Year of Release: 2019
Director: Michael Dougherty
Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, David Strathairn, Anthony Ramos
Genre: Adventure, Action, Fantasy
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 2
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review:
Following the commercial success of both Gareth Edwards's "Godzilla" and Jordan Vogt-Roberts's "Kong: Skull Island", a continuation of this series with big monsters was bound to continue. The film follows the events of the first "Godzilla" film, as now the world is aware of the existence of Titans. The narrative focuses on the broken family comprised of Dr. Emma Russell, a paleobiologist, Dr. Mark Russell, her ex-husband and their young daughter, Madison. Emma firmly believes these Titans should be unleashed into the world, since only then can the planet battle all the problems caused by humans. Firmly believing this plan, she unleashes "Monster Zero", who goes on to battle Godzilla, all the while other Titans are being reawakened. "Monster Zero" turns out is King Ghidorah, an ancient alien species seeking to terraform the Earth. It's up to Godzilla and its allies to fight this formidable foe, before the entire planet is destroyed.
Crafting an intelligent and compelling monster film is difficult. Steven Spielberg, when adapting Peter Benchley with "Jaws" and Michael Crichton with "Jurassic Park", knew that in order to successfully craft films that held people's attention, it wasn't necessarily the virtuosity of the monster or showcasing much of it all the time, that made these features so iconic. It's the ability to create a human tapestry of characters that are peers in relevance to the monsters onscreen, since they are after all, who we create empathy with. Michael Dougherty who made a name for himself, firstly as a collaborating writer with Bryan Singer's team (he worked on "X-Men2" and "Superman Returns"), sadly never manages to successfully create a film that is sufficiently compelling and ultimately, memorable. The characters are afterthoughts throughout most of the narrative, and witnessing digitally oversized monsters crash and battle each other for stretches of time, isn't something that holds audiences attention. What was so interesting about "Jurassic Park", or even Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", was the imminent threat being brought on to the main characters, whose journeys we were invested in. In this film, the characters are barely distinguishable in the middle of all the rubble and noise being created by the monsters. The great cast sadly has nothing much to do, with even the usually excellent Vera Farmiga faring poorly, the same going for Kyle Chandler (who probably should venture out to different roles, since he's worn out the father figure across a variety of films/shows). The visual effects are superb, but sadly even them don't save this film from exhaustion and oblivion. A wasted effort.
Crafting an intelligent and compelling monster film is difficult. Steven Spielberg, when adapting Peter Benchley with "Jaws" and Michael Crichton with "Jurassic Park", knew that in order to successfully craft films that held people's attention, it wasn't necessarily the virtuosity of the monster or showcasing much of it all the time, that made these features so iconic. It's the ability to create a human tapestry of characters that are peers in relevance to the monsters onscreen, since they are after all, who we create empathy with. Michael Dougherty who made a name for himself, firstly as a collaborating writer with Bryan Singer's team (he worked on "X-Men2" and "Superman Returns"), sadly never manages to successfully create a film that is sufficiently compelling and ultimately, memorable. The characters are afterthoughts throughout most of the narrative, and witnessing digitally oversized monsters crash and battle each other for stretches of time, isn't something that holds audiences attention. What was so interesting about "Jurassic Park", or even Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", was the imminent threat being brought on to the main characters, whose journeys we were invested in. In this film, the characters are barely distinguishable in the middle of all the rubble and noise being created by the monsters. The great cast sadly has nothing much to do, with even the usually excellent Vera Farmiga faring poorly, the same going for Kyle Chandler (who probably should venture out to different roles, since he's worn out the father figure across a variety of films/shows). The visual effects are superb, but sadly even them don't save this film from exhaustion and oblivion. A wasted effort.
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