Godzilla II Roi des Monstres

Un départ fantastique et une présentation visuellement époustouflante des monstres individuels, gâchés par un travail ennuyeux sur l'intrigue et le mépris de l'intelligence du spectateur. Grâce à Gareth Edwards, la Warner  avait réussi, dans le film précédent, à redémarrer dignement le culte de Godzilla, en reliant habilement les motifs et l'atmosphère du mythe cinématographique japonais avec la exubérance technique des blockbusters hollywoodiens. Et au lieu de faire un effort et de répondre aux attentes du public, ils ont confié les deux films suivants à des créateurs de films d'horreur moyens et sans intérêt. Un budget élevé injecté dans des effets spéciaux numériques de première classe devrait suffire, la cible est stupide et de beaux monstres suffiront. Nous verrons si cette approche change avec la nouvelle PDG. (05/07/2019)

Il serait naïf de fonder des attentes sur un film qui a pour sujet un combat de monstres géants. Mais bon, il faut quand même bien avoir au moins un peu d’espoir ! Mais que tous les personnages ne soient que des caricatures unidimensionnelles reproduisant tous les clichés des films catastrophiques (la fille dans le pétrin, le père héroïque en sauveur, le savant résolu à se sacrifier pour les autres) et récitant de façon robotique les dénominations accrocheuses des monstres de sorte que nous, les spectateurs idiots, sachions comment bien les appeler, c’est tout simplement criminel ! Il en résulte que le méchant, incarné par Charles Dance et pour lequel je me réjouissais le plus, n’a rien à jouer. Et on ne peut pas vraiment dire que les scènes d’action et les effets spéciaux soient désarmants au point de nous faire oublier la nullité du scénario. Il s’agit encore d’un de ces navets franchisés produits sur commande dans le seul but d’assurer la continuité avec le film suivant et sans considération aucune pour le public. (05/09/2019)

In his previous effort, Edwards handled the legacy of the Toho films much more deftly. He stretched the cues effectively and delivered a clear action set-piece with some iconic moments at the end. But this? This sequel has a fantastic, exciting trailer, with a wonderful musical theme “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that will make you swoon. Unfortunately, the film itself is not fantastic, let alone exciting. In every one of the 27 Godzilla movies I've seen so far (not counting Emmerich's crap that has nothing to do with Kaiju), I've had more fun than here, including the worst of them, the infantile Son of Godzilla, which was at least a pleasant guilty-pleasure. This film is just guilty, but without any pleasure. You don't care about characters who have a mouthful of family values, visually it's not great either. The golden-hued color filter is downright ugly and the action is cluttered, with a shaky camera that's often a clump of pixels you don't care about. It has a few moments, a few references to Toho's predecessor, which are nice (the woman is also the catalyst for plot twists, and we can hear about three times the notorious Godzilla arrival motif we know from Japanese Kaiju), but that can't be enough even for the most diehard Toho/Godzilla fans, among whom I count myself. It's a disappointment that I hope won't break the lizard's neck in the future. (31/05/2019)

Dougherty must be the only person on the planet who is approached by the people form Warner Brothers with a huge budget and an unmissable offer “to play games with Godzilla and all his fellow cult monsters in the backyard during their awakening and the end of the world", so he can't think “hmm, it could be from the perspective of people, as Edwards tried but failed to do, or bitter satire in the style of (Shin´s) Japanese Godzilla or a catastrophic B-movie full of ultimate monsters and titanic battles referencing the classics". No, what comes to his mind is “cool, I'll finally be able to shoot an interior conversational movie from the Avengers Helicarrier and satisfy all the scientists who have to say the weird nonsense with a straight face in similar movies, and I'll do it by not making them say that in a few sentences, but it will last tens of minutes and even the nonsense they talk about will be even more stupid than it normally is and I will intersperse it with dull CGI action, where everyone will constantly keep running out of collapsing buildings, and it will be full of such generic shots of falling skyscrapers that even the animators themselves won´t be able to tell whether this scene of a crumbling big city happened in the last Marvel or DC movie". And he did as he said he would. The childish quasi-scientific piffle and solutions meant to restart the civilization of Mother Nature are an integral part of the genre. But only If they form the background/prologue to the battles of the Titans, not if they are the cornerstone. No one gives a shit about monsters anymore. Except Dougherty. And when they just have mercy on the audience here and there and offer what the viewers are looking for, it lacks ideas, cool moments, dynamics and scale. The exception is a few moments during the decent ending, when the film almost becomes what it wanted to be (and should have been) the whole time. McCreary's music, paying one tribute to another, is the film's biggest asset. And yet it is very specific in every respect. At least he understood “what is going on", even if the director didn't. (28/09/2020)

Wow, I didn't enjoy it. Like, so very, very, very much. The other Godzilla shows that it cost a lot of money, and the monster battles are actually pretty good, at least the final one, which cleverly works with scale and alternates spectacular shots of two dueling titans with action with human characters running at their feet. But that's pretty much it. The new Godzilla has about fifteen human characters, but finding a single one among them that was the least bit interesting or likeable was a task beyond me. A few hours after the screening, I actually remember the names of about two of the protagonists. The trouble is that despite all the declamation and certain attempts to conceive Godzilla II a little differently, it is ultimately very much about those human characters, who of course are the ones who, by their dullness, flatness and absolute unwillingness to take themselves even a little bit less seriously (this is a film in which a giant lizard fights an even bigger three-headed dragon, dammit!) they get boring at first, and then just annoying. The grandeur and elegance promised by the trailers isn't there in the end, and while the fights are fun to watch, the rest of it really doesn't work. In fact, as a viewer, I'm not really interested in seeing another film conceived in this way. (30/05/2019)