Zwia Reviews: Godzilla – King of the Monsters

Godzilla King of the Monsters Zwia Review a.k.a. BIG BUDGET BIG MONSTERS

Before I forget to say this later: YOU CAN TELL THIS WAS MADE BY A BIG G-FAN

I’m not gonna sit here and claim to be a Godzilla expert. I WILL say that I’ve spent the last month leading up to this marathoning Godzilla movies, researching the property and its almost 70 year run. As such, I’m pretty confident in saying I can handle my own in a Godzilla conversation now, and the one main thing I’ve learned is this:

GODZILLA MOVIES HAVE SOME REAL STUPID PLOTS

Which is fine, I mean I’m the guy that obsesses over Super Sentai (basically Power Rangers), so I’m all sorts of used to giant monster fights where the plots are ridiculous and stupid and clearly there as a framing device for why we should care about the Kaiju duking it out. But oh mannnn Godzilla has some ridiculous shit.

There’s a plot where, I kid you not, time travelers called FUTURIANS try to move a pre-atomic bomb exposed Godzilla to another location to try to prevent his creation, but then leave these little bat things to get exposed instead, and then go back to the present to find the bat things turned into an EVEN BIGGER monster King Ghidorah so they go and find Godzilla and expose him to Nuclear Energy to create a Godzilla to destroy Ghidorah (Which he does) BUT NOW Godzilla is angry and destroying everything so the Futurians take the dead body of King Ghidorah and make MECHA KING GHIDORAH so that HE can now defeat Godzilla…

There’s a plot where a scientist loses his daughter so he COMBINES HER DNA WITH A ROSE so he can keep her somewhat alive, but then the Rose bush gets combined with GODZILLA DNA and becomes a giant crocodile plant thing, that then gets blown up and its pollen or something GOES INTO SPACE and combines with space shit or something and becomes SPACE GODZILLA.

There’s a plot about a guy keeping a mystery monster egg as an attraction because he bought it from the landowner the egg washed onshore of… and they calculated the cost by just adjusting the price of normal eggs to match a larger size.

There’s a plot where this guy just wants to build a Godzilla theme park and BUILDS A GODZILLA TOWER THAT SHOOTS LAZERS.

There’s a plot where it’s just a kid hanging out with Godzilla’s adopted talking baby who helps the kid deal with bullying.

THERE IS A FUCKING PLOT that’s just “Aliens have hijacked the minds of all the Kaiju ever” and Godzilla spends the entire movie fighting every monster ever in like 3 minute battles FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE. (And it’s pretty awesome. Seriously. He destroys that CGI Godzilla America made in the 90’s in a single attack)

MY POINT: As stated before, Godzilla movies have some real stupid stories to them. The first Godzilla is a clear exception, and I’m sure there are others along the way where the plot is more relevant and important (Probably Shin Godzilla), but at the end of the day most Godzilla movies are about the Kaiju battles, with everything else as time wasting human nonsense to help frame why the monsters are fighting.

Hell, most Godzilla movies you’d be lucky to ever hear the main human character’s names let alone remember them! They aren’t important, to the point that actors would get reused as different characters throughout the franchise.

Having said all this, Godzilla: King of the Monsters feels right at home with the rest of the Godzilla lineage. It has a stupid plot, it has boring human characters, it has character motivations that either make no sense or are just stupid and suicidal, it has some ridiculous ideas and other ideas coming out of nowhere… but this is a damn Godzilla movie. That is par for the course.

This isn’t a movie that would get good reviews. It is NOT a movie that would get a solid Rotten Tomatoes Score. This is NOT a movie for your average snobby Film Reviewer that cares about plot or character growth or motivation or for things to make “sense”

This is mindless, stupid fun.

And on that it mostly delivers. The Kaiju themselves look amazing, and it’s a real treat to see these characters given the full Hollywood treatment. The fights are BIG, and characters are BIG, and the big impactful moments are BIG.

Action wise my biggest complaints are that most of the movie fights happen during rainfall and everything is put in a blue lighting, so it’s a bit hard to understand exactly every detail of every fight. Also my IMAX screen was way bigger than I expected so I couldn’t quite see everything on screen because of that. But I’m pretty confident I’m gonna love this movie when the fights get put on Youtube later this year.

As someone who has educated himself on Godzilla, I was expecting this to mainly reference the first King Ghidorah movie appearance, since that has Mothra and Rodan in it, and while it clearly did and this movie can very much be considered a remake of that 1950’s flick, I was shocked at HOW MANY OTHER GODZILLA MOVIES IT REFERENCED.

It references SO MANY big items, characters, and MOMENTS from Godzilla’s history, and each reference is built perfectly into the plot as to not be obvious to your average viewer. We aren’t talking about a movie where the references are like “Hey, look at me! If you understand Godzilla this is huge but your average person will be lost.” We are talking references where your average person wouldn’t even realize its a reference, but your hardcore fan will be pissing themselves.

And yeah, it was a lot of fun. If you want plot, if you want strong characters, if you want your stereotypical Hollywood film structures… look elsewhere.

If you want just classic fun in the same vein as Pacific Rim or Power Rangers, a film that looks cool and has cool shit happen, then totally check this out.

I will suggest, sitting farther back in the theater so you can see EVERYTHING clearly, but DEFINITELY see it in a theater with some strong speakers. Like, there are some movies where you should wait for Netflix, don’t with this one.

They play Godzilla’s theme at multiple impactful moments and it is chilling. Perfection.

In the end, it’s badass, mindless fun. Also there is an End Credits Scene. If that sounds good to you, go see it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *