Godzilla: King of the Monsters

© 2019

One major part of my life growing up in the 70s, between the ages of, say, eight and ten, was Godzilla. The original Japanese gorilla-whale. How I loved Godzilla as a kid! From the murky, mature, somewhat adult original Godzilla of 1951 to the acid-rock 1971 Godzilla vs the Smog Monster to all those silly “monster island” movies with baby Godzilla, aliens with funky sunglasses and mecha-monsters such as Mecha-Godzilla and Mecha-Kong. My all-time favorite, which I still watch every couple of years when it’s on regular TV, is 1963’s Godzilla vs. King Kong. Every Saturday morning there’d be a Godzilla flick on, and WABC channel 7 would play a Godzilla-themed week several times a year as their 4:30 movie.

So, a half-dozen years ago, the little boy in me was quite excited when it was announced that a “real” revisioning of Godzilla was coming out. Forget that 1997 Roland Emmerich mistake. This time, though made by an American studio, this new Godzilla would be phenomenal and iconic.

Well, I reviewed that piece of garbage here. My wounded inner child graded it a C-minus.

Then, two years ago, that damn little kid got all worked up again over the Godzilla sequel, where the King of the Monsters would prove he was, uh, king of the monsters by kicking the combined asses of Ghidora, Rodan, and Mothra.

I was more than willing to forgive them for 2014.

Then, last week, I watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

I hated it. Hated, hated, hated it.

But not in an emotional way. More in an existential way. Not as in, “why does this movie exist?” Yes, we all know, to cash in on the hopes and dreams of middle-aged men who grew up on Godzilla decades ago, and also on their CGI-indoctrinated children. But as I watched the flick I was blanketed with a Satrian sense of ennui. Boredom. Existential boredom, where I questioned my own existence. Why was I watching this film? What did I do wrong? Where did I go wrong? Was I being punished for something? If existence precedes essence, why the hell is this sentient entity stretched out in his favorite comfy chair munching on his daughters’ Halloween candy doing watching this wretched excuse for cinema?

I had to take my revenge.

Therefore, I did something I never did before. Before the movie was over, around the halfway point, in fact, I reached for pad and pen and began taking notes on everything that I despised about and disappointed me with this movie.

In no particular order –

– Fat Godzilla’s back. Man, is he huge. More whale than gorilla. BMI greater than the number of Tokyo elderly. It was literally embarrassing to watch him on the screen. All jokes aside, fat monsters are not intimidating. How frightened were you of Jabba the Hut?

– Blurry CGI. Every special effect is seen either in the rain, or through a dust cloud, or at night, or on a TV screen in the movie, or through a camera lens. I know it’s to hide the cheap shoddiness of the final product. It annoyed me early on and all the way through.

– Roller-coaster camera work / camera never stands still. This is perhaps the number one thing I despise about movies today. I’m dizzy after ten minutes of any movie made after the Bourne Identity movies. It’s all shaky cam, even a Godzilla movie. I watched LA Confidential while I was laid up with a sprained ankle this past weekend and the static, unmoving camera work amazed me. I could enjoy the dialogue, the plot developments, the action, on a placid screen without reaching for a barf bag.

– Color-washed film with drab colors. Ugh. Why must the entire movie be various shades and hues of blue? Or sepia? Is it to instill a sense of unreality in the viewer? Not this one. It just took me out of the film entirely.

– Un-scary monster roars. Another peeve of mine. Monster roars are not scary. This goes even for Jurassic Park. Every flick with a monster bigger than a man has to have it roar at 110 decibels. Not scary. Godzilla’s roar is iconic. It is not scary.

– Unrealistic diversity and Mary Sues. Know what a “Mary Sue” is? Google it if you don’t. As soon as I saw the bald 105-point hit woman – the bad guy’s right-hand-man – I began counting all the diversity checkmarks in this film.

– Technically proficient teen daughter cliché. This was a cliché way back in 1993 with Jurassic Park. Teen girls don’t do Information Technology. Sorry, feminists and beta comic book fans. I have two daughters, fifteen and eleven, and though they could work their iPhones in a sandstorm during a midnight apocalypse, they laugh at computer nerds. So do their friends.

– Monsters still second fiddle to humans. This was not as bad as the first movie, where Godzilla was only seen in the background on TV screens in the film, but it was still bad. No one cares about the scientist family. The audience of this movie wanted to see 250-foot tall monsters beating the hell out of each other.

– Obligatory self-sacrifice scene with operatic dirge. This was just schmaltzy. Plus, I am not quite sure the sacrificee had to be sacrificed. But by that point I was completely out of the movie, and probably missed some important detail. Or maybe not.

– Something like ninety percent of the movie filmed before a green screen (background effects digitally added). Nothing seemed real. Everything looked kinda fakey-fake. I wouldn’t be surprised even if the kitchen scenes were done in a green-screen studio.

I do not hate you, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That would imply much more enthusiasm than I have for you. No, you simply underwhelmed me and wasted two hours and twelve minutes of my life.

Grade: D.

N.B. They’ve been teasing a Godzilla versus King Kong remake, and Kong actually had a two-second cameo (on a video screen, natch, in a military war room) in the movie. Please hold me to this vow not to see that sure atrocity when it arrives in three-to-five years!