-eyes about Vera Farmiga, but the heart-eyes also didn’t help me with the first Godzilla, where I was heart-eyesing at Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and it was great to see Watanabe and Hawkins again. Always a pleasure, those two. The special effects are gorgeous. And I was bored pretty much from start to finish.

Summarizing: not my cup of tea.