I am not kidding when I say I spent at least half of the film\u2019s 131-minute running time trying to decide whether I had actually seen the previous entry in the series (that would be 2014\u2019s somewhat better Gareth Edwards-directed <\/span>Godzilla<\/span><\/i>, which was all but guaranteed a \u201csequel\u201d after it grossed more than $500 million worldwide). \u201cDid I miss Vera Farmiga in the last Godzilla movie I saw?\u201d I thought to myself early on as the film started dishing out flashback after flashback of the actress (who here plays a nobly intentioned but unhinged scientist named Emma Russell) and her daughter (Millie Bobby Brown) surviving a monster attack that leveled San Francisco five years previously. Nope: The only actors who make a return this time around are Sally Hawkins, David Straithairn, and Ken Watanabe, all of whom are wasted in offensively boring but presumably decently paying supporting roles.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s a problem throughout the film: We\u2019re presented with supporting character after supporting character (say a brief hi <\/span>and then an even quicker bye<\/span><\/i> to O\u2019Shea Jackson Jr., Zhang Ziyi, and Thomas Middleditch), but director Michael Dougherty and his co-writer, Zach Shields, fail to establish Farmiga, Brown, and fellow ostensible co-star Kyle Chandler as leads. The aforementioned expository flashbacks are supposed to help us feel invested in the family drama that should be the core of the film, but instead, it feels like we\u2019re watching a second installment to a film that never existed (which is pretty much <\/span>exactly<\/span><\/i> what\u2019s going on here). Instead of wrangling with the potentially interesting thread about a mother pulled toward villainy after being consumed by the loss of her child, the film contents itself with grafting together monster standoff after monster standoff \u2014 rendered with so-so CGI \u2014 cheapening the impact of what should be its grand finale.<\/span><\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong; I actually like big, dumb monster movies and always have. I had little complaint about 2017\u2019s <\/span>King Kong: Skull Island<\/span><\/i>, a film that was big and dumb but also a lot of fun thanks to the more-than-game group of actors involved, and against all odds, I somehow found myself invested in last year\u2019s <\/span>Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom<\/span><\/i> (despite not caring an ounce for its timid fan service\u2013propelled predecessor). And I also thought that Guillermo del Toro made a thoroughly entertaining summer blockbuster with 2013\u2019s <\/span>Pacific Rim<\/span><\/i> (though I hear I made an excellent choice to skip out on last year\u2019s sequel). What do the aforementioned films all have in common? A sense of humor (here\u2019s looking at you, Ian Malcolm), an attempt at working in some sort of intelligible narrative, and a basic understanding of what audiences want in a big, dumb monster movie \u2014 come on, give us at least one memorable monster fight!<\/span><\/p>\n All that to say I will probably go see whatever dumb \u201csequel\u201d is released approximately five years from now, and I will definitely leave trying to figure out whether or not I ever saw <\/span>Godzilla: King of the Monsters<\/span><\/i>. If there\u2019s one thing Godzilla: King of the Monsters makes abundantly clear, it\u2019s that we\u2019ve collectively warped our definition of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":11946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/crookedc.png\")
<\/span><\/p>\nGrade: D+<\/span><\/h3>\n
2 hrs., 11 min.; rated PG-13 for sequences of monster action violence and destruction, and for some language<\/em><\/h5>\n
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