So yes there will be spoilers in this review because only like two people actually give a shit. They're all tagged so don't mouse over them you dumb fuckers. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a mixed bag, a really mixed bag. I'm going to reiterate what I've said a few times about Godzilla films. To work, they've either gotta be: 1. Some big brain shit where Godzilla serves as an advanced metaphor for something, be it nuclear weapons, nuclear disaster, a force of nature etc. or 2. Just be stupid dumb retard shit that's really funny and really bad. This film doesn't succeed in the former and while it's pretty bad at times, it's never funny bad. To be quite frank it's not very good at all. Even as a Godzilla movie it's pretty below average. It's enjoyable sure but fucking hell it's pretty messy. Acting is pretty mediocre, dialogue is mostly bad, action is very mixed.

Let's talk about the good stuff first before I go on an autism tirade. Monster designs are pretty good. Godzilla took steroids in between 2014 and now. Rodan is literally on fire. King Ghidorah's heads have each got like their own personality and act independently of each other, and the film does a good job of showing this to the audience without telling them outright. This movie has a huge problem with big long exposition dumps so these moments of visual storytelling are a relief. The music is fucking great. I didn't really expect them to lean so hard into the Godzilla theme I thought it was just gonna be an End Credits type thing because lol but no, they use it several times, and it's great each time. There were some pretty good shots in this movie, most already shown in the trailer. The fights were interesting in theory, but they're often undermined by all the shit I'm now going to complain about at length.

The action is shot real real real bad. Like holy fuck it was pretty painful. There's some cool shit going on, really cool shit. The problem is it's muffled underneath horrible direction. Fight scenes are oversatured with blinding lights, absurd overuse of atmospheric effects like rain, and just shitty camerawork shaking all over the place like the cameraman was having a fucking epileptic fit from everything going on on the fucking screen. I mentioned this already to Kuro, but the whole DURRR FIGHT IN THE DARK IN THE RAIN is a huge fucking meme at this point. You can do it well, it's not an automatically bad thing. Pacific Rim's two big fights were in the dark in the rain(Ok one was underwater but same thing), and both of those fights were fucking great. Do you know why? Because they understood how to hold the fucking camera. They understood to keep the action clear and make sure the viewers could follow it. They understood how to use the color and the lighting to draw the viewer's attention to what's going on and not drown everything out in a grey and blue mess. This movie does not understand any of this and therefore in spite of some cool stuff, the action is pretty fucking garbage.

Now I am going to talk about characters and plot and this entire section is going to be nothing but spoilers and excessive swearing so for the sake of the people who want to see this movie, it will be spoilered. For those of you don't want to be spoiled, it was bad. All of it.

SPOILERS START HERE RETARD










AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCKING GOD IT WAS ALL BAD.  I don't even know where to fucking start because fucking GOD. None of this is even funny bad it was all just painful bad jesus christ.  Let's start with the characters I guess?  The Male Lead is boring.  He does like everything in the movie because ??? and it just comes across as lazy fucking writing that he's always the smartest person in the fucking room.  At least he can fucking act though unlike Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the last one.  Female Lead is fucking shit.  At the start of the film you think she's a good guy but surprise she's actually working with the "evil" Eco-Terrorists and her motivations are so fucking shit.  Like jesus fucking christ.  It's like she's pulling some Thanos shit but it's handled terribly and just becomes a shitty fucking exposition dump that she somehow had a fucking powerpoint presentation ready to go for.  Ken Watanabe is back and he's like the only half-decent character that's actually putting some fucking effort into this movie.  He kills himself though so he won't be in the next one and his death is fucking retarded I'll get to that in a minute but first I have to talk about the break out character in the film.  Rick Sanchez.  No no no I'm not fucking joking oh god oh fucking god I wish I was fucking joking.  There's this fucking doctor guy in the film named Rick and everything that comes out of his mouth is just some fucking retarded insufferable cringe dialogue.  So much of this fucking movie is just shitty cringe dialogue like "Oh my god..."  "...zilla".  This character is so fucking awful and you want to know what the worst part is?  It's all intentional the fucking Rick Sanchez thing isn't a fucking joke I went to confirm that his name was actually fucking Rick and

"Dougherty verified that Dr. Stanton is loosely modeled after Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty. Dougherty had the character "drink a lot" to keep the character in line with the spirit of Rick Sanchez.[10]"

Somebody fucking shoot me.  Everyone else in the film is just fucking there?  The leader of the Eco-Terrorists is Charles Dance.  He seems like a good actor but he has nothing to fucking do.  THE MAIN ANTAGONIST OF THE FUCKING FILM BARELY DOES FUCKING ANYTHING.  He orchestrates some stuff, yells at female lead for being retarded, and then just vanishes for 90% of the fucking movie.  There's a bunch of dumb army secondary characters we're supposed to care about but don't because they aren't characters.  The dialogue is either some heavy handed foreshadowing, some heavy handed BALANCE OF NATURE shit that's completely at odds with the film's inconsistent tone and plot, or some cringy ass joke dialogue that's just fucking bad.

Like every dumbfuck film cliche you can think of worms its way into this film.  You know those WOAH WOAH ENGLISH DOC threads on /tv/?  Shit like that even though coincidentally enough that one isn't in here.  Villain monologue? Check.  Le ebil government senators that are against our protagonists and have a hearing in a dark shady room to remind you that le ebil government senators are evil? Check.  Nerdy autistic character that's a BIG FAN of Male Lead's work?  Check.  Bomb/Nuke is damaged and character needs to stay behind to detonate it?  YEP THAT'S HOW KEN WATANABE DIES.  Dumbfuck side plot involving the Child Lead that does ??? to actually help and serves only to advance the plot?  FUCKING CHECK, Character survives incredibly implausible and absurd scenarios and damage that should shatter every single bone in their fucking body?  Check, check, check, CHECK, FUCKING CHECK EVERY TIME THERE'S AN ACTION SCENE BASICALLY.  Do it once I'm annoyed, do it the entire fucking movie and I'm hanging myself. That's just the shit I can remember off the top of my head.

And then there's just stupid shit that gets brought up then immediately dropped like OK WHAT WAS THE POINT THEN?  It's all fanservicey shit too.  So Godzila and Ghidorah duke it out in Mexico and the Military says "Ok we've got a new super top secret weapon to kill both Kaijus, the Oxygen Destroyer."  Now, anyone who is a fan of Godzilla knows that this is a big fucking deal, this is some don't fuck with this shit tier WMD type stuff.  In the original Godzilla film, it's used to kill Godzilla by suffocating and liquefying him.  It's horrific, and its creator sacrifices himself by dying alongside Godzilla so that the rest of the world will never be able to use this creation. Within the context of the film, it serves as an allegory for nuclear weapons alongside Godzilla himself.  It's not something to be used lightly, and it's not something to be celebrated, it's a very grave and dangerous weapon.  What role does it serve in this film though?  Oh here it's basically just a glorified fucking nuke that shows up with no explanation and blows up in the water.  There's not even any cool effects or anything.  Ghidorah just survives it and Godzilla is just hurt by it.  It's prescence is never explained or mentioned again, it's just fucking there.  And then there's the shit with Ghidorah's origins where it's revealed that he's technically an alien, an invasive species from outer space that fell to Earth in ancient times.  This occurs sometime in the last third of the film and is a callback to the original King Ghidorah's origins.  What effect does this have on the plot here though?  Literally none.  The characters barely fake shock or interest in it then it's never brought up again and has no bearing on anything so what was the point of it?  What was the point of mentioning that Ghidorah was an Alien and not an ancient monster when it means literally nothing to the fucking film?  It's bad fucking writing it's so bad.

Now Godzilla can mean a lot of things depending on the film he's in.  He's a hero, he's a villain, he's a monster, he's a destroyer, he's an allegory for nuclear weapons, for nature, for our own human qualities, and this is what makes Godzilla so intriguing as a franchise and as a character.  His versatility and his ability to suit any role is what's kept Godzilla around for over 60 years.  This movie has no idea what it wants Godzilla to be though and because of this its messaging gets confused.  See in 2014 Godzilla, Godzilla was very much a force of nature.  He was the unbridled, raw power of nature and represented how ultimately, nature restores balance whether we like the ways it goes about it or not.  And in this film they try to push this message but it ends up completely collapsing in the final moments of the film where Godzilla abosrbs dead Mothra to become Ultra Instinct SSJB Godzilla Rojo Shin Gojira knockoff and basically causes a series of giant fucking nuclear explosions to kill King Ghidorah.  And it just makes no fucking sense because this right here completely flies in the face of everything Godzilla has ever been meant to represent on any fucking level as he uses nuclear warfare as a force for good to defeat his opponent.  Nobody even really acknowledges this since the film ends very abruptly afterwards with everyone looking on in awe as all the jobber offscreen monsters bow down to Godzilla and it cuts to heroic uplifting credits shit.  And while this moment is undeniably really fucking cool, it completely flies in the face of everything this Godzilla, the original Godzilla, and every other Godzilla has ever been meant to represent. It tramples on the very idea of Godzilla solely for the purpose of having a cool moment, and it leaves a disgusting taste in my mouth.

And then the credits are a series of shit explaining what happens afterwards with somehow everything getting better because of ??? and sets up Godzilla vs Kong sort of whatever movie's over rant's over back to non-spoiler shit.










SPOILERS DONE RETARD

The film learned nothing from 2014 Godzilla. All of its problems are compounded here. Bad human plot, constantly cutting away from the monster action to pursue bad human plot, and focusing on the wrong aspects that make Godzilla good. Godzilla isn't good because of big dumb monster action schlock. Godzilla is good because on some level it's meant to tell a story of how humanity interacts and coexists with some immensely powerful force in our environment that's beyond our control. All of the best Godzilla movies, the truly good ones, follow this formula in some way. But it's like this film learned all the wrong lessons from 2014 Godzilla and decided throwing more monsters at everything would solve the problem but it ends up making it worse. There's no time for a human plot so it all just feels like shit, not even serviceable shit just bad shit, and the monster fights end up like garbage because of CGI budgets. It just doesn't work.

So yeah, like I mentioned, it's a big fucking mess. It's enjoyable at times, but really just has a whole slew of problems that cannot be ignored and drag the whole fucking movie down several levels. Even if you're like a hardcore Godzilla fan I'm not sure I can recommend this. 50/50 you'll actually enjoy it depending on personal tastes. Anyone else should probably stay away because it's really not worth your money in theaters. It pains me to say this, it really does, since I've been looking forward to this one for awhile and I'm pretty disappointed it ended up like it did.