Audiences have become so used to spectacle from Hollywood’s big budget blockbusters, that one of the most recurring complaints levelled at Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla was that there wasn’t anywhere near enough Godzilla to satiate their appetites for the giant fire-breathing lizard, with the director opting to play the long game before revealing the title monster in all of his enormous glory.
The slow burn approach would have worked a lot better if Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Ford Brody wasn’t such a bland and one-dimensional lead, with the typically reliable actor struggling with a poorly developed and underwritten character. The story sags noticeably once Bryan Cranston is removed from the proceedings, too, but things pick up again just in time for the third act, and there’s a solid supporting cast to keep it all together, including the always impressive Elizabeth Olsen.
All told, it was a more than solid reintroduction for the iconic kaiju, headlining his first American blockbuster since Roland Emmerich’s widely panned 1998 version. Indeed, trying to put a fresh spin on Godzilla is a tough task when he’d starred in 33 movies prior to the first chapter of Legendary’s MonsterVerse, and while refitting him as just one of many Titans was a familiar approach, it was an effective one nonetheless.
Godzilla vs. Kong‘s first trailer is smashing records all over YouTube as the epic showdown gets ever closer to hitting theaters and HBO Max, and as a result, both Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island have found themselves in the Netflix Top 10 most-watched list over the last few days, with the former in particular having been hovering around the charts for almost an entire week as it draws in tons of subscribers. And in terms of viewership numbers on the world’s most popular streaming service at least, Godzilla appears to be winning this particular clash of the Titans at a canter.
Published: Feb 4, 2021 04:09 pm