Warner Bros, out now

 

When crypto-zoologist Emma Russell and her daughter are kidnapped by an eco-warrior, estranged husband Mark must team up with Monarch to rescue his family in a world being reclaimed by mighty Titans.

There’s a lot going on in Michael Dougherty’s (Trick ‘r Treat, Krampus) entry in the ongoing Warner Brothers Titanverse series (after 2014’s Godzilla and 2017’s Kong: Skull Island). It’s just a shame that it’s such a noisy mess with very little to say and is saddled with a painfully cliched script.

The USP of this entry is that in addition to eponymous titan Godzilla we get new iterations of Toho classics Mothra (giant moth, obviously), Rodan (flying lizard) and King Ghidorah (three-headed dragon), and to their credit the CGI is excellent and they all look like they exist in the same universe. But gone is the build-up or nuance of Gareth Edwards’ entry. There’s no suspense or real sense of scale – they just appear in all their respective glories, launching at one another in a series of monster tag teams, and there’s only so many times you can watch two flappy creatures blasting one another with radioactive rays. What we hadn’t previously realised is that whenever Godzilla is flagging he just needs to be charged up like a mobile phone and is soon able to offer 4G again.

The humans fare even worse, thanks to the awful, under-nourished script that spouts the sort of inane nonsense that absolutely nobody says nowadays. Returning characters (Ken Watanabe as Dr Serizawa and Sally Hawkins’ Dr Graham) look embarrassed to be here, the latter having had a far more successful relationship with an underwater beast in The Shape of Water. New characters played by Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring), Kyle Chandler (Super 8) and Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) really have little more to do than look perplexed and angry, and can we please stop having estranged families being the norm in these films.

You definitely need to watch this on the largest screen you can even for the Home Entertainment release. There’s a wealth of extra material provided, including a director commentary (with contributions from Zach Shields and O’Shea Jackson) as well as a lot of short featurettes on the making of the film. The interview with Millie Bobby Brown is interesting, and the Monsters are Real piece does move away from purely looking at the movie creation, while the other pieces complement the commentary (rather than purely repeating the same anecdotes as is too often the case).

Verdict: Oh. My. Godzilla! The 35th Godzilla film suggests that even though modern CGI beats men in rubber suits, there’s nothing new to say about this tired old atomic lizard. Even some eyebrow-raising additions to his mythology and a coda setting up future instalments just can’t get the heart racing. Best bit is the inclusion of Akira Ifukube’s theme from the 1954. I’m not holding my breath for Godzilla vs Kong. 6/10

Nick Joy and Paul Simpson [home entertainment sections]