A monstrous disappointment.

So, how much monster is too much monster? That’s the question. Odd though it may seem considering huge rampaging beasts are exactly what you watch a monster movie for, but judging precisely when to show your kaiju hand can make or break a film.

Do you go big and focus on your monster or do you shrink things down and concentrate on the human side of things? It’s a tough call and one that will leave audiences divided no matter which way you turn.

Too much one way or the other and you risk throwing the entire movie off balance. Too much monster and you lose the story’s heart, yet too many people and you’re in danger of short-changing your audience. 

And it only seems like yesterday that we were right here having the exact same conversation about 2014’s Godzilla, with the debate still raging to this day as to whether Gareth Edwards’ movie got the balance right or not. Yet, here we are five years later and there feels like no better time than now for its sequel to redress the balance and answer those critics.

With the world still reeling from the devastating kaiju attack on San Francisco, crypto-zoological agency Monarch operate in the shadows monitoring the activity of Godzilla and other god-sized monsters across the globe. However, with fear of their destructive capabilities continuing to grow, it’s not long before everyone’s worst nightmares are realised as the Titans awaken to reclaim a world which was once theirs. Now, with Mothra, Rodan, and the three headed King Ghidorah on the warpath and humanity’s existence in the balance, Godzilla may be our last hope for survival. 

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where we stand on Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla these days. From the moment it dropped, opinions have ebbed and flowed to the point that it’s all become a blur. Many praised it for its slow burn approach, yet just as many have written it off as boring and lacking adequate Godzilla action.

Whatever you think of it, however, Godzilla made its decision and ran with it, putting an admirable amount of time and effort into building an emotional, human core. Of course, you pay for a Godzilla movie, you expect Godzilla, yet the importance of working from the ground up for a film of such huge scope should not be underestimated.

Feeling emotionally tethered to the action is a crucial component of any huge monster movie and its impact on an audience. For all its faults, Godzilla slowly but surely built up to its big reveal, culminating in a final showdown that feels all the more satisfying for it.

While nowhere near as slow burn as its predecessor, Godzilla: King of the Monsters takes a similar grounded approach by anchoring itself in its human characters. Which is all well and good, except this time they’re almost entirely devoid of charm and personality. 

From our protagonists, the Russell family, to the various members of Monarch, a huge amount of time is dedicated to their fight against the marauding Titans, yet few feel like anything more than pitiful nonentities. With woeful dialogue and baffling motivations, almost every character is a cardboard cut-out put in place merely to stand around, react, and dump monster-sized piles of plot exposition on us.

The bare minimum you can ask for from any human in a monster movie is that they’re at least engaging and, for all the energy King of the Monsters puts into building up its non-Titan element, they’re barely worth the time. Unsympathetic and frequently annoying, the entire ensemble feels bloated and tonally confused, with the Russells in particular presented as thoroughly unlikable.

Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chandler are fine actors and worthy editions to any movie, yet they are utterly wasted by a script that undermines them at every turn. While Chandler is left standing around delivering terrible quips and sub-Ian Malcolm lines about dabbling with the unknown, Farmiga’s Dr. Emma Russell is cut adrift as her character makes ludicrous decision after ludicrous decision, delivering dialogue so expositional at times, it’s painful to watch.

Utterly overqualified for the job, no one in the talented cast really looks like they want to be there, with only Millie Bobby Brown coming out of this with any real credit. It’s certainly not perfect but her role does at least have some purchase and the closest the film gets to a fully rounded, sympathetic character.

Much like the characters, an intricate and layered plot isn’t necessarily what you go into a Godzilla movie demanding; yet, at the very least, it should be involving and serve as a steady foundation for the enormous action. Incredibly weak and making almost no sense however, the narrative is a huge disappointment, feeling superfluous and utterly lacking in bite.

Stuck in a loop of inexplicable character decisions, forced levity, and exposition tidal waves, the script very quickly runs out of steam before wearily stepping aside for the action. With bad guys (led by Charles Dance, obviously) ripped straight from Hollywood’s clichéd terrorist playbook, the plot involving Monarch and a device that can talk to Titans could’ve been interesting but ends up a bland, convoluted mess.

Opposite them, our gang of impossibly huge Titans are well constructed but given little opportunity to shine. While they’re certainly allowed more screen time than Godzilla was in the first film, Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah are never truly utilised to their full potential.

When you can actually see them, the Titans are a thing of beauty, looking magnificent and coming complete with neon touches that pop off the screen, even if little else does. And that’s the whole problem. For all their impressive design and stature, you can barely make anything out through the thick, muddy CGI fog.

With flashes of magnificence as the camera finally settles back to take in Godzilla et al in all their majesty, King of the Monsters has all the ingredients to put on a show worthy of its name, yet it never fully delivers. Fighting not only each other but the murkiness around them, the monsters are sorely let down by a visual style that makes it almost impossible to see what’s going on and a director that doesn’t appear to know how to shoot them.

Oddly framed shots and a complete lack of style drain everything of personality, with director Michael Dougherty unable to put his stamp on the franchise in the way Gareth Edwards or even Kong: Skull Island’s Jordan Vogt-Roberts did before him. As Dougherty struggles to judge both tone and action, King of the Monsters feels like a bridge too far for a filmmaker who, unlike both previous MonsterVerse directors, hasn’t really made the leap from the world of indies with any real success.

Particularly puzzling is Dougherty’s insistence on keeping focus with our various humans throughout huge fight sequences where you just want to kick back and watch Godzilla knock the snot out of the three-headed King Ghidorah. Again, if the humans were worthy of our attention, there’d be no problem, but the film’s annoying habit of pulling away or having irritating people get in the way of the monsters just as things get good, leaves the action feeling rather toothless.

Ok, let’s face it. You’re not going to pay your hard earned cash to watch a Godzilla movie for the sparking dialogue and in-depth characterisation, but the least you’d expect is a decent monster dust-up and, while King of the Monsters has its moments, it struggles to ignite. Let down hugely by a bloated, uninteresting group of characters and a flimsy, nonsensical plot, Godzilla: King of the Monsters may up the screen time of the Titans from its predecessor, yet it never quite uses them in a satisfying way. After the steady progress of Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, King of the Monsters feels like a kaiju-sized backward step and with a huge Godzilla vs Kong showdown on the horizon, the entire MonsterVerse needs to pull itself together to avoid going nuclear on us.