Where to even begin with this train wreck? I guess I'll start by saying I hated this movie, almost every minute of it. And I'll stop you now from saying "What were you expecting, it's a movie about monsters fighting, it's supposed to be dumb!" Because this movie is a failure on every front.
Opening during the climactic moments of 2014's Godzilla, the film inserts Mark and Dr. Emma Russell (Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga) into San Francisco, where they've just lost their son, yet still have their daughter, Madison (Millie Bobby Brown). Jump forward to 2019, where the pair have become estranged, with Emma and Madison researching these "titans' while Mark observes wolves.
Emma is working on a device known as ORCA which will allow humans to communicate with the giant monsters, which have been showing up at an alarming rate. In the first scenes, she uses it to quell the giant Mothra, right before an Eco-terrorist group (I can never say that with a straight face) led by Jonah Alan (Charles Dance) arrive to kidnap her and her daughter. So Mark is roped in to help find her, since he is the only one with knowledge of the ORCA.
The film is host to an impressive cast that includes Ken Watanabe, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch, and David Strathairn, to name a few. Yet the film fails to give any of them anything interesting to do, besides stand around and spout off exposition while looking at screens. The film is also confusingly paced, and is so erratic that I didn't realize a pivotal character died until a picture of said character with big letters that said DECEASED appeared, and I didn't realize that Ziyi Zhang plays twins in the film. Not to mention a twist that I'll discuss below that really angered me and soured my whole attitude on the film.
But what about the Kaiju fights? This film is, after all, a Godzilla film, and you come to Godzilla to see giant monsters punch each other. Well, the film features a wide array of characters from the Toho films, including the aforementioned Mothra, as well as Rodan and King Ghidorah. All of the monsters are rendered well, and there are some truly impressive shots in the film showing the full scope of their power and height.
However, the film fails to deliver any good fight scenes. Almost every single event takes place either in a blizzard, in the ash of a volcano, or at night in the rain. You can't make out anything that is going on, and the film insists on keeping our perspective with the human characters. Except, like every Godzilla film, I don't care about the humans; I just want to see the monsters destroy each other! The fights are shoddily edited and filmed, and were the one thing I was hoping would really deliver here. After all, Pacific Rim is no masterpiece, and while it lacks interesting characters, it has some terrific fight scenes between Kaiju and giant robots.
What really soured the film for me though, was just how stupid it was. SPOILERS BELOW: It is revealed about halfway through the film that Emma is in cahoots with Jonah, and that she is using her device to awaken the titans because she believes they will bring balance to the earth, much like Thanos. This info is delivered in the most ham-fisted skype call, a call Emma has no reason to make. But what makes this even worse, is that when destruction is reigning down upon the earth, Emma suddenly has a change of heart, and says, "This isn't how it's supposed to happen," as if any form of genocide would go smoothly. The movie tries to play this as deep and complex, but really it's shallow and stupid.
Which is an apt description of this whole film: shallow and stupid. Director and co-writer Michael Dougherty has done some interesting films in the past (Krampus and Trick R Treat), but he seems buried and lost at sea with how to handle this film. I can only hope his next venture is better.
The film is set in the "Monsterverse", and is tied to King Kong; Skull Island (2017), and will be followed up by King Kong vs Godzilla next year (the big guy is mentioned a lot in this film but never seen). So far it's been an underwhelming cinematic universe, and one can only hope future films deliver on the monster fights.
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