Godzilla MonsterVerse Movies: Memories from Cinema and Sofa [Editorial]

For a very long time, I was thinking if I should take up discussion on the MonsterVerse movies. Obviously, these are American productions, so I did not want to trash my blog with separate reviews of these, even though they are technically part of the Godzilla franchise. For a moment, I considered posting my thoughts on Letterboxd, but I think the best solution is to talk about the films and my memories of them in the form of a concise editorial.
     So here we are. The MonsterVerse movies. The frenzy that started back in 2014 with the release of Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla. However, the slow built-up for the film started already before the premiere of Godzilla: Final Wars. That is to say, the Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) director, the late Yoshimitsu Banno, secured the rights from Toho to make a Godzilla short film using 3D technology. Banno started assembling the creative team for the project in the United States, and the idea evolved into making a 3D feature. Ultimately, Legendary Studios teamed up with Banno, and after securing a licence from Toho, they geared up for an official Godzilla live-action remake.

     Being a Godzilla fan in the 2010s, I relentlessly followed the news about the upcoming movie. I still remember the excitement when I saw a 2012 conceptual teaser video, then a leaked 2014 teaser trailer with J. Robert Oppenheimer’s voiceover and a promo photo of Gareth Edwards and Akira Takadara (the actor had a cameo in the film, which unfortunately ended up on the cutting room floor).
     Come May 2014 and I was ready for action. After a whole day at a university, I went to cinema with a colleague who was also a Godzilla enthusiast. We got tickets for late afternoon screening and barely any people were in the audience. When the lights went dark and the opening credits by Kyle Cooper rolled in, I knew I was in for a special viewing experience.

     Needless to say, I greatly enjoyed the film. Nowadays, moviegoers complain that the film does not have enough of Godzilla in it and the monster fights are scarce, but I believe Edwards’ restrained approach compensated for that lack. Godzilla (2014) is more about Kaiju ambience than the King himself. It is a film about the looming, larger-than-life danger that is beyond human comprehension. To my mind, this is the first American monster movie that actually strived to show the psychological side of dealing with monster rumble in the same vein as Spielberg dealt with fear of the unknown in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
     When the movie ended, I was the only guy at a movie theatre that was clapping. To date, I remember that some parents with children looked at me like some sort of weirdo. My colleague, on the other hand, had teary eyes because he was so moved by the final shot of Godzilla roaring and disappearing in the sea depths. I said to him, “Now, I have to wait four years for a sequel!”

     Little did I know I had to wait five years instead of four. Godzilla: King of the Monsters was plagued by production delays. Even though Gareth Edwards was slated to return as a director, he was eventually replaced by Michael Dougherty who brought the whole project home. In the meantime, I was dealing with sickness on my own, so I was unable to see Kong: Skull Island (2017) on the big screen, which (in fact) is the film that ushered in the MonsterVerse concept; that is, giant monsters having crossovers and fighting each other. For Hollywood, it sounded like a novelty in view of Marvel movies, but Toho started doing this as early as the 1960s.
     I eventually caught a copy of Skull Island on DVD and greatly enjoyed it, although I’m not a massive King Kong fan. The action and bright colours were definitely a stand-out, but some of the sequences involving the military felt dragged out to me.

     By 2018, I managed to get better, so I was ready for the premiere of King of the Monsters in June 2019. To be honest, this movie was everything I wanted it to be. The action set pieces and the monster fights were outstanding, in my opinion. In addition, some of the sequences were just really beautiful like the release of King Ghidorah from his ice imprisonment, the airplane getaway from Rodan, or Mothra’s transformation. The last moment in particular made me cry at the cinema because it was so well done. The rearrangement of Yuji Koseki’s original theme gave me incredible chills.
     All the more, it is hard for me to comprehend the hate this film gets. Evidently, it had a lot of human characters, human drama, and cheesy one-liners, but on the whole it was light-hearted fun. The creative team knew what kind of film they wanted to make, and they delivered on that front. Still, it does not change the fact that the film basically failed at the box office, barely recouping its box-office and marketing costs.

     It comes as no surprise that Legendary took to heart the complaints of cinemagoers and, after many delays, they re-edited the living crap out of Godzilla vs. Kong before releasing it worldwide in Spring 2021. Back then, my country was still dealing with the pandemic, so I was unable to see it in the cinema, but I watched the film on streaming, and bought a disc later on.
     Well, Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong certainly has a briskier pace than King of the Monsters and it is definitely more colourful. Basically, it is a movie in which a giant lizard and an ape go boom boom, so I can’t complain. However, in terms of overall tone, it stands out from the previous MonsterVerse entries. In fact, I believe it can be said that each MonsterVerse Godzilla flick is actually a love letter to Toho’s classic glory days of the franchise. Godzilla (2014) pays homage to the Heisei era by reusing the theme of an old warrior showing up for one more battle, King of the Monsters to the Showa era with the multiple monster/people shenagings, and Godzilla vs. Kong to the Millennium era with its neon aesthetics and bombastic inclusion of Mechagodzilla.

     All things considered, I like MonsterVerse movies for what they are, but it is nice to live in the fourth era of the Big G’s renaissance. The question remains: How long will it last? Legendary already develops the fourth film and a TV series, but Toho also works on their 70th anniversary film Godzilla Zero (2024), and they also churn out remakes of other popular properties: Shin Ultraman (2022), Shin Kamen Rider (2023), etc. It goes without saying that sooner or later Toho will reintroduce the King yet again for a new generation of cinemagoers.

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