How the MonsterVerse humanizes its Titans but struggles to do the same for its human characters.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Let me start by saying that I grew up with the Toho Godzilla movies and have seen every live-action film in the franchise multiple times over. I have even watched some of the short-lived “The Godzilla Power Hour” Hanna-Barbera animated series from the 70s, and some of the equally short-lived cartoon that was spawned from the much-maligned 1998 American movie. There are various figurines and themed items, that I’ve either had since childhood or collected as an adult, scattered throughout my home. Of all my pop-culture interests, it’s fair to say I love Godzilla the most.
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong, watching it when it debuted on March 31st and again the next morning. The Titan fight sequences were a great deal of fun, both in their choreography and visual execution, and the coloration was incredible, particularly during the nighttime battle in the neon-fueled streets of Hong Kong and the Hollow Earth sequence in the film’s second act. It’s a marked improvement from Michael Dougherty’s King of the Monsters in 2019 and likely the second-best MonsterVerse movie behind Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla that started it off back in 2014. Even though Wingard delivered on his promise of putting the two Titans center stage (as they should be), crafting compelling and meaningful human stories to go alongside the monsters continues to be difficult in these movies.
Crafting worthwhile human stories has always been a challenge throughout the history of the Godzilla franchise. That’s not to say it can’t be or hasn’t been done, but there’s a reason aliens show up frequently throughout the 30 live-action Toho movies. In order to really get into this, there are going to be some plot points I need to talk about and some historical groundwork to be laid, so be warned.
The MonsterVerse has a track record of bringing in some great actors but underutilizing their best talents and/or ultimately killing them off. When Bryan Cranston signed on to do the 2014 Godzilla, it signaled the studio actually wanted the project to succeed. He gave the best performance of the film and set the table for the rest of it, including the emotional death of his wife (Juliette Binoche) who’s gone within the first 15-minutes. Then, Cranston went on to die somewhere around the halfway point leaving Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen to carry the rest of the movie. They weren’t even bad, but it didn’t feel like the story was really theirs. It’s not the most compelling, but a soldier trying to get home to his family was easy enough to get behind as the monster action ramps up.
Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe are also introduced as members of Monarch, a government organization that keeps tabs on Godzilla, but they are supporting players despite Watanabe’s character having the most direct connection to the history of the franchise. His character, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, is the who’s primarily responsible for framing Godzilla as nature rather than some malevolent creature. It’s an important distinction as it gives the audience a reason to cheer for the giant radioactive lizard rather than fear the destruction that comes with his arrival. However, it was basically a disaster movie where the disaster at hand is the emergence of Titans so a simple human story was effective enough.
Moving on to King of the Monsters, Gareth Edwards was out of the director’s chair and Olsen and Taylor-Johnson were no longer in the picture. Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, and Kyle Chandler got top billing to step into the lead roles, even though both Watanabe and Hawkins reprised theirs for the sequel. So, not only did Warner Bros and Legendary bring in a new writer and director, they rolled out three new main characters for no real reason and a handful of supporting roles that were only there for comic relief that didn’t land at all. Charles Dance was a great addition to the cast as the leader of a terrorist organization, but he would have made for a much more effective primary antagonist if he weren’t handcuffed to Farmiga’s Dr. Emma Russell.
Her character motivation was weak, at best, thinking that unleashing all the dormant Titans would be an effective cure for global warming while betraying her colleagues and endangering her husband and daughter in the process. None of it made sense and it’s weakened even more by her eventual realization and attempt at redemption before her one-liner death. Hawkins died as well, unceremoniously in the midst of the first Godzilla vs Ghidorah clash early on, getting swallowed in the action as if she were just some random extra. Even the other characters didn’t seem to notice or care too much afterward. Watanabe’s death was meant to be meaningful, it kinda was, but it could have been a great moment if his character was ever given due respect. Instead, a character who never got his due is making the ultimate sacrifice? By the end of the second movie, three more of the best actors in the franchise had been eliminated and the importance of caring about the human story element had mostly evaporated entirely.
Godzilla had been effectively established as a defender of the Earth, if not humanity itself. Focusing on that element wasn’t the focal point in the second film and the primary problem was that Dougherty’s take had that human-based story in the driver’s seat. When you make a move called King of the Monsters and then proceed to focus very heavily on a human storyline that is mostly meaningless in the end, it undermines the goal of the movie. There are several moments throughout the film where the Titans are fighting, but it’s in the background while the humans scamper around narrowly avoiding death (at least for the main characters). It’s like finally getting to see Mike Tyson vs Muhammad Ali but the camera is focused on a fight that broke out in the audience.
I think…in fact, I know…these movies can have a compelling human element lead the way and we can still get the monster fight that we deserve in the end. The problem is if the filmmakers don’t seem to care about getting that part right, why should we? That brings us full-circle to Godzilla vs. Kong.
Wingard has already voiced his opinion that the MonsterVerse potentially doesn’t even need human characters at all. However, his film introduced eight new leading or supporting characters. Human characters. With them, come varying degrees of ridiculous plot points that didn’t make much sense at all or align with his vision of the cinematic universe he’s working within.
We’re first introduced to a little girl, Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who’s best buds with Kong and Rebecca Hall’s Jane Goodall-esque “Kong Whisperer”, Ilene Andrews. Except, she has no relationship with Kong aside from overseeing his captivity in his Skull Island containment habitat. She just has a relationship with the little girl who has a bond with him and apparently gets the credit for that. There’s no explanation as to how or why Andrews had any authority over Kong, she just did. That came in handy when they need to shortcut Kong’s departure from Skull Island, but I’ll get to that a little later. It was an effective place to start because we see Kong as a very humanized creature with friends, a daily routine, and awareness of his own captivity through these human characters.
Next up, we meet a Titan-conspiracy podcaster (Brian Tyree Henry) who’s moonlighting as an undercover mechanic at Apex Cybernetics when Godzilla shows up to destroy the facility in Florida. Brown’s character, Madison, listens to the podcast and tracks this guy down with surprising ease considering it was established that he’s hiding from the government. Enlisting the help of her friend Josh (Julian Dennison), the three of them set out on an absolutely ridiculous adventure to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Godzilla’s sudden outburst. The whole thing was comic relief and there’s no dialogue between them that wasn’t designed for that specific purpose, but it’s totally out of place with the bigger picture. It’s a complete tonal mismatch and showed that punchline-driven humor doesn’t need to be in these stories. Honestly, Brown and Kyle Chandler didn’t even need to come back for this. He’s only there to be on the receiving end of a few lines from her so that she can go off on her buddy-comedy adventure to investigate Apex.
That company is run by the cartoonishly villainous Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir). Bichir is great and this could have been a fantastic villain for the story, the eccentric tech billionaire who’s getting into private military contracts with his anti-Godzilla weaponry, but they barely touch on that. His buddy/business partner also happens to be Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri), the son of Watanabe’s character. While you think that may have been of some importance, I don’t recall it coming into play or even being brought up at all actually (though I could be wrong about that). Anyhow, they go on to recruit a college professor disgraced for his Hollow Earth theories, Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård). He just so happens to know Hall’s character, which also wasn’t explained, and he coerces her to use her influence to allow Apex to use Kong as a guide to Hollow Earth. Apex wants some samples of an energy source, so Lind, Andrews, the kid, Simmons over-the-top badass daughter, and Kong all head out on a fleet of ships headed from the Indian Ocean to Antarctica.
After the Kong navy is inevitably destroyed on the open ocean by a pissed-off Godzilla, Lind gets the bright idea of transporting a drugged-out Kong via helicopter…rather, helicopters. If that was an option, why put Kong and the entire fleet in danger, knowing full well that Godzilla was going to come for him? Considering Lind and Andrews have the full support and control of the military assets at their disposal, presumably thanks to Apex, why not just take the fastest and safest route, to begin with? I get that a chained-up Kong being transported by boat is a classic image from the character’s history, but Godzilla isn’t roaming the oceans in those other stories and it made little sense to insert that here. The action sequence we get out of that moment is actually pretty awesome though, so I can look the other way on the logic.
They eventually arrive at their Hollow Earth launch site and basically force Kong to lead them. Keep in mind, Kong doesn’t know where he’s going. The science of Hollow Earth was also super flimsy and the only thing we know for sure is that the immense gravitational forces killed the only expedition to ever try entry. So, they didn’t actually need Kong to show them the way after all but he does take them to a particular location where they can drill for the samples they are after. Somehow, they are able to extract what they need and upload the energy back to Hong Kong? Okay. Anyway, Godzilla also is made aware of their presence there and decided to send them an open invitation to come party back in Hong Kong and that’s where the action hits its peak.
I can’t lie, watching the showdown between the two alpha Titans is tons of fun. When I heard Wingard talk about Kong as an 80s action hero, I was really nervous there for a minute. However, once I saw it all play out, I understood and appreciated what he was trying to accomplish. We even get to see what Apex was working on and why that whole story angle mattered. Meanwhile, the humans are doing what they do, narrowly avoiding death, until there’s a plot beat where they need to step in. The performances are pretty good across the board as well, just not very deep. In one such moment, we discover that Professor Lind is an incredible pilot as he flies a vehicle he’s completely unfamiliar with right into the middle of the action when the battle is raging. If you stop to add up all the inconsistencies like that, you’ll find yourself asking a lot of questions that don’t get answered.
Let’s be honest, this wasn’t a movie that was meant to raise a lot of questions. It’s not cerebral and not pretending to raise larger questions about humanity, technology, and the world like other installments in the Godzilla franchise. This was an action-blockbuster made to answer one question: Who would win in a fight between Godzilla and Kong? This movie answers that question and does so in a way that’s a lot of fun to watch. If there’s any movie that’s going to call for a theatrical experience right now, this is it.
It’s nice to have my expectations not met with crushing disappointment for a change. Having seen it twice already, it’s tough to say where Godzilla vs. Kong lands when it comes to franchise history. It’s more accessible to those that just want to see the monsters fight and, to be fair, there are a number of Toho films where that’s the primary emphasis too. However, my personal favorites are the ones that had something to say about humanity in the shadow of the monsters we came to see.
Recommendation: Godzilla fans and action lovers can both enjoy this spectacle, but its staying power remains to be seen.