Director: Michael Dougherty
Writers: Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields
Stars: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown
2 Hour, 12 Minutes
Synopsis
We start out in 2014. San Francisco lays in ruins. The family is looking for Andrew as Godzilla walks by, narrowly missing stepping on them. Son Andrew was never found. This basically continues the 2014 Godzilla movie.
Dr. Emma Russell and Daughter Madison are at Monarch Outpost 61, where they are studying a giant egg. It had been dormant for years, but suddenly started giving off radiation. The egg hatches… it’s a giant caterpillar. The containment force field fails, and the monster attacks the armed guards. Dr. Russell goes out and opens up a device that plays a frequency that pacifies it. They name it Mothra. It lets Madison touch it.
Then the bad guys, led by Tywin Lannister/Charles Dance/Jonah, storm the place, killing many of the scientists. They take over the base.
There’s a presentation given by Monarch to the government why they are qualified to find and destroy the radioactive monsters. There areat least 17 of these monsters, Titans, known now, and some are believed to be benevolent. The Monarch guys get called to leave, and they go to Colorado to pick up Mark Russell. The evil Alan Jonah wants to capture the communications device, called the Orca, and Mark helped build it. They take him to their undersea base.
Jonah, Dr. Russell, and Madison land on Antarctica, where they take over another base. They’re digging up Monster Zero. Dr. Russell immediately starts up the drilling machines to release the monster.
Mark hears an alarm. Godzilla is attacking observation drones. They open the shields to show the big guy that they’re harmless. He’s off his normal hunting route, and Mark thinks he may be after the Orca. Godzilla’s path takes him to Antarctica. They know there’s a rival Alpha down there. Godzilla goes into an underground tunnel and loses his pursuers.
What seems like two minutes later, the good guys are storming the Antarctica base, but of course, it’s too late. Emma’s with Jonah, and Mark wants her too. Madison has to decide, and she chooses her mother. Emma hits the detonator, blowing up all the ice around the big monster. It’s free now. Everyone runs for their helicopters, it’s time to get out of there, since the entire base is exploding as the monster rises. A giant, three-headed dragon, King Gidorah, rises from the cavern. It attacks the helicopter, and it looks like they’re all doomed until something distracts the monster. It’s Godzilla! They fight. Mark is knocked out.
Mark wakes up in the hospital. Why is Emma releasing all the monsters? She calls them and explains. She’s saving the world. She wants to reduce humanity using Earth’s original and rightful rulers. They are here to protect the Earth, and the humans are an infection. The monsters will restore balance.
Meanwhile, in Isla Del Mara, Jonah’s group releases still another monster out of a holding facility, this one is Rodan, a fire-breathing bird creature with lava wings. All the monsters start approaching the same area. Rodan fights Monster Zero. The heroes are recalled; the military have been developing an Oxygen-destroyer missile that they want to try on the monsters. Every time one of the monsters come after the heroes’ plane, Godzilla shows up to attack. He tears off one of the heads from King Gidorah.
The missile kills everything for a two-mile radius except Monster Zero; Godzilla is killed. Gidorah’s head re-grows. Meanwhile, even more monsters are awakening. Emma says she’s not responsible, it must be King Ghidora/Monster Zero is doing it. He’s calling all the monsters to him. The giant caterpillar comes out of his cocoon, and Mothra is now a giant moth.
There’s a cave painting that explains that King Gidorah is not from Earth, he fell from the stars in ancient times. He’s an alien monster, which is why the oxygen missile didn’t work. The only monster that has a chance to bet Monster Zero is Godzilla, and he’s dead. Mothra calls, and Godzilla answers; he’s not dead.
The new plan is to use nuclear missiles to reinvigorate Godzilla. They find an undersea temple with paintings of all the Old Gods, which happen to match all the monsters. It’s Godzilla’s home, where he goes to heal and evolve. Dr. Serizawa takes a mini-sub to feed Godzilla a nuke in his own lair. It has a two-minute timer, although there’s no reason whatsoever they couldn’t have used. Longer one to let Serizawa at least try to get away. Godzilla is healed, repaired, and fully charged.
Madison leaves the bunker and heads out to do something on her own. She hooks the Orca machine into the loudspeakers at Fenway Park; she calls the monsters there, away from the King. Emma leaves Jonah to rescue her. King Ghidora blows away Fenway Park, and Madison barely runs away in time.
Just as he’s ready to blast Madison, Godzilla intervenes, flanked by hundreds of jet fighters to back him up. Except Godzilla’s now too powerful; he’s about to explode like an atom bomb. Ghidora bites the power lines and we see he can recharge as well.
Mothra kills Rodan, or maybe just wins the fight. Ghidora shoots Mothra, who explodes into dust that falls on Godzilla. Emma powers up the Orca and draws Ghidora away from Godzilla until it catches up with her and shoots her with its electro beams.As she crawls from the wreckage, the three-headed monster see the new and improved, super-glowing nuclear-lava-monster Godzilla that melts buildings just from being too close to him. He kills Ghidora and swallows the third and main head.
The other monsters finally show up and literally bow down before Godzilla, he’s the new King of the Monsters.
After credit scene: Jonah acquires one of Ghidorah’s heads.
Commentary
This looks good, and there are lots of monster battles. My twelve-year-old self would have been blown away by this film. None of the monsters really have any backstory here, but they all look really cool. It’s supposed to be the present day, but all the technology is way ahead of ours; they have a helicarrier and some really high-tech secret bases. I’m not sure why they couldn’t go for modern-day realism instead. If they want to make it a sci-fi movie, then at least make that necessary to the plot.
It’s a long movie, but the pacing is good. It moves fast from one thing to another. The science is just horrible, there were half a dozen times when I said, “that’s not how that works,” but the film didn’t care about that. Still, the monsters themselves are neat. It’s kind of a super-large-scale Jurassic park where all the dinosaurs shoot fire and don’t even care about the humans.
Realistically, none of this makes any scientific sense, but they try so hard to explain it all. The talking parts get a little boring and they really don’t help; cause “that’s not how that works!” They should have just let the monsters come out of the ground and fight without all the made-up garbage.