Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I know a lot of people who have "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" high on their lists of most anticipated films of the year. If you grew up watching the many variations of Godzilla movies that were primarily a man in a suit, stomping on miniature versions of Tokyo, it's easy to understand your attraction to this franchise. These were the original disaster films, that featured large swaths of civilization laid to waste by giant monsters battling one another. Before "Transformers" or the MCU, this was your go to fix for mass destruction.

A few years ago, I had a slight aversion to these types of movies, a hangover of 9/11. The thought of the death that would be involved took most of the joy out of this after a while. Maybe it is true that time heals all wounds because I did not have a negative reaction this time around. In part it may be that the cities are mostly abandoned in anticipation of the arrival of the monsters, but I also think that since there is such a heavy emphasis on the scale of the creatures, everything else looks like toys being crushed, despite the improvements of Computer Generated Images. It still comes across as if we have guys in rubber suits wrestling among the sets.

"King of the Monsters" does not waste time setting up a backstory or building a narrative. It launches right into what passes as a plot with Scientist Emma Russell, played by Vera Farmiga, plowing forward with a tool to communicate with "Titans" in a primitive way using sound. She is estranged from her ex-husband after they lost their son in Godzilla's rampage in San Francisco five years ago. Her daughter Madison however is still in touch with her Dad electronically, and she has some worries about her mother's obsessions. Millie Bobbie Brown from "Stranger Things" plays the young Maddy and to no one's surprise, ends up in the middle of the "clash of the Titans". Kyle Chandler is her Dad, and he is a veteran of these kinds of films having been in Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong" and the J.J. Abrams genetically derived from Spielberg "Super 8".  Ken Watanabe returns as the character he played in 2014's "Godzilla" and so do Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn. Their presence is not essential to the story, it merely adds a link to try and connect the events of the earlier film to these proceedings. New characters abound and are played by familiar faces but their parts have little impact on the main focus of this film...monsters fighting.

The pace of the movie is relentless, and that may sound like a good thing but I'm not sure it is. There is virtually no time to reflect on the implications of each new discovery or every turn in the tide  because the next plot complication arrives almost immediately. Maybe that's why the movie feels so much like a cartoon and is more easily digested, because the human characters are so superfluous to the events happening on screen. The locations around the world keep shifting so quickly that we don't get much sens of our bearings before we are whisked off to another battle on a different continent. The best things that the movie has going for it are it's scope, size and volume. Spinal Tap must have left their equipment in the studio when the sound engineers of this film went to work because this movie plays at eleven, for all Two hours and eleven minutes. There is so much, roaring, screaming and explosive impact from the screen that I would advise you to bring earplugs if you want to avoid tinnitus for a few hours after the film plays. 

Monarch is the name of the secret agency tasked with dealing with these monsters, see there is a link to Godzilla even in the name of our science group. The scientists solve problems in seconds but the military component of the group leaves something to be desired. The tactical units don't know how to secure an area that they are taking control of. The equipment is always damaged in some way as to require a fix that presents a distracting side complication to the fight. And finally, there does not seem to be a very clear chain of command. Basically, a terror group that wants the monsters to remake the planet, is battling with Monarch over control of technology and the monsters themselves. So in addition to the Three headed invasive species of Ghidorah, Monarch has to deal with Tywin Lannister. This plot thread will allow a continuation of the franchise and the restoration of some of the destroyed creatures in future episode. There are also a few seeds of the future Kong vs Godzilla battle that all the fans of these movies are waiting for. There were no crossover characters from "Kong Skull Island" in this film, but the location is referred to a couple of times and it is clear that Kong is one of the titans that will battle for apex status in the future.

So the human characters are not great, they just hold together enough plot to make the giant monster battles serve some purpose. Those big battles look pretty spectacular, but I've got to say, if it were not for human intervention, there would be little reason to think of Godzilla as the king. He gets whooped a couple of times in the movie and it is only "Science" that makes him able to challenge for the throne again. Look it's big and LOUD, and a lot of fun, but it means little and you will not be permanently impacted one way or another. Go have some popcorn, put your favorite candy in the popcorn and then butter it. Wash it down with a large soda, because after all, you are being asked to swallow an awful lot by this movie. 

The Shape of Water

A fable is a story that uses animals or other creatures to teach a moral lesson, so clearly "the Shape of Water" fits that definition. There is an animal at the center of the story, an ethereal "princess" that moves the action forward, and there are morality tales everywhere in the events that take place. Keeping track of the main theme might be the most complicated issue related to this movie, because everything else is a little too spoon fed to us. The shifting of the story to another time period, but one that feels familiar, and in fact has been referred top by many as "Camelot", makes it all seem even more like a fairy tale.

Guillermo del Toro has a mixed record of success as far as I can tell. "Pan Labyrinth" is a well respected and widely loved success. "Pacific Rim" was successful but not as widely admired, and the two "Hellboy" movies worked for fans but they don't seem to have connected with many outside of the comic book world.  This is a film that would probably bring him a wider audience with one significant issue that is going to hold it back, the explicit sexuality. This is a beauty and the beast match which adds more to the story than our imaginations might need. For adult audiences with mature tastes, it is well presented and beautiful. An adolescent audience might find it gross or something to titter over. Younger audiences will probably find it creepy and that is what I mean about it being a bit too direct.

Ultimately the morality lesson that should be the central focus of the story is about the danger of loneliness and isolation. Elisa, the mute woman at the center of the story, has a solidary life with an older man as a friend and a co-worker that she can talk to, but she has no romantic life. The sadness of that is demonstrated almost immediately in the film by letting us in on her morning bathroom routine. Sally Hawkins is an average beauty but one that clearly has a spark of life that needs to be fed. Her mostly mute performance is designed to deliberately emphasize her separation from almost everyone else in the world. Del Toro shows her intimately but it is her face that gives us the greatest cues as to her feelings. Like Elisa, her neighbor Giles, played with fussy perfection by scene stealer Richard Jenkins, is isolted as well. He is an artist living in the post atomic age, he is a homosexual without the ability to create a connection that he so desperately crave. Octavia Spencer is Elisa's work friend Zelda, a black woman working in a white mans world with a husband who largely ignores her. Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Hoffstetler is also mostly on his own but for very different reasons. The character that ultimately connects them all is the amphibian man who is the most lonesome of all. He has been dragged away from his domain, locked in a vault, chained and for the most part mistreated.
Elisa's efforts to reach out to this unusual creature starts to unlock the loneliness surrounding her and the creature. As in most fables, before we can learn the lesson there have to be failures. This is the role that Giles fulfills. Unable to make a romance with a man he is attracted to, and clearly empathetic to the black residents of Baltimore who are also isolated in spite of their population, he capitulates to the needs of his one true friend and makes a gallant and dangerous stand against the oppressive feeling of being an outsider.

So far I have not mentioned the other major character of the film. He clearly qualifies as the villain of the piece, but his connection to the theme is interesting. Head of security at the facility to which he has brought his prize, Strickland has difficulty relating to others as well. He is verbally respectful at first of the two women who work as custodians at the facility, but that is all undermined by his non-verbal indifference to them. In one of the dangling strings of the story, he also has a sexual attraction to verbal silence. Elisa becomes an object of fascination and revulsion to him. The writer/director I think gives too much time to his personal peculiarities without connecting them very well to the morality lessons. Michael Shannon is a fine actor and he easily gets us to dislike him, we really don't need to see his sexual hangups or the awkward family life. Except for how it fetishizes the culture of the early sixties, his whole sub-plot about buying a Cadillac is a trip to no where.

Doug Jones has done these creature characters in a number of other movies and his body language is the main skill he is called upon to use. He manages to convey some emotions quite clearly with his posture. His arm movements are the tender element that allows us to accept Elisa's attraction to him. The make up and special effects prosthetics help his performance but he shows he is an actor with range, even if he does not have the name recognition of Andy Serkis.

As I mentioned, except for the explicitness of the relationship, this movie follows the patterns of a hundred other variations of the Beauty and the Beast motif. It is incredibly lovely to look at but it has a lot of side trips that lead to dead ends. You can get the impression that there is a social critique here but it is truncated at best and certainly heavy handed as it is being delivered . The love story works against every expectation, but you have to be a fairly sober viewer to appreciate it.