I know the website has been lacking in content recently—and I apologize for that—but I couldn’t not write at least a few words about Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And we really do have some things kicking around for the Halloween season, and hopefully before. And hey, we’ve been doing the podcast regularly. Semi-regularly. Sometimes. We’ve been doing it sometimes.
As usual, I’m not here to review a movie, to tell you what’s wrong with it and why you should or shouldn’t see it. There are plenty of other people who do that better than me. I’m just here to revel in the movies I love.
Spoilers ahead, so beware if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
If you listen to our podcast or follow Joanna on Twitter, you might know that we’ve been going through the Godzilla films for the first time, and our 7-year-old son is along for the ride (our almost 5-year-old son, however, is pretty indifferent to the whole thing, except Godzookie—he likes Godzookie). This journey has been a blast, and it’s far from over. I was really excited though that we’d get to take our kids to see a new Godzilla film in the theater smack in the middle of our own kaiju project. So on June 1st, we dipped to the theater set to ill. That indifferent 5-year-old I mentioned? Indifference gave way to full-blown animosity. I spent the first 30 minutes of Godzilla: King of the Monsters in the hallway outside the theater and a good portion of the rest of the movie with him quietly whining in my ear that he wanted to leave. Oh, and he had to go to the bathroom 3 or 4 times during the movie, I suspect out of spite. My 7-year-old son loved it though and was geeking out the whole time. Obviously, another viewing was in order, so Joanna and I took a half day from work while the kids were in school and went in for a second watch.
I was aware of some people’s problems with the human element in the movie. That’s fine. I don’t really agree and had no problems there, especially compared to Godzilla 2014 where we don’t see the big guy until like the 59-minute mark. For a very brief yet accurate review of our thoughts on the movie, see Joanna’s tweet below:
In my book, KOTM is 2 hours of Giant Monster Mayhem. We’re shown King Ghidorah (in frozen form), Mothra (in larval form) and Godzilla (not even counting the news footage showing the battle from 2014’s film) all in like the first half hour of the film. There’s a mid-movie brawl between KG and Godzilla to boot, plus some great menacing stuff with Rodan and so on. I sat in awe, both times but especially the second, of these monster characters on the big screen. Nothing can truly replace the charm of the guy-in-a-suit Godzilla, Ghidora, etc., from the old films, but I thought these Titans were amazing. And look, if the human aspect is going to be only military and scientists, I’m okay with the way it was handled. Some scientist fucking with shit is usually how most creature movie plots go anyway, and in Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and Alan Jonah (Tywin Lannister Charles Dance), we basically get a human version of a Thanos/Ra’s Al Ghul team-up, where the villain truly believes they are doing right by the world and sometimes present good cases as to why.
Plus, it can’t be overlooked that between Skull Island and KOTM, we now have Dr. Dre, Eazy-E AND Ice Cube fighting monsters.
So, as we look forward to King Kong vs. Godzilla next year, here is how my ideal movie would look: The film opens shortly after the events of Skull Island, and definitely has to feature Brie Larsen and Tom Hiddleston. Godzilla shows up and he and Kong battle, after which Godzilla goes back into dormancy. Fast forward to the present, after the events of KOTM, he resurfaces and he and Kong battle again until Alan Jonah’s Mecha-King Ghidorah shows up and Kong and Godzilla team-up and defeat him, after which they realize they are fighting on the same side and go their separate ways as Kong returns to Skull Island and Godzilla the sea. And in this mix, as long as I’m throwing out my kaiju wish list, I’d like to see a comic tie-in called ‘Monarch’, and it would be similar to Hellboy and BPRD, that spotlights different eras of Monarch agents, whether they are altruistic Indiana Jones types or shadowy government agent types, searching for and following the trails of various monsters.
Lastly, all hail Mothra, Queen of the Monsters.
Long Live the Queen.
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