“Long live the king,” Charles Dance says in the best line of the trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. But Tywin Lannister might not be talking about Godzilla here, but instead, a three-headed monster frozen in ice.
Take another look at the trailer and keep your eagle eyes open:
That’s King Ghidorah frozen in the ice, there. The Hand of the King and his shadowy organization have their own plans for Ghidorah and the rest of the monsters.
This is presumably why they’ve kidnapped Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring 1 & 2, Bates Motel) and her daughter, Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things). Man, if her character doesn’t have telepathic abilities like Eleven, I’m gonna be disappointed. Her mom has found a way of communicating with — and maybe even controlling — these monsters through the use of bioacoustics on a sonar level. Looks like she developed her research while working at another organization: Monarch.
You may remember John Goodman’s organization, Monarch, from Kong: Skull Island, which worked with the government to spearhead the expedition to the island, proving that monsters do exist.
But it looks like we’ll have to wait until 2020 to see Godzilla vs. Kong. This time around, it looks like the monsters featured in Godzilla: King of Monsters will include Rodan (who is often shown hibernating in volcanoes)
and Mothra, a fan favorite in the franchise. I’d initially thought she was going to be in the 2014 Godzilla movie, judging by the initial trailers, but it turned out that those giant bugs were two MUTOs. It’s just as well, because Mothra is often a force of good in the movies. I must say that this Queen of Monsters looks absolutely beautiful, thanks to the special effects in this trailer.
In fact, the special effects for all the monsters look very impressive. I suspect that all those clouds are caused by Rodan. I would hate to see a bunch of needless clouds added as a way to obscure these fantastic beasts, like in the 2014 Godzilla movie.
Sure, the HALO jump led to a cool POV perspective, but I remember watching the movie and being annoyed when they’d cut away from the Godzilla action. I don’t want to see some partial Godzilla footage on a TV as part of a news report in the movie. If I pay money to see a Godzilla movie in theaters, I wanna see Godzilla on the big screen — not a small screen on a big screen! But we’ve got a new director (Michael Dougherty), so hopefully that won’t be the case this time around.
Much like Gareth Edwards before him, Director Michael Dougherty has cut his teeth on directing low-budget monster movies before directing a Godzilla movie. Hopefully, he’s up to the task of directing a big-budget feature. I do like his previous horror pictures: Krampus and Trick ‘r Treat. I used to recommend Trick ‘r Treat to customers at Blockbuster around Halloween. The Little Red Riding Hood story with Anna Paquin (True Blood) is especially of note. Then, when I worked at Barnes and Noble, I’d put the movie on the runner over the “T” movies in the Halloween Bay during that time of year to highlight the DVD. I certainly wasn’t going to put Twilight up there.
Krampus is also really good. Parts of it are legitimately creepy and the scene in the attic is terrifying. I initially decided to watch it because it starred Toni Collette (Hereditary), whose acting is amazing in United States of Tara. I almost never watch entire seasons of TV shows more than once, but I did with the first two of the three seasons of her Showtime series. However, in Krampus, it’s her relatives, played by David Koechner (Anchorman, Snakes on a Plane) and Conchata Ferrell (Two and a Half Men), who are particularly memorable, especially the scene with the gingerbread men.
I bet Dougherty’s experience working with these well-known actors has prepared him for working with all the big names in this movie. Hopefully, he doesn’t needlessly kill any of them off a third of the way through, like Edwards did with Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad). Not only am I still bitter about Walter White getting the ax so early on when his character had the most interesting arc in the movie, but also because the 2014 film was clearly pitched to the public as Heisenberg vs. Godzilla.
Returning from the previous Godzilla movie are Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) and Ken “Let them fight” Watanabe (The Last Samurai, Batman Begins). The rest of the cast includes Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) and Kyle Chandler… who, funny enough, was in Peter Jackson’s King Kong.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the third film set in the MonsterVerse; the first two being Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017). I wonder if we’ll get an end-credit tease of King Kong — like the tease for these monsters we got at the end of Kong: Skull Island.
I guess we’ll have to watch Godzilla: King of Monsters to find out. Watch out, Godzilla! There could be another “King,” who could challenge you for the crown, in the next movie.