With the third film in the ‘MonsterVerse’ series, we’re back with Godzilla.

The film opens in 2014, the climax of the first film with Godzilla fighting his monster-sized foes. But the focus is on the ground with the humans, one family in particular, desperately searching for their son, lost amidst the wreckage.

Fast forward 5 years… the mother of that family, Dr Emma Russell, played by Vera Farmiga, is remembering that awful day she lost her son, Andrew. Russell is a paleobiologist, who works for Monarch.

With her is her daughter, Madison, played by Millie Bobby Brown.

Alone in the kitchen, she’s replying to an email from her father, Mark, an anthrozoologist, played by Kyle Chandler.

In her reply, Madison starts to mention that she’s worried about her mother when Emma walks in; Madison quickly shuts the laptop for her parents are separated and she’s not sure how her mum would react.

Emma and Madison are in China, at one of Monarch’s sites, where a giant larva moth has been found and is being studied.

Named ‘Titanus Mosura’, or Mothra, the moth hatches only to panic in its containment unit and reacts angrily, putting the scientists in harm’s way.

Not wanting Mothra terminated, Emma successfully uses a device called the ORCA, the only one of its kind, to calm the creature.

The device is one she and Mark had devised years ago, mainly to communicate with whales. The couple came to Monarch’s attention when the communication device was able to transmit frequencies the monsters, or titans as they’re now called, could hear. That raised the potential of humans being able to communicate with the titans in a way to allow them to co-exist.

But after Andrew’s death, Emma and Mark destroyed the ORCA prototype. After they separated, Emma, without Mark’s knowledge, worked on rebuilding the device.

As Mothra becomes calm, Madison reaches out and touches her.

The gentle moment is interrupted by gunfire. An armed group charges in, led by Alan Jonah, played by Charles Dance, a former British army colonel turned eco-terrorist. He and his people kidnap Emma and Madison, and take the ORCA.

Cut to a US Senate hearing, where Dr Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), and his assistant, Dr Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), along with Sam Coleman, played by Thomas Middleditch, a Monarch director, are being questioned as to whether the time has come, given the increased sightings of more titans, for Monarch to be under US military jurisdiction.

But the meeting is cut short when Serizawa and Graham abruptly leave, having received news of the attack and abduction.

They find Mark, who’s out in the wild studying wolves, and inform him of his family’s fate, asking him to join them to find Emma, Madison and the ORCA. Still bitter at his son’s loss, for which he blames Godzilla, Mark agrees, but only for Madison’s sake.

We meet more of the Monarch team – Dr Rick Stanton, played by Bradley Whitford, a crypto-sonographer, and Dr Ilene Chen, played by Ziyi Zhang, one of Monarch’s key researchers. The military side of Monarch is led by Colonel Diane Foster, played by Aisha Hinds.

We follow Mark and the Monarch team as they come face-to-face with Godzilla, track Emma and Madison, get wrong-footed, witness the birth of more titans, race to stop the massive destruction being unleashed and realise, once and for all, that Godzilla is actually a protector of Earth.

The film takes us to various parts of the world – from deep in the ocean to Antarctica to Mexico to the skies in the form of an impressive flying machine, the Argo.

Whereas the critics faulted the 2014 film for ‘too much human focus, not enough monster action’, this time their criticism was, ‘too little human focus, too much monster action’. There’s no pleasing some people.

Granted, there are some big names here – Vera Farmiga, Charles Dance, Kyle Chandler, Bradley Whitford – but this is, first and foremost, a monster movie. And Godzilla fans are spoilt for choice.

Not only do we have Godzilla in all his glory…

We have the beautiful Mothra…

The prehistoric-looking Rodan…

And the ultimate big-bad, Ghidorah…

Before we’ve hit the halfway point in the film, we have a no-holds-barred, spectacular fight between Godzilla and Ghidorah. Not expecting that at all, I heard an audible intake of breath from Gordon, sat next to me; it took him some seconds to start breathing again!

There have been criticisms about the lack of clear shots of the monsters either because of the way the cinematographer frames the shots or because there’s too much environmental atmospherics. Personally, I felt all the environmental stuff – lightning storms, waterfalls, torrential rain, volcanic eruption – added to the awesomeness and majesty of the monsters.

The human story was pretty straightforward and easy to follow, though there were a couple of questionable moments trying to work out the logic behind one of the character’s motivations.

As always, Vera Farmiga gives a nuanced performance, torn between being a mother wanting to protect her surviving child and a scientist wanting to do, what she believes to be, the right thing.

I didn’t find Kyle Chandler’s character that convincing; he’s too angry most of the time and always seemed to have the right answer no matter the situation.

Millie Bobby Brown does a good job as a child caught between her parents, wanting to be with both but having to choose one. When she eventually has a change of heart, it happens quite subtly, and she carries it off well.

Of the other characters, I quite liked Aisha Hinds’ colonel – a no-nonsense officer, Foster has the respect of her people and leads by example. As in the 2014 film, the military is portrayed as people and not mindless robotic-types.

And I enjoyed seeing Ziyi Zhang in an English-speaking role.

Again, my favourite human character is Dr Serizawa. Ken Watanabe’s portrayal here is tinged with sadness and desperation; I admit to shedding a tear.

I have to make a special mention of the Argo. I loved watching it in action in much the same way I love watching spaceships like the USS Enterprise in ‘Star Trek’; they’re almost a character in their own right.

When watching a film which features giant monsters, it goes without saying that we’re suspending our disbelief. That stretches to the Argo too. I’m no scientist or engineer, but something that size surely has no business flying the way it does. But there’s no doubting the majesty and sheer spectacle of the Argo, especially in its aerial fight scene with Rodan. I’m hoping it’ll feature in a future ‘MonsterVerse’ film.

At the end of the day, this is a kaiju movie and it is chockful of giant kaiju goodness! The actions scenes are stupendous, especially on the big screen. There are times the camera has to pan right out so we can get an idea of the scale of these creatures. When we see them from the human point-of-view, from down on the ground, they’re even more terrifying.

And the music! The composer, Bear McCreary, has woven music and themes from the Japanese Toho films, namely Mothra’s Song and Godzilla’s theme, in with his own compositions.

Considering how many Godzilla films there have been, it’s interesting that none have ever used Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Godzilla’, recorded in 1977. Here, Serj Tankian (who I’d never heard of before this film) covers that classic, which has been adapted to bring the sound right up to date.

This film made me gasp, it left me wide-eyed, it even made me cry a little. It’s one I enjoyed the first time I watched it, and the second. And it’s one I’ll happily watch again.

‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ alternative poster

[All images from ‘Gojipedia’]

Film Review - 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters'