Movie Marathon - Godzilla (2014) & Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Studios love expanded universes these days and with Godzilla vs. Kong now releasing on streaming platforms, I wanted to look back to see where this all began. I remember enjoying Roland Emmerich's entertaining version of the big beast from 1998 but in 2014 Gareth Edwards released the much darker Godzilla which set the scene for this new franchise.

The film stars Bryan Cranston as a scientist in Japan who loses his wife in a supposed accident and believes there are secrets a mysterious organisation, led by Ken Watanabe, a trying to hide. It's a very engaging first act but Edwards shoots himself in the foot and makes the protagonist be Cranston's military son played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Taylor-Johnson is fine actor but is given so little to do making the rest of the story feel a bit bland while Cranston leaves a far stronger lasting impression on the whole film. 

Fortunately, the action with the beast is where the film shines with its impressive visuals and a Pacific Rim style sense of scale when we see the big monsters clash that made this so entertaining even if it runs a little too long towards the end. Edwards decision to hide much of Godzilla during the action was an effective idea in building the tension but some fans were left disappointed with this Cloverfield styled approach. I personally preferred this and while the film suffers from losing Cranston way too early in the story, it was still a fun ride.

Come 2017, Kong: Skull Island (click the link for my post about it) was released and this was where the studio began setting the scene for bringing Kong and Godzilla together. The film itself was an improvement over Edwards' beast flick but the studio wanted another Godzilla solo action adventure which came to be Godzilla: King of the Monsters that released in 2019 and directed by Michael Dougherty. 

Dropping Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen while keeping Ken Watanbe and Sally Hawkins from the last Godzilla film, the sequel sees Godzilla return to do battle with a series of new beasts that have been awoken by Charles Dance's environmental terrorist. There's also a dismal plot focused around Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chandler which unfortunately dooms the film's chances of ever matching Cranston's motivation from the get-go, and forms the centre of the lacklustre story. 

The best I can say about this one is that the score is good and some of the visuals are nice but gone are interesting characters, that all-important sense of scale with the beasts and a general sense of enjoyment. There should be a sense of awe when several monsters decimate Boston but instead I found myself feeling bored by it all and looking at Godzilla vs. Kong it seems many of the problems found here exist in that too. 

It's unfortunate as Edwards and Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who made Skull Island, were on to something good but the series has turned into a generic blockbuster action fest. That might work for some but I'm not sure an expanded universe can survive on that alone and this might bring about another reboot in a few years to come.