Godzilla: King Of The Monsters

Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, and Millie Bobby Brown

Director: Michael Dougherty    

132 minutes (12) 2019

Warner Bros 4K Ultra HD  

[Released 14th October]

Rating: 8/10

Review by Christopher Geary

This sequel begins with a prologue in San Francisco, 2014 - where the Russell family lose their young son in the city’s ruins. Five years later, Dr Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) is a top scientist working in China, where Mothra hatches and communicates with humans via Emma’s ORCA invention, much to the delighted amazement of Emma’s daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things). Angelic scene-stealer Mothra transforms from that larval caterpillar and later cocoon to become a glowingly beautiful insectoid queen of this Monsterverse, a goddess of re-minted mythology. Young Maddy’s dysfunctional dad Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler, First Man), is recruited by highly secretive organisation ‘Monarch’, and he’s flown to their Castle Bravo base under an off-shore platform, in Bermuda, where Mark confronts Godzilla, the giant beast that killed his son.

These kaiju entities and other Lovecraftian creatures, named Titans, are wholly protected by the varied science heroes of Monarch, but also hunted by soldiers whose leader, Jonah (Charles Dance), appears ruthless enough to capture civilian hostages in eager pursuit of profits from exotic DNA samples. Buried in Antarctica, ‘monster zero’ Ghidorah, the ‘alien’ dragon with three-heads, is freed after destroying a huge scientific base so that the beast effectively rules that continent, before a siren bid for global domination. Emerging from a volcano in Mexico, winged ‘fire-demon’ Rodan generates mini-hurricanes in its wake. The Monarch mother-ship Argo is a flying aircraft-carrier, launching fighter-jet squadrons and Osprey transports, while following legends and myths as a moral compass in a fluid state of doomed competition or urgent co-operation for desperate mankind’s ongoing struggles against nature.

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters has a fine supporting cast, including Ken Watanabe as Dr Serizawa - dispensing fortune-cookie wisdom, Ziyi Zhang as Dr Chen - ably explaining the Titans’ history, David Strathairn as Admiral Stenz - rallying the US military, and Sally Hawkins as Dr Graham. The generic influence of earlier Transformers and Jurassic World franchises is especially and clearly effective in this epic production. Various grandly scaled action sequences have comparatively tiny humans as hapless participants or, more often, merely as helpless bystanders, sometimes killed by just a quick, casual nudge from titanic curiosity, or a withering blast from their storm-force breathing.

A submarine journey into the underworld, in a hollow-Earth scenario, finding the ruins of an ancient civilisation, and the revelations of Godzilla’s secret lair adds further themes to this comprehensive collection of iconic fantasy and sci-fi disaster elements. Boston serves as ground-zero for waves of mighty monster appearances and the climactic battles. Delivering a balance of nightmarish thrills, big-fun adventures, and enough giant mayhem to challenge Hollywood absurdism like Pacific Rim (2013), while paying honestly compelling tributes to the Japanese Toho formula is an extraordinary pure trick. With its magnificent combination of rewarding human-scale dramas and some massively destructive widescreen-quality visual effects, Godzilla 2 pulls off its winning saga of heroic new dimensions in this enduring legacy of awesome super-species cinema, built upon the unlimited scope and scale of wonderfully child-like imaginations.

This 4K Ultra HD edition showcases powerful symbolism, alongside magnificent spectacle, so there’s more than sufficient chills and joys to satisfy even the most jaded of monster-movie fans. The bonus Blu-ray disc’s extras include: Monsters 101, Evolution Of Titans, Monarch In Action, and etc. with multi-part featurettes exploring an impressive creativity and technical works involved in realising these gigantic stars, each one meticulously designed to match the human characters played by a capable and talented cast.

Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong is due in March 2020.