Can 'Godzilla' Create a New Monsterverse?
by EG
Moviegoers haven't been very interested in monsters lately, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters hopes to change that. Can the legendary lizard distract audiences from superheroes for a few minutes? Read on for details.
In the recent words of the polymath artist and great thinker John Lurie: "Though Godzilla has appeared in 47 different movies, his acting has never improved." Lurie's count may be quite a bit off, but he's on to something. Whether embodied by a man in a rubber suit or a vast team of digital artists, the eponymous radiation-breathing monster can't be counted on to carry the films he stars in. Their success depends on the pacing and execution of action sequences; the sweaty brows and urgent voices of scientists speaking to generals; and the subplots screenwriters must use to fill time before a giant lizard thwacks a skyscraper with his tail.
So even if he could still use an acting coach — and, like a certain superhero god we could name, really needs to go on a diet — the old monster has a grand time in Michael Dougherty's Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Easily the most satisfying of his Hollywood-produced adventures and a respectable cousin to the long string of Japanese ones, the sequel to Gareth Edwards' admirably serious but dullish 2014 film is the first to suggest any promise for what Legendary is calling its "MonsterVerse" — a franchise in which the Japanese kaiju world meshes with that of Hollywood's favorite oversized ape, King Kong.
Here, that impressive legacy of big-screen destruction gets a nostalgic assist from humans known for comfort-food television: Stranger Things' breakout actor Millie Bobby Brown gets more dialogue than Eleven did, and briefly shares the screen with Randy Havens, who played the show's enthusiastic science teacher; Kyle Chandler, as her father, recalls the fiercely virtuous protectiveness of Friday Night Lights' Coach Taylor; and kibitzing in situation rooms, Bradley Whitford hails from The West Wing, that fantasy of presidential intelligence whose stock shot up at approximately 2:30 a.m. Eastern time on Nov. 9, 2016.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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