Mister Minutes' Cinema Circus

The lost virtue of patience (in cinematic universes).

In 2008, Marvel Studios set out on an ambitious undertaking, to create a cinematic universe encompassing all their most popular characters within one shared continuity, where stories would overlap, characters from disparate movies would interact, all with a central end goal in mind. They achieved their monumental goal through patience and careful, exact planning over the course of 23 films. The amount of work, organization, careful forethought and construction cannot be understated; it is truly an incredible, commendable achievement.

In 2013, Hollywood Idiot Zack Snyder said “I can do that too!” and proceeded to shit the bed with the DC Extended Universe, further showcasing just how incredible an achievement Marvel had attained through careful planning and patience.

In 2014, a committee board said “We can do that too!” and proceeded to shit the bed with Dracula Untol— oh, I mean, what movie? Nothing to see here! What I mean is, In 2017 a committee board said “We can do that too! Again!” and proceeded to shit the bed with The Mummy, trying and failing to create a “Dark Universe” that would bring together all of Universal Studios’ classic movie monsters.

All of this brings us to 2014, when Gareth Edwards apparently said “I can do that too!” with his Godzilla as the flagship film to kick off Warner Bros.’ MonsterVerse, a cinematic undertaking with the goal of bringing together... just Godzilla and King Kong, I guess. Maybe 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong will just be the end of this universe shit and we can all move on to something better.

Any of these “universes” could have worked - I for one was actually really excited for the Dark Universe - but they all lacked the one component that made the MCU great: patience. They all saw what Marvel achieved over 23 films and ten years and thought “nah, betcha I can do it in four”, and they all failed. The MonsterVerse is in its infancy, but it still falls into the same traps the other ones have, namely trying to get in its Avengers without having earned it. For Marvel, The Avengers was the sixth movie in the franchise. In the DCEU, Justice League was fifth, which looks fine on paper until you remember that they’d already had two big team-up movies beforehand with Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, both of which were terrible. DC jumped the gun and tried to cram too many characters into its films too fast, whereas Marvel gave its main squad each their own individual movies to set up their characters and motivations, instead of forcing them into a team dynamic from the start. The Dark Universe didn’t even get this chance, since The Mummy was such a colossal flop that the DU was labeled DOA after its first movie.

The MonsterVerse more or less had its Avengers in its third fucking movie. The main two stars, Godzilla and King Kong, both got their own films first, so that’s fine (I have yet to see Kong: Skull Island, that’s next on my list), but then decided they should just skip right to the end of whatever plan they might have had with Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The plot is stupidly muddled, but the basic premise is cool: Godzilla’s arch nemesis from the original films, King Ghidorah, is unleashed upon the world, and wakes the rest of the monstrous Titans to serve him and plunge the world into chaos, usurping Godzilla’s “throne” on Earth. Ideally, this should have been their Infinity War. Do a Rodan movie first, or Mechagodzilla even! But no, they wanted to jump straight to the end, the highest stakes possible in Godzilla’s second god damn film. Logically, nothing they do after this can top it; are we really going from every monster destroying Earth to a fist fight with King Kong?

The MonsterVerse doesn't know what to do with women, including Mothra.

Mothra is a benevolent kaiju; protector of humanity, a source of goodness and beauty. She is the second most popular kaiju monster behind Godzilla. Everyone loves her. King of the Monsters, however, has to be willfully stupid in everything it does, so they build her up throughout the movie, give her some absolutely gorgeous shots to show off how beautiful and awesome she is, then she fights Rodan for a minute and gets bodied by his heat laser, exploding into a cloud of wasted potential that rains down on Godzilla and gives him the determination to kill Ghidorah or something. This series has no idea what to do with female characters. Elizabeth Olsen had fuck-all to do in the first one, Millie Bobby Brown had nothing to do in this one, Vera Farmiga is boring as hell, and the scientist woman with Dr. Serizawa gets an unceremonious (and dumb) death at the hands (jaws) of Ghidorah - which is supposed to make us mad at him but she’s such a boring character it elicited no feeling from me.

Did we forget how to act with our EYES?

I’m not one to complain about “these days” or whine about how “movies used to be so much better” — that’s silly. But one thing that modern movies have apparently forgotten is the art of the reaction shot. You go back and watch Jurassic Park, or Back to the Future, or really most sci-fi/horror/fantasy movies in the previous decades, and they’re full of reaction shots. The camera pushes in on the character’s face, we see their eyes go wide in terror, or their mouth hang open in awe and wonder — it creates a connection between the audience and the character; it makes the unbelievable elements of the film feel real, because We The Audience can see how it’s really affecting the character.

Take for example the scene near the end of Jurassic Park, where Tim and Lex finally get a moment’s reprieve after their harrowing hike across the island. They’re feasting on sweets and food and taking a moment to relax, and be safe. But then, Lex goes silent. Tim looks up at her, the camera cuts to a close-up of her, staring in petrified terror over Tim’s shoulder, the Jell-O on her spoon quivering from her shaking fingers. She’s looking at the shadow of a velociraptor behind her brother, and if we had just seen that shadow come in, it still would have been a great scary moment, but seeing Lex’s look of absolute fear, the moment of anticipation as our minds race, “What is she looking at??” That’s how you make the unbelievable real.

My other favorite monster movie, Tremors, is similarly excellent at catching the actors’ reactions to the terror they face. I even have to praise the Oscar-deserving David Arquette cinematic masterpiece Eight-Legged Freaks for this. Released in 2002, the giant spider CGI has not aged well; the director compensates, however, by taking the time to film characters’ reactions to the spiders. The CGI looks goofy now, but the actors’ fear and panic really sells them as a real threat, and makes it that much more believable. Contrast all of that with these two Godzilla movies, in which the only person emoting in any way is Bryan Cranston and he died in the first 25 minutes. There are shots of characters... looking at the monsters, but never once does anybody actually look scared or in awe at what they’re seeing. Everybody looks bored to tears. There’s no wide-eyed terror, no backing away from a creature; a giant monster battle can’t even elicit an eyebrow raise from these people, and it just makes the entire production look fake and uninteresting. Not once do you feel like the characters are in any real danger, because they don’t react as if they’re witnessing anything more interesting than a 5 Minute Crafts video. It’s not just these movies, either, this is just the trend with movies now. No one reacts to anything, or looks scared, or even like they want to be there. Why should we care about what’s happening if the characters don’t?

Everyone in this movie is a creepy cultist and they’re mad at the only rational person in the film.

As I stated in my review of the first film, I do not like the characterization of Godzilla as a hero for humanity. I would much rather see him treated like a threat, a dangerous animal. The organization Monarch is tasked with studying the Titans, but it feels more like a cult led by Dr. Serizawa. He speaks of Godzilla with a near-religious awe, talks about him as a natural peacekeeper and a method for the earth to “maintain balance”. He never once elaborates on what this means, and believes Godzilla is a benevolent force with no evidence to back that up, after watching him level Honolulu and San Francisco and kill who knows how many people. Vera Farmiga’s character Dr. Emma Russell shares similar views, going so far as to fall in with a Titan-promoting eco-terrorist to unleash all the monsters and return Earth to the “natural order”. It’s the typical “humans are a disease” bullshit every disillusioned fourteen-year-old goes through when they discover atheism and I honestly don’t know why we’re still doing it. It’s boring and doesn’t require any critical thought in the writing. The only sane character in the film is Dr. Mark Russell, Emma’s husband, a former scientist who aids Monarch in order to rescue his daughter from the clutches of his wife’s stupid and uninteresting scheme. Mark and Emma’s son was killed in the San Francisco attack, Mark hates the Titans, and wants the government to just kill them already. He is the only sane person in the film and everyone treats him like an asshole.

In my opinion, a much more compelling move would have been to actually make Serizawa the villain. I imagine his obsession with Godzilla warping him into the “humans are a disease” position; just replace Emma’s spot with Serizawa and you’ve got a really interesting character arc, from cardboard nothing character into a humanity-ending bad guy who wants to see the world returned to the Titans who once ruled it. But no, once again Ken Watanabe is given jack shit to do until he kills himself by detonating a nuke to resurrect his #mancrushmonday Godzilla.

What’s my genre again?

I feel a sense of pity for movies that try so hard to be one genre when they should be another. King of the Monsters should absolutely be a horror movie, but it needs to keep its demographic of children and foreign investors, so they can’t do anything actually interesting. A bunch of giant rampaging monsters get unleashed to destroy humanity and render Earth uninhabitable, under the reign of a three-headed dragon. That’s some scary shit! The implications of their very existence are terrifying, and the movie should focus on the human toll, the uncountable deaths and unimaginable destruction caused by these incredible, uncontrollable beasts — but nah, it’s a action movie so explosions, yeah!! Don’t get me wrong, I love fun action movies where you don’t have to think about the implications as much, but these movies so willfully and gleefully ignore those implications for no good reason other than to suck Godzilla’s dick. The movie ends with Mothra (the only nice Titan) dead, King Ghidorah defeated, and the other Titans bowing to show fealty to Godzilla — and that’s fucking scary! What happens now? Is humanity rid of one world-ending tyrant, only to be replaced with a new one? Who’s to say Godzilla won’t just turn around and tell the other monsters to keep on killing? But no, none of that matters! We cut to credits with “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult playing over news headlines talking about how much good the Titans are doing for the earth; literally just by existing, they seem to be bringing back endangered coral reefs, cutting down on pollution, solving America’s debt crisis, and this all seems entirely antithetical to the message of the original Gojira, a terrifying personification of nuclear destruction. What was once a symbol of Japanese collective mourning and suffering has been rebranded by America as the natural world order; humans should give up our place on the planet, let Godzilla and his cronies take over and put things back the way they were supposed to be. An American-made tool of death and horror is now the ultimate savior of the entire planet. You’re welcome, Japan.