No spoilers.
First of all, it’s quite good. Don’t pay attention to the pro* reviewers, or the film’s weirdly low 40% pro score. Pay more attention to the 87% audience score. Even weirder, the film in no way reflected what had seemed the chief criticism of the critics. To wit, that the film went overboard on the monster action, leaving the film severely underusing it’s wide cast.
[*In this case, ‘pro’ as defined as being an official Rotten Tomatoes reviewer.]I actually told people at work that I was sympathetic to the general idea of too much action—using the hour long fight scene in one of the Transformers movies as an example—but that I wasn’t too much worried about it here. So I was pretty surprised when I saw the film and there wasn’t in fact a huge amount of monster scenes. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty. However, they by no means overwhelm the film.
Indeed, the reason the excellent supporting cast generally gets so underused is that there are too many supporting characters. In the Marvel movies, they had 22 films to bring in all the supporting characters, and thus time to flesh them out here and there. There have been three films in whatever they are calling this, and so when you have a dozen or so major supporting actors standing around you obviously don’t have time to give them all much to do. That’s not because they often cut away to 30 minutes monster fights, because they don’t. (I did particularly enjoy Bradley Whitford, though, who literally seemed to be channeling Cub’s skipper Joe Maddon.)
Much of the human drama is centered on one three-person family, and I know that plays well overseas which is increasingly what studios want (and to be fair, require). Believe me, I get it. John Wick 3 made more in its US opening weekend than it looks like Godzilla KotM will (!), so they will definitely need huge oversees audiences to push the effects-laden monster extravaganza into the black.
Yet do we really need ‘human drama’ in these things? Shin Godzilla is great (and won Best Picture in Japan), and all the myriad of human characters there do is try to deal with Godzilla. They don’t stand around with subplots and action sequences built around their personal lives. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this impatience with priorities just might reflect a small percentage of viewers. Maybe not, though. And in any case, if the great supporting cast is underused, it’s because of the focus on the three family members, not because of too much monster action.
I really need to see this again, because there was one major element that really reduced my enjoyment of things. There’s one character—no spoilers, but anyone who’s seen the movie will know instantly who I’m talking about—that literally infuriated me and kept me from fully appreciating the rest of the movie. Or rather, the character didn’t so much as the way the film obviously intended us to view their actions. Seriously, I was really pissed off by this.
I’ll need a second viewing so I can get past that, and probably see it in 3-D because I’m sure the monster action looks great that way. If I had a minor critique of the monster action, it’s that they stretch the CGI budget by presenting nearly all the monster action in the dark or rain or at least heavy clouds. However, that’s just the reality of having a limited if still pretty decent budget.
Anyway, a pretty strong thumbs up on that one. I mean, it’s no Avengers Endgame, but that’s setting the bar ludicrously high. Even so, I can’t imagine anyone frequenting this site who wouldn’t enjoy it, especially since most likely won’t be as bothered as I was by that one aspect. The film is also full of little references that will delight old school Godzilla fans, so that’s pretty fun.
PS: After I wrote this, the estimated weekend box office figures came out. Godzilla KotM underperformed even it’s modest expectations, making not much more than half of the domestic first weekend take of the first movie. Maybe they shouldn’t have waited five years for the sequel. More likely, and it pains me to say this, but culturally audiences seem to have disinterest for monsters in the same way they have disinterest in westerns and musicals. In any case, the foreign take is tepid as well, so the film might not break even.
They already basically shot Kong vs. Godzilla (or whatever) for next year, so I’m sure people are sweating over at Warners. Barring a miracle, that should be the end of this series.
