In Review: Godzilla: King of The Monsters (VOD)

Synopsis: When ancient god-sized monsters rise again, the crypto-zoological agency Monarch faces off against Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah as they all vie for supremacy.

Review: ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ is one of the films I didn’t manage to get out to see at the cinema during the summer. But thankfully I didn’t have too much of a wait before Amazon released it to buy on their streaming service.

As a fan of pretty much most genre entertainment. I have to admit that I was quite surprised by how good this film turned out. It really is a loving homage to the Godzilla movies that I saw as a teenager in the 80s when Channel 4 shown the Japanese movies, which of course were dubbed into English.

The Story

Set a few years after the 2014 film. This movie has more focus on the mythology of the various monsters we see. When Dr. Emma Russell releases all the worlds Monsters as part of her plan to try and save humanity from itself she winds up bringing forth a monster apocalypse, which can only have one winner. As the film progresses we see humans pitted against monsters and then humans fighting alongside monsters to save themselves. The film’s plot has a strong message about how the more selfish and destructive aspects of human nature are destroying our planet. Other than that we get tons of monster fun as we see Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah duke it out to decide who will rule the planet.

The Acting

Although the CGI Monsters and the special effects are the real stars of this film. We do get a pretty solid cast made up of well-known character actors from both the US and Japan. Kyle Chandler heads up the cast as the reluctant hero Dr. Mark Russell who doesn’t agree with his wife’s methods and thinks we should kill all the monsters. In fact, his character has one of the most interesting journeys in the movie when it comes to growth. Playing their daughter and only surviving child is Millie Bobby Brown who is better known to fans of ‘Stranger Things’ as El or Eleven.  Adding a degree of cynicism to the plot is Bradley Whitford as Godzilla tracking expert Dr. Rick Stanton.

Heading up the Japanese part of the cast is the superb Ken Watanabe as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Ziyi Zhang as Dr. Ilene Chen / Dr. Ling.

All the acting performances are pretty solid and Witfords sarcasm really shines through and provides a few laughs throughout the film.

Overall

This film is much better than I expected it to be. We get a lot of nice mythological nods to the various monsters in the film, which are called titans and we even get a blink and you’ll miss it sighting of King Kong as well as a verbal reference to Skull Island where the great ape lives.

The monster battles are all super. I particularly loved the sequence where the three-headed King Ghidorah chased after the huge stealth ship, which was protecting our human cast throughout the films run. The final battle between the various monsters, which included Godzilla’s on-off again squeeze Mothra were fantastic and looked stunning on my 4K screen. This is Shakespear with Monsters. I mean am sure that if Godzilla could talk that he’d say, “To be or not to be”, just before he bites into a Snickers bar and gulps it down with some nuclear saltwater.

Overall. A wonderful monster of a popcorn movie.

‘Godzilla: Kind of the Monsters’ is available now through all good streaming services.