Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Film Review)

2019 Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures
Directed by: Michael Dougherty; Written by: Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields
Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, and who cares, I came to this movie to see Godzilla fight monsters
MPAA Rating: PG-13; Running Time: 132 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 4/10

2014's Godzilla featured havoc wrought upon the city of San Francisco, as the skyscraper-sized titular character faced off against two equally skyscraper-sized monsters called Mutos. Michael Dougherty's 2019, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, picks up several years into the aftermath of the 2014 film. A family, I don't care about their names, lost their son in the San Francisco carnage. Now the dad, played by Kyle Chandler, is off in the wilderness doing something with wolves. The mother, played by Vera Farmiga, and pre-teen daughter, played by Millie Bobby Brown, are off trying to wake up all of the other giant hibernating monsters (called titans here) because they believe they'll restore the natural, non-human-wrecked order to the Earth, like a forest fire.
Unfortunately, the mother-daughter duo wake up a three-headed, electricity-firing, winged beast named Ghidorah. Ghidorah doesn't hail from Earth, and just wants to wreck the place. Unfortunately, instead of, I guess, wrecking the Earth in an orderly fashion, all the other monsters join up with the all-powerful Ghidorah, and start wrecking it in a disorderly one. This pisses off the fire-breathing, radioactive Godzilla, who doesn't want the other monsters bowing down to anyone but him.
That's already a lot of plot for a movie that's only meant to exist as a vehicle to deliver mammoth monster fights to viewers' eyeballs. Godzilla: King of Monsters tosses a big bag of raisins more characters and plot convolutions in just because I guess this movie had to be 2.25 hours long. Most of that running time consists of characters blabbering on in inhuman, non-entertaining fashion about things the viewer doesn't particularly care about, almost as if the director is not only openly trolling those who just want to see monsters fighting, but those who actually wouldn't mind a less nonsensical, more entertaining film.
If told clearly, the main plot points are fine--tragedy destroys a family, 2/3 of the family's negative reaction to that destruction leads to 3/3 of them reuniting, and also huge monsters fighting. As I've said, though, that's not what the viewer gets. The family dynamic is conveyed as if by someone who not only doesn't understand it, but doesn't care about it. King of the Monsters' other NINE billed actors characters' words have even less importance and significance--and yet the vast majority of the film's run-time is dedicated to those characters talking.
When the action finally does come, and for those only interested in that--about 45 minutes in, Ghidorah is awakened and he and Godzilla fight for about three minutes; about 15 minutes later they and another monster fight for about another three minutes, and Godzilla is incapacitated due to human interference; Godzilla sits out the next hour until he comes back and fights Ghidorah for about ten minutes in a fight that is so cut to pieces with footage of humans doing stuff, and obscures so much of what is going on it pretty much doesn't happen--it's directed with so little flair it's little respite from the rest. Hmmm...what other franchise does this remind me of?
Transformers.
Transformers is supposed to be about massive transformable robots fighting each other. Michael Bay's Transformers film series focuses on uninteresting and little developed human characters, with tossed in moments of action so incomprehensible, they lend no value to any of the other time you wasted watching the parts of the movie that doesn't feature any action. Bay's films also frequently cut from the robot fights you actually wanted to see to whatever the human characters you don't care about are doing. Godzilla: King of the Monsters does this last bit a lot, and is so tone deaf to it that, right before the climax, a character says, "This time we'll join the fight," as a subconscious admission to the viewer that the upcoming battle royale is barely going to feature footage of the monsters.
This makes even King of the Monsters' initial bad press incongruous to reality, as the film isn't mind-numbing due to nonstop monster-fighting action, but due to nonstop inanity. It doesn't deliver on what it says it is. It doesn't deliver on anything...well, almost anything.
The film is badly written, badly directed, and badly edited (I don't know whether to blame the director or the editor for the latter). However, the monster designs are absolutely awesome, which makes the fact that they are completely underutilized even worse. Dougherty at least features several excellent static shots of them, but every time they start to move, he for some reason feels the urge to cut away. Bear McCreary's score for the film is excellent, featuring tons of great choral work, as well as reinterpretations of previous Godzilla music. Sure would be nice if the moments he was soundtracking matched his level of work.