By Chetan Mehrishi
This clunky sequel has rare moments of visual splendour but they can’t disguise a laughable script with a ramshackle narrative!
If there’s anything positive coming out of arguably the first bad Summer Blockbuster of the year, it would be that the marketing team at Warner Bros receives a monstrous raise.
The $200m sequel seems like an unnecessary addition to 2014’s soulless reboot, a recklessly expensive extension to a franchise-restarter that no one cared for.
Here’s our review of Godzilla: The King of Monsters.
What’s the Story Morning Glory?
Mark (Kyle Chandler) and Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) lost their son the last time the 355-feet lizard paid San Francisco a visit. The tragedy broke them up – while Mark found succour in wildlife photography, Emma lives with daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) and embraces the Monarch programme to ensure a tragedy like that doesn’t recur. Because, surprise, surprise! Godzilla isn’t the only one, there is a total of 17 titans out there from the classic kaiju era and they need to be kept accounted for.
What follows is a twist so crackpot that the film never recovers – Emma and her daughter is kidnapped by an eco-terrorist (Charles Dance) and soon we are in the middle of a Thanos-like spiel about restoring the ecological balance by letting the titans run wild; they can right humanity’s wrongs, such as overpopulation. The idea is so hare-brained that your sanity is the collateral damage.
On the Upside
The only thing you can take home from this movie is the spectacular visual effects. The birth sequence of titans is breathtaking and the battle scenes between the titular creature and the three headed Dragon, Ghidorah leave you to the edge of your seat. Sadly, that’s about it!
On the Downside
Even the special effects couldn’t save the film from its lackluster story and forgettable characters. The 1998 Godzilla, other than being a picturesque creature feature, was also relatable because of the human story involved. The film in question lacks the very depth in its characters and hence, feels alienated.
All in All
The blame is on that devilish Warner Bros marketing team to craft a trailer suggesting something far better than what they ended up releasing. We can’t go beyond 2 out of 5 stars for this disaster of a movie. Our request to the colossal production houses? Please leave our beloved franchises alone!
