Superhero Media: Godzilla II King of the Monsters

Oh my God-zilla, but this came out of nowhere! The 2014 Godzilla was alright and Kong Skull Island was a hell of a lot of fun, but King of the Monsters pushed everything to a new level; being a really good action film even without Godzilla or grading on a curve for being an American Godzilla film. No longer bothering with easing Western audiences into the whole Kaiju concept, King of the Monsters has Godzilla on-screen in the first minute and throws out a heady mix of Mothra, Rodan, King Gidorah, the Hollow Earth and Aliens as it smashes it's way to greatness. Every part of this film is finely crafted in a way most genre action films don't bother to be, from the soundtrack, to the cast and especially the Kaiju, King of the Monsters had the potential to be a great hit. Sadly, it did poorly at the box office and that's all Hollywood executives care about right now. I can only hope that Godzilla vs. Kong performs well and I finally get that Kaiju Cinematic Universe I want, complete with all the weird monsters Toho has the rights to, but with American money behind it. 

Unlike the previous attempts to adapt the King to a Western audience, King of the Monsters embraces what has worked in the Japanese films for decades, even down to Bear McCreary using the classic "Godzilla" theme as the basis for his score, giving longtime fans like me a thrill as the big brass horns start up. And don't get me started on the version of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" done with Serj Tankian, a Buddhist Monastic choir and full orchestra, still my favourite new song of 2019. How good is this film, when you get down to it? I saw it in the cinema with my then-girlfriend, who had only seen the 1998 and 2014 versions and thought the whole premise was laughable, but she was cheering with me when Mothra comes back into the Boston fight to take out Rodan and kept talking about how amazing the whole thing was through dinner later. King of the Monsters takes us to the Hollow Earth to detonate a nuclear bomb in Godzilla's face, which heals him, of course, as a preamble to the third act, but none of it feels out of place or forced, it's that well crafted. How this wasn't the start of something bigger just baffles me, more people have seen Gidorah memes than they have this film. 

Even the sounds the kaiju make are pumped-up versions of their classic calls from the Japanese films, such is the fidelity on display here; it's astonishing. And for all the loyalty to the history of the franchise, King of the Monsters is still a beautifully crafted film, with scenes like Godzilla approaching the underwater base frankly better lit than many entire films I've seen of the same era. Hell, I didn't even get to the cast yet! Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Bradley Whitford and Sally Hawkins are just a few of the names that grace this motion picture, that's a hell of a cast and they deliver, from the shock and awe of the opening, to the final "Long live the King" drop. King of the Monsters is one of my favouirte "rainy day" movies, something I'm always up to watch, even if I only saw it again a few days ago, because it's a lot of fun and always thrilling. What the cast and crew of this film did right is the same thing the Marvel Cinematic Universe does right, they trusted that something that had been around for decades already "worked" and build a solid film around those concepts, rather than trying to reinvent it from the ground up. I hope this isn't the end for the "Monsterverse", I want to stay and see where it goes. Long live the King.