Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Michael Dougherty (Trick 'r Treat)
	Actors: Kyle Chandler (Super 8, Argo, King Kong), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Conjuring), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things TV-series)
	Country: USA, J
	Genre: Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 05.06.2019, Cineplanet Costanera center.
Synopsis: Years after the devastation of San Fransisco by a battle between giant monsters, the company Monarch keeps on finding new dormant specimen around the globe, closely supervised by the military in order to avoid future catastrophes.
Review: Both Pacific Rim and the first Godzilla (in 2014, not the 1998 Roland Emmerich version) marked the beginning of a small trend of blockbuster Hollywood movies featuring Kaijus (= titans = giant monsters), and there are even some in Spielberg's Ready Player One. They have been present and popular in Japan for 60 years (see for example Godzilla -Attack all Monsters from 1969) but only those two films finally managed to adapt the style and message of those stories to the Occident, maybe thanks to a new generation of filmmakers that grew up ready mangas. I found the first Godzilla to be a good blending between human scale and stakes (a family) that have to stay at the center of the story to get the audience to feel more than just entertainment in front of massive battles, and those battles often cleverly shown off-screen (at that time a specialty of director Gareth Edwards). In a nutshell, if this sequel delivers 100% on the front of new Kaiju and massive battles, it completely fails on the human side although it tries very hard. The three members of the main family and the bad guy all have disappointing story arcs (hard to follow), only the character played by Ken Watanabe gets a satisfyingly concluded arc. I watched a YouTube breakdown of the movie afterwards, and then noticed even more how weak the movie was on the character's side because I failed to register one major character's death, and that one other character were on fact twin sisters! As I said, the subtle balance was not achieved with this movie. So you are just left (and that's already something) with watching it on the biggest screen possible for the scenes with the Kaijus, their discovery (and very nice designs), their awakening, their battles, culminating with a teaming up between (spoiler, highlight to read) Godzilla and the Army that I found was going the right direction in this franchise, but was under-used. Also like I criticized in Kong: Skull Island, it is hard to find any of the battle involving humans realistic when they are so under-gunned and insist on flying so close to the monsters. By the way, you may notice the slow but steady building up of a shared Universe with those three movies, to be continued in 2020 with Godzilla vs. Kong (I hope they come up with a good story). And what will then be next? Will they go all crazy with Mecha-Godzilla vs. Mecha-Ghidorah?
Rating: 5 /10