The MonsterVerse is the creation of Legendary studios and Warner Bros. that features both Godzilla and King Kong. The first instalment of this new franchise was a reboot of Godzilla in 2014 (which was one of my first reviews for this site) and continued with Kong: Skull Island in 2017 with Godzilla: King of the Monsters set for release in 2018 which will be followed by Godzilla Vs. Kong in 2020. At the time of writing my Godzilla review I was unaware that film was intended to be the first of a shared universe.

The tone of the articles below are going to be a bit different mainly because I wrote the review of Godzilla when I started this site, and was still getting into the swing of writing plus developing my own style.

Right now that’s out of the way, let’s crack on…

Date Posted: 07/12/14

Godzilla is a 2014 science-fiction film and serves as a reboot of the Godzilla franchise, and has nothing to do with the 1998 film of the same name, and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Bryan Cranston

I think in life everyone starts off as a movie going optimist, then as time goes on and you see one piece of crap after another you become more and more cynical until eventually you don’t look forward with new film with hope you look forward with an arched eyebrow and a massively sarcastic quip just waiting to be hurled when someone else tries to tell you that blockbusters like Twilight and Prometheus weren’t as painful as jabbing a fork in each eye.

Did Godzilla restore my faith in cinema? Of course it didn’t, if it did I wouldn’t be writing about it. 

This film (not to be confused with the one from 1998) centres around Godzilla and two other monsters called…I dunno so I am going to call them...Steve and Sharon, that isn’t what they are called but sod it. Anyone who has seen the trailer will know that bloke from Breaking Bad featured quite heavily, so you would imagine that he features quite heavily in the film right? Wrong, the scenes from the trailer are the amount he’s in the film, then he dies (spoiler alert) to be replaced by his son or whoever.

The premise of this shambles is that the nuclear testing done in the south pacific a few years ago by the French were actually attempts to kill Godzilla, not just harmless nuclear testing, yes they  were not harmless nuclear tests. But they failed and Godzilla has spent the last few years not holding a grudge and swimming around minding his own business, listening out for signs that his arch enemies, Steve and Sharon have awakened from their slumber. Yeah, Godzilla has been around for millions of years just waiting for these things to reappear, personally I’d think in a few millions years you’d have time to examine every blade of grass to make sure these things aren’t inexplicably hiding beneath them and tread on them if they are, but no he was content to swim around listening.

Well Steve hatches from his cocoon and immediately set off to go find Sharon so they can repopulate the Earth with their kind. It is at this point that Godzilla springs into action, by which I mean he swims to Hawaii to catch up with Steve, causing a massive tsunami that wipes out hundreds of innocent holiday makers approaches Steve for the titanic battle, at which point the film cuts to a child watching TV in which we see Steve fly round Godzilla’s head for a minute whilst Godzilla swats pathetically at him with his arms before Steve flies off and Godzilla returns to the sea to continue his pursuit.

What are the humans doing whilst this is happening you ask? Well, pretty much nothing, you see Steve is looking for Sharon, and Sharon is being held in a mountain near Vegas for some reason. The military have her in a bunker but when Steve gets loose feel the need to check to make sure she’s still there so they open a little window in the door and discover half the mountain missing and her wandering towards Vegas. Seriously guys, you had to look through the window? Did no one, I don’t know, hear the sounds of a giant monster ripping half the mountain away?? The humans are essentially helpless because both Steve and Sharon give off multiple EMP charges (that is Electro-Magnetic Pulse for the less nerdy of you) rendering all your technology useless...the reasons for this are not made clear but they probably made sense to the writer when the woodpecker sitting on his ear steadily hammering through his skull pierced his brain.

If this had been made as a fake nature documentary with David Attenborough doing a narration I’d probably have actually enjoyed it, but as it was we got a film about giant monsters kicking the crap out of one another and it was boring. Read that final bit to yourself again and ask yourself how the hell do you make a film with that premise boring? I don’t know but thankfully we live in a world where Hollywood can take such a great premise and make it shit, but then these are the same people who thought vampires that glow in direct sunlight would be a good idea.

The special effects are impressive but killing off the best character in it was a real waste of talent and spending the entire time teasing the audience with the promise of an epic monster battle was pointless.

My final verdict is therefore a definate Thumbs Down

3/10 - Impressive special effects but on the whole this is an irritating waste of a potentially great idea

Date Posted: 03/09/17

Released in 2017 Kong: Skull Island is sent in the Legendary MonsterVerse, which is the same universe as 2014’s Godzilla. Unlike that film which was set in the present day, the majority of Kong happens in 1973. Samuel L. Jackson and Tom Hiddleston appear along with John C. Reilly and John Goodman.

I look back over my reviews frequently (generally to check them for spelling and grammar errors that I missed when I proof-read them before posting them) but also because I actually like reading my own stuff. Recently I cast my eye over my Godzilla review (which is now above this one) and whether you realise it or not that was one of my first reviews for this site. I also did not rate the film especially highly as Godzilla and the two monsters didn’t seem to do much the majority of the film except wander about. Plus I was so uninterested in the monsters Godzilla was fighting I didn’t even bother to remember or look up what they were called. The film focussed on the human characters rather than the monsters, which seemed to me to be a massive miss-step. The final battle between Godzilla and the monsters was…meh…in my eyes and so I assumed we’d hear no more about this franchise.

I have no idea if it was always the intention for Godzilla to be part of a wider universe or that every other studio in Hollywood is looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe with envious eyes so have decided to have their own wider universe. DC are trying to do it with the DC Shared Universe and Universal are having a bash with their Dark Universe that started with 2017’s The Mummy starring Tom Cruise.

Was Kong any good or was it another dull edition to Legendary’s MonsterVerse, let’s set sail to Skull Island to find out

The film opens in 1944 with two pilots, one being an American named Hank Marlow, being shot down and crash-landing on an island, Marlow and Japanese pilots start fighting, but their battle suddenly ends when a huge ape appears and stares down at them both…

(So we are a few minutes in and we’ve already seen the titular Kong)

Cut to 1973, representatives of a company called Monarch approach a US Senator requesting permission to head to a mysterious island that has only recently been discovered by satellite. What is on the island is a mystery but Bill Randa (Goodman) advises that whatever is there, the Americans should stake a claim on it before anyone else can. The senator agrees to give them the funds and armed personnel to go to the island but if it turns out to be a wild-goose chase no further funding will be given to Monarch.

Elsewhere the Americans are abandoning Vietnam with many of the soldiers happy to be finally returning home. Their commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Jackson) is less enthusiastic, and is contacted by his superiors who tell him that he and his men are being loaned to Randa in order to investigate the island.

Randa also tracks down a former SAS operative James Conrad (Hiddleston), who specialises in going to dangerous locations extracting people to accompany them, they are also joined by a photo journalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson)

The group arrive at the massive storm front that permanently surrounds the island, and the soldiers are briefed as to why they are there. Monarch is interested in the mineral wealth the island may have so are intending to have the fleet of helicopters drop seismic charges all over the island which will give them a reading of the underlying minerals. They will set up a base camp on the island and will be collected in a few days from the island’s north end, if they miss the rendezvous there will not be another.

Things seem to be going to plan, the charges are being dropped and exploding, when a tree is suddenly hurled at one of the helicopters, shattering the windows and causing it to crash. Before the eyes of the stunned soldiers a giant ape appears in front them, being soldiers they immediately open fire, and the monster before them decimates their fleet of helicopters. The majority of the soldiers are killed and the survivors are separated into small groups, and forced to lick their wounds as they try to figure out how they are going to make it off the island alive.

As they travel deeper into the island they discover Marlow (Reilly) who was the American pilot we saw in the opening that has been on the island since 1944. He informs the survivors that the ape that attacked them, known as Kong is not the worst thing on the island, far from it; in fact Kong is all that stands between the island and far more dangerous creatures called Skullcrawlers. If Kong doesn’t kill them when they are young they will grow to huge proportions, escape the island and become a real threat to the rest of the world.

Kong is territorial and only attacked the helicopters because they were dropping seismic charges, and he viewed them as a threat. Conrad and Co hurry to reunite with the other survivors as Packard is hell-bent on killing the monster that slaughtered his men.

Godzilla left a bad taste in my mouth by focussing on the humans rather than the monsters, and fortunately Kong: Skull Island doesn’t make the same mistake.

When Peter Jackson remade King Kong in 2005 Kong himself was essentially an over-sized gorilla, and he moved like one, on all fours. This Kong is not meant to be just a big ape, he is supposed to be a complete different species, and as a result he walks on two legs rather than four. He reminded me more of a yeti than an ape. Now unlike Godzilla which seemed to take an age to get going, we see Kong within five minutes of the film opening, the whole getting-to-the-island things is done pretty quickly and then we can crack on with the action. Personally I liked this approach, this is, after all, a monster movie so naturally we want to see the monsters. Godzilla seemed to forget this, thankfully, Kong: Skull Island doesn’t.

Kong has more screen time that I remember Godzilla having and even though he doesn’t speak, he is obviously not a mindless monster. There is a sequence in which one of the wrecked helicopters has landed on a giant water buffalo like creature that is crying out in pain. Weaver tries to move the wreckage but is not strong enough, suddenly the helicopter is lifted up, Kong stands over her and simply looks at her before walking away. Kong isn’t the monster of the movie he is effectively the hero. He has a personality and will not just attack without reason or provocation; however, Packard effectively becomes the film’s Captain Ahab as he is determined to kill the giant beast.

The fight between Kong and the Big-One (a huge skullcrawler) is suitably bone-crunching with some of the humans helping the big ape out so he can get the upper hand against the creature.

I did enjoy this film and it does go to show that monster movies can still work and can be good, however, it was not all good. The soldiers are basically there to be killed and whilst some are given some time to have personalities, they pretty much just seem to be doing what the characters in Independence Day Resurgence did and are having a: who can have the noblest death competition. One of them decides to stand his ground as the giant Skullcrawler charges him and his men down, he holds two grenades above his head, and goads the creature to…well, presumably eat him hoping that the grenades will detonate inside the monster and kill it. Sadly for him, the creature bats him away with his tail where he sails into the distance and the grenades detonate uselessly, but killing him.

Er…guy that plan sucked.

This is a military trained Vietnam soldier, why exactly did he decide to sacrifice himself in such a pointless way?? Like I said so he can have the noblest death, that is really the only reason that I can think of, his death really serves no purpose.

There is also one of those scenes that I have seen countless times in movies and always make me frown and scratch my head. You’ll know the one, as you’ve undoubtedly seen it a million times yourself. Conrad’s group enter some ruins with inscriptions and such, as Weaver is taking pictures a native appears that was standing in front of the ruin with their face and body painted to make them blend in. I always wonder when I see this, how long have they been standing there?? Do they spend days, weeks, months, years just standing around in the ruins waiting for the day when some stranger walks in so they can open their eyes at the precise moment to scare them?? Is that a life well spent?? Who knows. Fortunately the natives in this version of Skull Island are friendly and have been giving Marlow a safe place to live since he crashed there in the 1940s.

As the American pilot who has been surviving the island since 1944 Marlow is naturally on hand to tell the survivors what is going on, but he also has a strange comedy moment that is completely out of place. He informs Conrad that Kong is the good guy, and the creatures he fights are called Skullcrawlers. Thing is he then says that he’d only ever thought that name, and didn’t realise how stupid it was until he spoke it out loud. It seems like this was supposed to be a funny moment but it is more awkward than anything else, and just left me frowning rather than smiling. I understand that there is a monster in this universe called Mothra (which is a giant moth), which is also a bit of a stupid name; “Skullcrawler” is hardly the dumbest name he could have chosen. If he’d called them “Pixie-dusters” then yeah, that is a stupid name, but not sure why Skullcrawlers is any stupider than Mothra. Anyway, the joke is just out of place and doesn’t fit with the overall tone of the film as there are no other occasions when anyone seems to be making jokes.

Goodman’s character’s motivation for coming to the island is basically just to get proof that monsters exist. During the nuclear tests in the Pacific (which we learned in Godzilla were attempts by the French to kill the titular monster) Randa was on one of the ships Godzilla destroyed and he has spent his life trying to prove that monsters are real. The seismic charges were supposed to provoke a response from Kong so he could get the photographic evidence that he needed. As motivations go it is not the most original but it is also the reason that the majority of the people die. If he wanted to flush Kong out then why didn’t he…I dunno…get a helicopter to dangle a huge banana from it then film Kong when he came to eat it??

Acting wise there are some decent performances here with Jackson naturally shining as the Army Officer determined to kill the monster who killed his men, not realising or caring that he is putting the survivors in danger in his selfish desire for revenge. I think thought that the characters are nothing we haven’t seen before. The ex-SAS guy, the woman, the grizzled soldiers, the young men who just want to get home, and so on and so on.

As there is nowhere else to bung this particular point I’ll put it here, there is a bit after the credits which cements this as part of the MonsterVerse

All in all I have to say that I did like this film, Kong was strong, and powerful but was not a mindless monster. The acting is decent enough with Reilly clearly enjoying himself, and whilst some aspects of the film fall rather flat, the characters are interesting enough, and the focus remains on Kong not the humans. The film is awarded with a Thumbs Up, hopefully now that Kong: Skull Island has raised the bar from the poor effort that was Godzilla the next outing for Godzilla, the so-called King of the Monsters, will be better, and I look forward to seeing Kong tackle Godzilla in Kong Vs Godzilla in 2020.

7/10 – This is pretty good and entertaining monster movie, it doesn’t take itself too seriously which is a plus, and also it doesn’t forget that in a monster movie we want to see the monsters not piss about with what the humans are doing.

Date Posted: 09/06/19

The sequel to the 2014 film Godzilla sees the titular radioactive lizard return to do battle with new monsters. Ken Watanabe returns to reprise the role of Dr. Ishirō Serizawa from the original film along with Sally Hawkins as Dr. Vivienne Graham. Joining them this time around we have Charles Dance as Alan Jonah with Vera Farmiga as Dr Emma Russell and Kyle Chandler as Dr. Mark Russell

My doesn't time fly. It barely seems like yesterday that I created this site and started gracing you humans with my opinions regarding various forms of entertainment. Godzilla was one of the first reviews that I did for this website and as I look back over all the reviews I have done, I do sometimes wish that I'd dated each one so you, my reader, would know how much time has passed between them. I imagine that it might seem strange to see shorter reviews from when I was getting into the swing of writing alongside longer and more detailed ones that came much later. Plus the tone shifts and the way my writing style may have changed over the years. Still, I think with even your limited understanding, it is still possible to gain enjoyment from reading my articles, because if it wasn't then you probably wouldn't be reading them in the first place

Okay, so let’s kick off with Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Now as you may recall from my original review that I was not overly keen on the first film as Godzilla himself and the two other Monsters seemed to only be in the background whilst the story lingered on the human characters. If you don't remember then look at the review, it is either above this one or in the Monsterverse page of the Films section. Let me pose a question...would it not be reasonable to assume that if we are watching a film called Godzilla that perhaps we want to see a film about Godzilla, not about the humans buzzing around him like insects??

Kong: Skull Island realised that no one wants to watch humans in a monster movie so Kong himself had a far bigger role and more of a personality in his film. He didn't just randomly attack, and spent the majority of the film fighting the Skullcrawlers that clawed their way out of the Earth on his island home. The monsters took the focus, and I was hoping that Godzilla: King of the Monsters would follow this example.

Things kick off in 2014 with Dr Emma Russell and Dr Mark Russell witnessing Godzilla trashing San Francisco whilst battling the two M.U.T.O creatures which I referred to as Steve and Sharon in my review so will again here. They are able to rescue their daughter from the city-wide devastation wrought by Godzilla but their son is killed. We cut to 2019 in which Madison Russell and her mother Emma are living in a remote Chinese Monarch facility that Emma works in. It is also housing a giant cocoon, which begins to hatch. A huge larvae insect emerges and is spooked by the guards around it, it starts to attack, but is calmed by a device called the ORCA which Dr Russell has developed with her ex-husband using the signals deciphered from the monsters (or Titans as they are known) around the globe. The larvae is calmed, but moments later the facility is attacked, everyone else is killed with Dr Russell and her daughter Madison being taken hostage and the ORCA is stolen whilst the larvae escapes into the wild.

Meanwhile, we learn that in the five years since the battle, Godzilla has disappeared back into the sea and Monarch is being held accountable for the devastation brought about by the monsters. A committee has been convened to decide whether Monarch should fall under the blanket of the military who would seek to eradicate any other monsters around the world. Dr Serizawa and his colleagues learn of the attack on the facility and recruit Dr Russell's estranged husband Mark to help them locate his ex-wife and child.

They take him to a state-of-the-art underwater facility that has been monitoring Godzilla in his underwater habitat for the last five years. The big guy abruptly gets restless as Monarch and Co try to find out where Jonah will strike again. Little do they realise that a far greater threat is about to be awoken, one that could unleash all remaining Titans reigning untold levels of destruction down upon the world and this time Godzilla may not be able to stop it...

I was hoping that as Kong: Skull Island realised that people wanted to see the titular monster that Godzilla: King of the Monsters would do the same. Unfortunately that hope was dashed as the film continued. Like the original, every time the monsters prepared to battle it was all build up, no pay off. Like riding a rollercoaster that just keeps going upwards without ever coming back down again. Every single time that Godzilla and a monster would clash the camera would cut to people nearby, or a vehicle exploding, or a particular blade of grass that the director thought would be interesting. I didn't count a single time when the camera actually remained focused on the monsters fighting. The camera kept swivelling away from the literal clashing of Titans or an object would drop down I the foreground blocking what was happening in the background.

Can someone tell me why Godzilla is being shoved into the background so uninteresting dipshits can hog the screen??

Although, I guess it is understandable, after all Pacific Rim would cut away...actually no it wouldn't. We'd SEE the kaiju going up against the jaegers because in that film Guilermo Del Toro had the balls to focus the camera on the monsters. Remember when Jurassic Park was released and we didn't actually see the dinosaurs even after they broke...no, no, I'm wrong again. Spielberg put them front and centre so we could see them whilst managing to give time to the human characters too. What was the director of King of the Monsters THINKING??? I have no idea why the lives of the humans are seemingly more interesting than those of the monsters the film is supposed to be about. Kong from Skull Island has more of a personality than all the other monsters here combined because he was allowed to actually have some screen time. We saw him lifting a helicopter off a trapped animal on Skull Island and not harming Brie Larsen’s character because she had been trying to help the creature before Kong walked over. He didn't hurt her; hell Kong didn't hurt anyone unless he was first provoked. In this film Godzilla isn't given enough screen time to develop any personality, and when he is on screen the director is so determined to not keep the camera on him?

It reminded me to sitting behind a real fat person at the cinema who's head selfishly blocks the screen so you have no clue about what is happening.

I kept wanting to shout "Oi, down in front, I'm trying to watch the monsters!"

So for a monster movie to not give much focus to the monsters, it is left to the human characters to carry things, so how do they do??

With the exceptions on Jonah and Serizawa they are pretty forgettable. Mark Russell is a behaviour scientist or something and when the ORCA is stolen he suddenly becomes the go-to-guy on all things Godzilla related. I have absolutely no idea why. At the beginning of the film he's researching wolves, and when I say researching I mean lying behind a log photographing various animals. I am not sure why he is suddenly the expert when as far as I could tell he has had no contact with Godzilla prior to San Francisco or any afterwards. So wouldn't the Godzilla experts be the ones on the underground base that have been observing his behaviour for five years???

On that note, Monarch is able to build this massive underwater facility very close to Godzilla's habitat, and yet in all that construction time not once did the big guy swim over to check out what was happening. There is a sequence where he approaches the base and everyone shits themselves, and Mark advises to open the blast shields so Godzilla can see that they are not a threat. Would it not have been more interesting if Godzilla regularly approached the base?? Or is he'd accepted that it was there and did not act in a hostile manner towards it?? Godzilla appears to communicate to some degree using the dorsal plates on his back to flash so couldn't the base have some kind of lights that they use to communicate is some basic way with him?? These are all ideas off the top of my head and all of them would have been way more interesting than a base that just sits there staring at him day after day.

Getting back to the characters it would seem that Charles Dance is having some fun as the environmentalist mercenary Allen Jonah. He effortlessly plays the ruthless man who seeks to free all of the Titans from various Monarch facilities around the world. However, he is not the main person behind the plan...

It turns out that Dr Emma Russell is behind the plot to release all of the Titans upon the world and her reason for doing it is because of climate change. In the wake of the destruction of Las Vegas and San Francisco, the radiation that Godzilla, as well as Steve and Sharon were emitting has somehow provoked growth of plant-life. So they are emitting good radiation then?? Is this the same kind of radiation that give certain superheroes their powers?? Emma Russell releases a second monster in Antarctica, a monstrous beast with three heads named King Ghidorah which promptly awakens all other Titans and calls them to do its bidding, which basically means fucking up the Earth. As a result over a dozen Titans awaken and start laying waste to cities across the globe undoubtedly resulting in the deaths of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people. Towards the end she realises that she may have fucked up when Madison decides to take the ORCA to the Boston Red Sox stadium in the hopes of sending a counter signal that will stop the monsters following Ghidorah. When the signal is released the three-headed monster comes personally to destroy it, and Madison in put in danger. In the end Emma decides to sacrifice herself by drawing Ghidorah away using the ORCA so that Madison and Mark can escape the city. Her death might have been tragic if she wasn't responsible for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of other people's deaths. Personally I think the only reason she chose to sacrifice herself is because she realised that she'd probably be ripped apart by the families of people she is responsible for murdering by unleashing the Titans.  

Godzilla is able to stand victorious over King Ghidorah in the end, and establishes himself as the King of the Monsters which at least half a dozen bowing in submission to him. But most of them were in other countries whilst Godzilla and King Ghidorah were fighting, so how did they get from the far side of the world to Boston so fast??? Plus in amongst the mix was another Steve or Sharon, but weren't the ones in the last film the last of their kind???

I guess King Ghidorah may have called them to come to his aid but by the time they reached him it was a tad on the late side Plus if the ORCA was a threat why did Ghidorah come personally to destroy it when he could have sent any of the other monsters??? It is established that the three headed monster is intelligent and also an alien...

Yeah, don't ask...so why does it go into danger personally???

In the closing credits we get all this stuff about new growth arising in the wake of the monster's smashing up numerous cities, so is that a good thing??? It is kind-of implied that it is, so Emma Russell was right to release the monsters because ultimately the world will be better off for it. I have no problem with destruction in movies but how is this a good thing when potentially millions of square miles of landmass have been irradiated??

At the beginning of the film the military is vying for permission to destroy Godzilla, but there doesn't seem to be a way to actually do it. During the film they are given the go-ahead to fire their Titan destroyer which is designed to suck the air out of a 2 mile radius thus suffocating anything at the epicentre. They fire it and...yep, it does nothing. Godzilla is seemingly killed but he manages to survive by retreating to his home beneath the sea.

Oh yeah, there are tunnels that exist through the Earth which explains how Godzilla is able to travel around so fast, and at the heart of this is the city of Atlantis...[...sigh...sure, why not...] that Godzilla resides within. After the Titan-Buster he is weakened so it is decides that a nuke to the face should not only wake him up but also heal him. So Serizawa decides to sacrifice himself to set off the device, which not only works in reviving Godzilla, it also gives him a massive power boost allowing him to go thermo nuclear. But it’s ok, even though Boston is obliterated, it is good radiation, so if anyone were to survive they won't have a long debilitating death due to radiation poisoning, no, no, plants will grow and they'll happily skip through the tulips or something.

Also the larvae cocoons itself again and emerges as...I think Jesus, no sorry it’s Mothra, a giant moth. Still it spends the rest of the film casting God-rays on everything. It comes through the clouds as heavenly light bathes its majestic wings, the gang follow it to Godzilla's domain, and it even rocks up to help the titular lizard in his battle with King Ghidorah by taking on a winged bird-like creature called Rodan so Godzilla can focus on the three-headed monster. It sacrifices itself to protect the giant lizard and then it turns to dust which mixes with Godzilla so he can resume the fight...yeah, I have no idea what that was supposed to be about.

I could have liked Godzilla, it if was mindless action, or if they had actually kept the focus on the monsters like Kong: Skull Island, Jurassic Park, Pacific Rim or any number of monster movies did. But no, every time something cool is about to happen the camera moves away from the action and we are left to watch gormless dipshits running from various things blowing up around them. It is s shame because the special effects are pretty decent, but they are completely wasted, I would have thought that keeping the focus on the monsters was a given. At the planning stage did someone drew a big picture of Godzilla and said "Right, this guy's the focus..." at which point the director grabbed the pen, put a couple of dots by the lizard's foot and said "Actually this'll carry more weight if we focus on this". I wonder if the meeting was rather awkward after that as people tried to explain that a monster-movie should be about the monsters.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters was yet another waste of potential. When Godzilla is awakened and super-charged by the nuclear blast, it looked like things were finally picking up some momentum. The military were mobilising to support him in the fight with King Ghidorah. There was a scene in which Madison turns around as the three-headed monster tries to kill her and smiles as Godzilla appears on the scene flanked by various jets. I was thinking that FINALLY we were going to get a good fight, but it was not to be, once again the camera immediately turned away as the Titans clash.

I have no idea why the film is so terrified of its own monsters, and as a result all we ended up with was another wasted idea. The old Japanese films focused more on Godzilla and his various monstrous friends and foes when it was obviously just blokes in rubber suits, if they weren't afraid to show the monsters why the donkey bollocking hell was this film????

It should come as no surprise that my Thumb is Down, I had hoped that after Kong: Skull Island the makers of these films had realised that we want monster movies, not humans hogging the foreground with monsters relegated to barely recognisable shapes on the horizon. I'm hoping that as Kong will be back in Kong Vs Godzilla then maybe things will pick back up as this franchise is starting to look like a line graph which Godzilla as the troughs with Kong as the peaks.

4/10 - I rate this film fractionally higher than the original thanks to Charles Dance and the special effects. If you want to see humans running around with stuff exploding around them, watch pretty much any action movie, if you want to watch a monster movie in which the monster/s are the focus rather than the irritating thing that keeps trying to make the film about them then watch Kong: Skull Island, Pacific Rim, Jurassic Park (and its sequels), Anaconda, Jaws, all of which had competent directors that knew where to point the fucking camera