Long live...the King (Godzilla: King of the Monsters 2019)

236.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters

8/10

A massive creature feature is back and this time, Godzilla is hopefully going to be on the screen a bit more than his last movie. This universe is starting to take shape as we are gearing up for the lizard taking on King Kong. I'm still a little intrigued as to how and why, but only time shall tell on that part. For now, let's focus on this instalment. With a decent cast grouped together, this movie has a lot of potential to be a disaster movie crossed with a monster movie. Kyle Chandler, Vera Farminga, who I love from The Conjuring franchise, Millie Bobby Brown, fresh from the success from Stranger Things and even Charles Dance. I had a fair degree of excitement for this movie, enough so that I went to my first viewing in IMAX because it looked like it was the only way to do the visuals justice.
IMAX truly was the way forward.

I had heard a lot of reviews and snippets that the movie wasn't great, there was too much monster activity and not enough storyline. Everything else suffered because they wanted to make it look visually appealing. All of this was bullshit in my eyes. We are the moaning for the first Godzilla movie as not getting enough of the monsters and this time, we get plenty and people are still fickle. The movie looked immense visually. Some of those shots, long-range shots and look of each monster were something I would not get tired of fast and in my opinion, nothing else suffered. It really does take seeing to be believing as each monster was exposed to us, the scene and cinematography were some of the best I have witnessed in a long time. I know it's CGI but a lot of the time we can see this go very wrong, as witnessed in many other movies.

The storyline was never ever going to be Oscar-worthy and people are too critical these days. We had a broken family where the mother was a fanatic, looking to free these massive beasts in order to wipe out civilization and start again due to over-population and pollution. The daughter, played by Millie, has to fight to save her mother from making the wrong decisions, whilst her estranged father does the same. Vera's character is working with Charles Dances' to bring about the end but after some total destruction and finding out that one of these monsters isn't on Earth to help kick start the place again, they know they have made a boo-boo. Godzilla gets her proverbial arse handed to him until the gang nuke him to give him some extra power, a moth comes and heals him during the big fights and in the end, Godzilla turns into a nuke of his own as Vera's character commits and sacrifices herself to save her family and Godzilla stands upon a city of rubble with a number of other monsters bowing down to his immenseness, if that is even a description.

It was very interesting to see the switch between characters as, at first, Vera's character seemed a loving mother, trying to save these great beasts and after the first 30 minutes, she was only really in it for herself. This was the reason that Kyle's character left the family after he found out that she was trying to control these monsters with a device of their own. We are very used to seeing Vera as one of the Warrens' but this time, we didn't know what to feel, whether she was doing it for the greater good or silently evil, the audience could easily be torn. Millie Bobby Brown featured in this with it being the first thing I've seen her in and I can see the buzz about her. Great acting as she went through each emotion possible for a child. Her and her dad, played by Kyle Chandler are two characters that I think would be really good additions to the next movie. Whether they forget the timeline and bring anyone back from the Skull Island remains to be seen.
The franchise is taking a serious step in the direction of Godzilla vs Kong and the countdown is on to the big one. It'll be very interesting now to see how this is about to shape up with the size of Kong and how he's getting off the island or where the fighting takes place. With these other monsters be involved and will any of our characters make it back to the next one.