Billed as Godzilla 2: King of the Monsters, Godzilla (2019) is actually Godzilla 39.
The Good: If you took the parts of the movie with Godzilla fighting other monsters, such as Ghidorah or Monster Zero, and edited that film down to 22 to 24 minutes, about the length of a sitcom, Godzilla 2 would be named one of the Best Movies of the Year.
The Bad: But the movie was 132 minutes long.
Kyle Chandler?
Look for his nomination at the 40th Golden Raspberry Awards.
Vera Farmiga? Terrible. She should get one, too.
Millie Bobby Brown? I'll regret saying it, but I have never rooted for a Monster to eat a kid so badly in my life.
Screenwriter Max Borenstein? Yale weeps.
Cinematographer Lawrence Sher? Hey, you see this? This is a light bulb.
You should learn how to use this.
Throughout the movie, there were multiple references to restoring Earth to a "natural balance." And right before the climactic ending, I thought to myself that this specific Godzilla movie is almost a public service announcement against climate change.
What the director should have done is split his movie in half if his motive was to truly warn against the dangers of climate change. The first 10 minutes should have been monsters fighting. Then an intermission video from National Geographic: (Below)
And then monsters fighting again to the end.
If you were really serious about restoring natural balance, you'd get better actors to convey the message, right? I wasn't expecting high art from a Godzilla movie, but if you're going to spend $200 on a monster movie, chip in another $5 to $10 million for the next level of actor. If you just wanted a good monster movie with underlying tones, you'd go with the Fred Hunt Under Half Hour Edit with the National Geographic Missive in the middle.
What I watched was a 2 hour plus mess.
The Ugly: Toward the end of the movie, one of the supporting actors yelled "if you were my parents, I'd run away, too." I literally wanted to yell the same exact thing at the screen. For a split second, the movie was inadvertently self-aware.
Not in a good way.