Film of the Week: Godzilla – King of the Monsters

Godzilla has been rebooted, remade, and reimagined so many times – there has been 32 made by the Japanese studio Toho, 4 films made by other studios around the world, and 3 films made by Hollywood Productions, with a 4^th coming next year in 2020: Godzilla Vs. Kong. There have been 39 films made about Godzilla. If you take into account everything else, from TV to comic books, Godzilla is truly an iconic character, and there will always be new films about him over the next coming years.

With special effects practically a world away from what they when the first Godzilla film came out, the ability to make Godzilla and the rest of the monsters realistic-looking, is expected of us audience. But, the one thing that always comes with Godzilla is epic fight scenes. I don’t doubt that when the first Godzilla film came out, that was seen as an awesome spectacle, with ground-breaking fight sequences which warrant many re-watches. As special effects and computer effects have progressed on an outstanding rate over the years, those fight scenes are also getting bigger and better. When it was announced that the three headed beast, Ghidorah was to appear, we were eager to see them two clash on screen for the first time whilst in Hollywood’s hands. If no one was voicing it, we all were definitely thinking it – we expected it to be epic and grand before seeing it.

And boy, did it deliver. Critics have voiced their dislike toward the film, stating it has a poor story with many unoriginal elements, even stating that it doesn’t have enough time with the humans, but feature too much monster battles. First of all – that’s exactly what we wanted. Realistically, there are going to be humans in this film because it’s set on Earth. This is also a sequel, so we do see some emotional development from the battle that happened in the 2014 Godzilla. When the critics were saying we don’t see the humans enough, I was expecting them to make cameo-like appearances, but instead the entire film told through their eyes, and besides, why would you want to substitute epic imagery and fight sequences with more scenes with the humans. As far as I’m concerned, the reason why the storyline for the humans is looked down upon as weak and poorly written, is because it’s practically filler between Godzilla tearing Ghidorah apart with his bare claws, and he wouldn’t have been able to do that with the help of us humans, who, on a realistic note acted against Godzilla to begin with as they understandably thought him to be a threat not a saviour. It may be poorly written in the eyes of critics, but it’s necessary for the film to make somewhat sense.

To be honest, and this isn’t an actual criticism, I cannot remember the entire story the humans had anyway. When those fight sequences happened, I forgot everything and focused my full attention on absorbing as much of those frames as I could. When this film comes out on digital download, I will pause it at certain moments at extract them to be used as desktop backgrounds, because they deserve to be worshiped. There are so many truly epic imageries throughout, I was not at all bored with how much monster fighting there were.

Godzilla – King of the Monsters was superbly made with the right balance between monster and human, and certainly set a new standard with monster movies.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)