One MonsterVerse Movie Almost Derailed The Entire Franchise (And For Good Reason)

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters brought the MonsterVerse to its critical and especially financial nadir just before that big Godzilla vs. Kong showdown.

What Went Wrong With Godzilla: King of the Monsters?

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is no misunderstood misfire in the history of the MonsterVerse. While no post-2017 entry in the saga has hit the creative heights of either Godzilla or Kong: Skull Island, King of the Monsters is an especially misguided affair. Writer/director Michael Dougherty does pack the script with more monsters, seemingly as a response to all the complaints of Godzilla’s minimal screentime in 2014’s Godzilla. However, he constantly cuts away from any of the carnage involving Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah to an even more plentiful cast of humans than Godzilla’s human characters.

This abundance of flesh-and-blood Earthlings all talk in irritating quips, making any screentime spent with them insufferable. Meanwhile, Ken Watanabe’s Ishiro Serizawa’s storyline eventually dovetails into a self-sacrifice scene that somehow paints nuclear weaponry as “heroic” in a Godzilla movie. It’s a misguided decision exemplifying how little thought has gone into the grating humans populating King of the Monsters. Whenever those big beasties are on-screen, meanwhile, Dougherty frames them through strangely busy framing and jumpy editing.

The crisp, awe-inspiring imagery of the Gareth Edwards Godzilla (which truly made Godzilla and the MUTOs feel towering) is gone. In its place is an excessively crowded visual scheme, drowning Godzilla and his foes in busy snowstorms and buckets of rain. It’s a decision that left viewers uttering “what just happened?” rather than “whoa!” That alone exemplifies why King of the Monsters couldn’t click with audiences. Even other weaker MonsterVerse titles like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire at least made the monster fight scenes visually coherent.

If King of the Monsters couldn’t deliver on giant monsters duking it out, what good was it? That reality led to box office returns that totally should have spelled doom for everything related to the MonsterVerse.

How the MonsterVerse Bounced Back From King of the Monsters

In its domestic box office run, Godzilla: King of the Monsters only grossed $110.5 million, a sharp 45% drop from Godzilla’s domestic haul five years earlier. It’s also, to date, the only MonsterVerse film to gross under $300 million internationally. Normally, outright flopping like this would’ve inspired the MonsterVerse to end before that long-teased Godzilla vs. Kong showdown. However, this franchise got lucky, since Godzilla vs. Kong was already deep into principal photography when King of the Monsters came up short theatrically.

Meanwhile, Godzilla vs. Kong beat out box office expectations in March 2021 thanks to the external circumstances surrounding its release. With New York and Los Angeles finally reopening their theaters in March 2021, Godzilla vs. Kong was the first major blockbuster to open all across North America in over a year. This Adam Wingard directorial effort didn’t register with audiences, then, as a King of the Monsters sequel. It was instead a grand return of big blockbusters to your local multiplex. Between that and Godzilla vs. Kong doing significantly better internationally than its predecessor, the MonsterVerse was back.

The significantly pared-down human cast of titles like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire also suggests that the MonsterVerse took to heart complaints over the ludicrously excessive human cast eating up screentime in King of the Monsters. Even the emphasis on Hollow Earth and its brightly colored, daylight-heavy in the Godzilla vs. Kong movies feels like a shift away from the drably lit backdrops of King of the Monsters. Unforeseen external circumstances gave the MonsterVerse a new lease on life at the box office. However, its most recent installments have shown a tangible commitment to not replicating the failures of the saga’s weakest installments.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is now streaming on HBO Max.

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