Godzilla: King of the Monsters 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
Nathan Swank
August 29th, 2019
GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS is in many ways exactly what you expect from a big summer movie with the title, “Godzilla” in it. For those of you who are excited to see the giant nuclear kaiju titan battle other classic monsters, such as Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla’s ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah, then you’ll probably be pleasantly satisfied as a mindless summer movie. I wish I shared your excitement, because for me, the fun special-effects driven, monster battles are hardly enough to make up for the the ultra dumb characters and super thin plot line.
Five years after the devastating events from 2014’s GODZILLA, no one has been able to locate the giant lizard monster. However, they have located nine others… or is it nineteen others… lets say roughly fifty other currently docile titan monsters. Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), doing her best super villain Thanos impression, believes these creatures will bring balance to the earth by wiping out half the population and replenishing the nature that over-population and human corruption has destroyed. She’s brought her daughter Madison (Mille Bobby Brown) along with some “bad guy” military group led by Jonah Alan (always deliciously villainy Charles Dance) whose motivations are unclear, but is overly eager to help Dr. Russell wake up all these sleeping monsters.
On the other side of the fight is the ex-husband and father to Dr. Russell and Madison, Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler). Mark likes to shout things like, “We need to kill them” and “That’s my daughter out there!” After losing their son in the Godzilla prior, the Russell family took two very different approaches to life. The family dynamic is meant to be the heart of the film, but it never achieves that emotional connection, probably due to the fact that the mom is pure evil in her desire to murder half the world using gigantic destructive beasts, but still pretends to retain a grey area in kindness with some sort of redemption possibility. Forgive me, when Dr. Russell’s hero line or Madison’s slow motion screams for her mother have absolutely zero impact on me.
There are just as many scientists and military personal in GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS as there are monsters. Ken Watanabe returns as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and is still madly in love with Godzilla, believing he is the people’s protector. Sally Hawkins, Ziyi Shang, Thomas Middleditch, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Aisha Hinds, David Strathairn and Bradley Cooper are all familiar faces and join in for some of the film’s extremely limited comic relief.
I wish I could talk more about all the epic battles between GODZILLA and any other opponent but there isn’t a lot to say other than they were pretty gnarly, but I found myself waiting for the next battle in this 2 hour and 10 minute film while all the people talk and explain too much as they jump locations without being bothered by time or physical capability.
I’m not sure GODZILLA and KING KONG movies are meant to be made in our current age of filmmaking (the two titans are scheduled to do battle next year). Sure we certainly have the technology capability to bring the larger than life creatures to the screen more realistically, but it’s lost all the cheesy charm that it garnered when filmmakers were forced to be a bit more creative and audiences were more easily wowed or impressed by a spectacle.
I don’t know, I almost feel guilty not being completely on board with a movie that was never meant to have intelligent characters or much of a plot. Perhaps I should review GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS like it is meant to be reviewed with a simplified, five-word quote – “Characters dumb, monster fights cool” or even a more appropriately trivialized, “People bad, monsters good.”
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: I was hoping for more from this 4K presentation, especially given how dark the film is. But it only has the standard improvements you get from what appears to be a 2K upconverted transfer. Closeups and backgrounds have significant improvement over the Blu-ray, but overall this is a modest improvement.
Audio: The Dolby Atmos track is extremely efficient, utilizing surround channels where appropriate.
There are no 4K exclusive special features, but it does include a Blu-ray of the film, which has the following special features:
Commentary with Michael Dougherty, Zack Shields and O’Shea Jackson Jr.: The best part of this commentary is having them point out all the Easter Eggs and homages to Godzilla films. Since I’m not a huge fan of the Godzilla fans, I didn’t pick up on most of them, so it was fun to watch the movie with the director, producer and actor pointing things out along the way.
Evolution of the Titans (27:25): This is an in-depth look at how the various monsters were created and how they were filmed.
Monarch in Action (32:55): This is a detailed look at the major settings used in the film and touches on why they were chosen.
Featurettes: Five mini-featurettes that are way too short to be very informative. Millie Bobby Brown gets her own featurette and the others look closer at the monsters.
Deleted and Extended Scenes (5:00)
Trailers
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