Rating Every Monsterverse Movie by How Much I Like Them
Godzilla X Kong: A New Empire is almost here, and I can’t wait to see it. The Monsterverse has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, mostly because big monsters destroying things rules. I’m not sure I need to explain myself further. Today, we’re going to look back at the previous four films that have brought us to this moment, and we’re gonna judge them by what I liked…and what I didn’t like.
Godzilla (2014)
SCORE: WHELMED
DIAGNOSIS: NEEDS MORE GODZILLA
2014 Godzilla stands out in the Monsterverse in that it feels the most like a real movie, a “real movie” in that it tries to develop character and have arcs. It also has a very different structure from the later films. It brings you into the story by giving you an extensive backstory and arc to the villain, in this case, the MUTOs. As a general movie, this works pretty well. The only problem is, it’s a Godzilla movie and Godzilla doesn’t show up until like the 30-40 minute mark. The MUTOs are in many ways the star of the show.
Overall though, it does work in a larger context, if only to expand the Monsterverse and give some gravitas to the tone of the movie. Godzilla is the most human based film in the Monsterverse. This film had to set up a cinematic universe, which is tough, especially since humans are pretty disposable in these films. Instead you have to set up concepts through characters, which is an extra step. Then it gets increasingly more convoluted because some characters simply exist to be the human backbone of the story and don’t reoccur. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen? One offs. The Elizabeth Olsen arc is a little underbaked anyway, which sucks because I liked her in this movie for the most part. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is also very good, though his character is basically Soldier Ken, G.I. Joe with a heart of gold. Bryan Cranston is in this film for like 30 minutes at the peak of his power and he steals the show…then dies when a crane collapses.
When it comes down the actual action in the movie…it’s solid. Pretty good even. There is far more pacing in this film in regards to the action. You can feel the weight of these Titans as they lumber into combat, the tension rising with each THUMPing foot fall. Our human characters can only watch in terror…. That’s one thing Gareth Edwards nails in this film, tonally and storywise. We don’t know the motivations of these titans, especially Godzilla. So when Godzilla pops out to attack the MUTOs, it draws more of “Oh great”, rather than “Thank god Godzilla is here!.”
I think my main issue with this film is that there’s too much human action that they also spend valuable time undermining with exposition drops about how “everything we do is futile! These fucking 80 foot tall monsters just popped out of the ground and literally nothing works.” They even try and lure the beasts out with a nuclear bomb, but that goes terribly wrong and requires the humans to wingsuit (back) in and disable the nuke. Apparently no one considered that giving the Titans a live nuclear warhead was a bad idea.
The monster action is okay, but the buildup is better than the payoff. Godzilla is just clearly more powerful than both of these creatures and he basically wipes the floor with them in 1v1 combat. Only when they team up can they get an edge, and even then it feels very temporary, basically a setup for the “insignificant humans do something that gives good monster time to recover” trope. In general, I think Godzilla just needs more screentime in general and you probably could’ve added in 5-10 more minutes of Godzilla related plot and cut the whole “Fiery Train/ Humans try and fight MUTO’s sequence” that occurs before the film moves to San Francisco. I know showing Godzilla is expensive, but that whole 15-20 minute skirmish probably wasn’t cheap either.
In general, it feels like a very different movie than the ones that followed because of it’s focus on aesthetic direction, a tone of dread and terror, and an interesting (albeit entirely unintuitive) approach of “making the monsters fight” be the last resort in favor of increasingly futile human conflict.
Kong: Skull Island
SCORE: MONKE
DIAGNOSIS: GUY WITH A POOL CUE IS WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
This movie is an entirely mixed bag for me. I loved parts of it and what it was trying to do, and then other parts of it felt contradictory entirely. Kind of felt like the director and the story were going in different places. Like, the story/premise as concieved is great- a Vietnam era take on Skull Island. The problem is the script and tone have these parts that, while recognizable as parts of good movies, do not mesh well together in this context. It felt like Jurassic Park 3 meets Indiana Jones meets an Asylum film, with some flourishes of Platoon. And it did feel like a very coherent, even at times good movie overall, but there are some tonal blindspots, as in sometimes what you think the situation should feel like, do not reflect what the film shows at all.
So, the whole thing is they want to explore this island (Skull Island), so they get government approval and go there with a bunch of soldiers who are on their last deployment (this means death.) They have to fly through a super storm that surrounds the island in helicopters. It is a very cool moment. Samuel L. Jackson gives this monologue that is very cool. Then they fly around the island and drop depth charges to try and…map the island? It’s not really clear except that it sets off the “that doesn’t seem like that should work” alarm. Well of course not. Because actually, they’re trying to mess with Kong. And you shouldn’t mess with Kong.
There’s a lot to like in this movie. The whole “creeping through a jungle full of unknown things” has always been a favorite set piece of mine, and I especially love when it’s creepy things, and not just enemy soldiers. The massive spider-mantis scene in this movie is awesome. The Skullcrawler fight sequence in the boneyard is awesome. In general, Skull Island is pretty well depicted throughout the course of this film. I really felt like they captured that aspect of things well. Kong’s place is entrenched (he’s clearly the biggest thing here), but it’s still a dangerous place for humans.
The problem isn’t really the characters or the setting, but the interaction of the two in some places. For example, Tom Hiddleston is like a badass mercenary, which he demonstrates by hitting someone with a pool cue. But then, he gets on the mission and he’s like…the nicest person ever. He’s Mr. Yes Sir, No sir, Harry Potter-esque. I mean, his acting is pretty good. Just nothing to work with. He’s supposed to be our male lead, Brie Larson as out female lead, but they end up feeling like a side show. Not to say they aren’t entertaining, but we’d go back to them and I had forgotten what they were doing, and I was watching this at 2 p.m on a Monday sober as a bone.
In a way that’s part of the movie’s problem. Everything feels like a sideshow inside of a slightly larger sideshow, except whatever Kong is doing, which is supposed to be the plot thread of the film, but it’s hard to follow because the sideshow’s keep coming to Kong. If you struggled following that sentence, that’s how you would feel watching this film. You’ve got the soldiers, which are a large sideshow comprised of Samuel L. Jackson and his troops, which then break down to two smaller sideshows of Samuel L. and the death wish soldiers, and the ones who are basically supporting characters who are skeptical of the whole “let’s blow up a giant ape” thing. Then, you’ve got the explorers/scientists, which has John. C. Reilly, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson and they honestly have a pretty charmed time up until the end because unlike the soldiers, they don’t purposefully seek out danger. Overall though, the whole thing devolves into an exercise in “what are we doing here?”, which is fun but a little chaotic.
Godzilla: King of The Monsters
SCORE: SUPER GOJIRA GALAXY 2
DIAGNOSIS: NEED MORE CAMRA
One of the saddest things about this film is the amount of camera people who were killed filming the close up action sequences, which led to many of them being cut from the film. This explains why so many scenes begin to show monster on monster violence only to return to our human characters, who are typically shocked, throwing up their hands at the absurdity of what is happening. Unfortunately that’s only half true. The computer generated imagery that constitutes Godzilla and the other Titans are not a threat to human life, but we did cut away way too often to see our human characters doing nothing we came to see.
This is especially frustrating considering how utterly awesome the monster cast in this movie is. Ghidorah? Mothra? Rodan? This is basically the Avengers of Godzilla characters. King Ghidorah in this movie would have to be in my top 5 coolest looking villains ever in a movie. I mean, the effects on him in this film are breathtaking, from the sheer height and scale of his tall ass frame with it’s three heads, to the yellow energy storm that surrounds him. He may not feel like a full on alien, like he’s supposed to, but he’s clearly some kind of Super Titan.
As far as the human characters go, I don’t dislike them. Millie Bobbie Brown is good, Vera Farmiga is solid and Kyle Chandler may even be kind of great. But they’re in this way too much. And not because of anything they do, but rather all the times we’re focused on them not really doing anything. There are a handful of chunks of this film that actually feel purposefully, even maliciously, built to keep a focus away from our monsters battling.
EXAMPLE A: Godzilla and Ghidorah are in the Arctic doing Godzilla VS. Ghidorah things….but Kyle Chandler and Millie B have to catch a helicopter! Quick! Let’s see them run to this helicopter! Are they gonna make it? Are they gonna Bryan Cranston Millie Bobby Brown? I just saw like 500 people get crushed under foot, but it feels different when it’s our lead!
EXAMPLE B: Godzilla and Ghidorah are having Round 3…Godzilla is juiced off an atomic bomb while Ghidorah is destroying the city of Boston for no apparent reason (yes this is a real description of something that constitutes a key set piece of this movie-it’s awesome), and Millie Bobby Brown has caused this by summoning Ghidorah with a suitcase that sounds like a challenge from an Alpha Titan. Kyle Chandler and Vera Formiga (her dad and mom) team up to go find her. Where is she? The monsters are fighting! Oh! She must’ve went home to our actual house somehow! And so now we follow them driving around Boston, and finding Millie Bobby Brown in a place she has no means or reason to go to. Is their house that close to Fenway Park? If so, why did it take so long to get there by military jeep in NO TRAFFIC?
The point is, this movie might be awesome, but it’s ultimately a little frustrating in it’s choice of editing during specifically the monster fights. It felt like they had a great barebones story thread that really put us on rails, but instead of powering through any holes like Adam Wingard does in the next movie, they expose their weaknesses (human characters, and by extension human motivations) and it ends up eating some good aspects of the movie.
Despite the constant cut aways, a lot of the sequences and monster on monster violence is classic Godzilla. The Oxygen Destroyer part is great (Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Serizawa is pretty much the best character in this expanded universe), the Rodan chase is also awesome, along with the eventual Fire Godzilla sequence. It’s actually a well paced, fun story at it’s core, with some issues filling scenes. It needed to be like 10 minutes shorter though, with an extra 3-5 minutes being the monsters themselves.
This one is still probably my second favorite one, simply because the monsters are so cool. It may leave you wanting more for some of the wrong reasons, but it did make these monsters compelling enough that there was an opportunity to waste. And truthfully, when it comes to titanic monsters fighting battles of nearly unimaginable scales, there’s not really a lot that can rival this, even with all the editing.
Godzilla vs. Kong
SCORE: GODZILLA FRIEND NOT ENEMY (in sign language)
DIAGNOSIS: FLAWLESS EXECUTION
This is the best Monsterverse movie, and I’m actually not sure it’s that close. Yes, it’s got some logic-plot gaps (they all do), yes it shares a lot of DNA with the work of Michael Bay, and yes it’s kind of a paint by numbers team up film. Two cool things fight, then team up to fight something bigger and slightly less cool. Except in this case, Mechagodzilla is awesome. This is the one movie I could’ve done with an extra 20 minutes just to see more Mechagodzilla. I also didn’t mind the human storylines and I appreciated the roles the characters played and understood the archetypes the director was going for.
The archetypal character building method here worked much better than the previous “invested due to trauma” stories of the previous films. That’s not to say that isn’t an element here, but it feels like it’s exercised in tandem with familiar archetypes that go down easier than the time investment based character building of the previous films. This is key- the characters work because they are on screen for an appropriate amount of time and they are doing things that move the story forward.
This is probably where this film improves the most over any of the other ones. The Hollow Earth subplot is actually fun and gives our human characters something reasonable to do. The writing has them doing a variety of things and none of them are “just watching the monsters fight.” Sure, there are some tropes here that have occurred in previous films, such as Mechagodzilla needing to be staggered, or Kong having to be revived, but they feel much more gracefully placed here than in the previous films. It’s not insane to say that despite possibly giving our humans the least amount of screen time, this movie actually gives them the most to do. And it works, in a Godzilla film none the less. And that’s partially due to Adam Wingard’s direction, which shows a nimble hand at balancing the cheap thrills of big budget cinema with familiar story telling patterns that are tried and true.
Is it a little implausible that we went from contemporary warfare in Godzilla (2014) to Mechagodzilla in 7 years? Yes. It’s actually ridiculous. It’s called a “blockbuster.” It’s also one of the things that makes this film great. It’s not weighed down by “what makes sense” and feels no restriction from the previous films. Godzilla drills a hole through the center of the Earth and this causes no problem. No one even really panics beyond the fact that Godzilla is there. Kong stares back into the hole and roars, even though the hole is probably like 50 miles long. The Kong Whisperer girl, who communicates in sign language, communicates using a sign for “Godzilla.” There’s several Man of Steel-esque moments where Godzilla and Kong destroy tons of things and kills tons of people and no one cares. It’s awesome, completely unserious and undisputed fun.
The monster fights in this film are glorious, truly a marvel to watch. There’s no overly realistic drag (Godzilla), or cutaways to a frightened human character (King of The Monsters). Just good ole monsters kicking monster ass. Seeing these things fight is just such a surreal experience, and I think this might be one of the best kaiju films OF THIS TYPE (read: monster versus/team-ups) ever made. The Godzilla vs. Kong fight in Hong Kong has to be one of the best action sequences of the decade so far.
This film embraces the rule of “cool” and is better for it. Aesthetically, visually, and sonically, it feels more like a blockbuster than the previous films and its ideas also feel more in that realm. It feels more like a world with Godzilla/Kong rather than a world defined by Godzilla. This is the movie, from a writing standpoint and a visual standpoint, that really blows open the expanded universe this world has to offer. Having humans be the powerless spectators, fighting with F18s against Titans, was always going to get old. The decision to move towards futuristic tech was the right one, and the way they were able to establish this under the story thread of Mechagodzilla was brilliant writing that will likely help the Monsterverse as it seeks to expand it’s grip on audiences and the box office.
Godzilla X Kong: A New Empire heads to theaters near you on March 29th.
