'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' (2019)



What's the best way to get over watching an absolutely dreadful zombie movie? Well, there are loads of 'best ways' as it happens, all involving watching pretty much anything other than 'Zombie 108'. My 'best way' though, came about as a result of a wander down Deptford High Street and a quick stop off in CEX. To be honest, I'd completely forgotten that 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' was even a thing (I enjoy a half decent 'Godzilla' movie but it's not my main fandom) but when I saw it, I had to check it out. And so I did, 'Godzilla: King of Monsters' may have its problems (which I'll go into) but it ended up being a more than half decent 'Godzilla' movie.

It's five years since Godzilla fought the Mutoes and since then, members of the crypto-zoological agency Monarch have tracked and contained further emergences of the 'Titans', monsters that have come to light since Godzilla appeared. When an eco-terrorist group steals equipment that can communicate with the Titans, the monster King Ghidorah is released and it soon becomes clear that not only can it not be controlled but it also has apocalyptic plans for the planet.
The only thing that stands any chance of defeating King Ghidorah is Godzilla but what chance does Godzilla really have when King Ghidorah can control every other monster in the world...?

What 'King of the Monsters' does, it does very well; namely stand up fights between some very impresssive looking monsters. Cataclysmic is the word here with cities getting levelled and monster fights doing that thing where the impact is so loud that it does that trick where you're not supposed to be able to hear it. I'm not describing it very well but you know what I mean; like when the Hulk fights Iron-Man in 'Age of Ultron' but anyway... 'King of the Monsters' learns a lesson from 'Godzilla' and actually lets us see more of Godzilla this time round which is great as this means we actually get to see the fights. It's surprising how the makers of the first film thought that having lots of fights in near darkness wouldn't be a problem... That's a not a problem this time round though and the results are eye catching and just brutal in what these monsters do to each other. Even Mothra gets in on the action.

So that's all good then. 'King of the Monsters' delivers on what it had to, big city wide monster brawls. No complaints from me on that front. What I had an issue with was the length of the movie, around two hours of it. That's not a dealbreaker in terms of the fights but the accompanying plot strands were not able to stretch quite far enough to fill in that length of time. What you get then is a movie where it's all brilliant when the monsters are going at it but, at the same time, a movie that slows right down when the monsters go off screen. This lends a real stop/start feel to the movie and the plot judders along as a result, a real shame as it didn't need to at all.

'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' is fun in all the right places but falls short when the other plot lines need to catch up with the big events. One of those films where I don't mind spending a few quid on it but I'm glad that I didn't pay to see it in the cinema... Although having said that, I bet it would have looked good on iMax...

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