This super-sized creature feature with a pea for a brain stomps into cinemas intent on ruling the box office by squashing the audience into submission.
A sequel to 2014’s visually gorgeous but dramatically sterile Hollywood reboot of Japan’s most iconic export, this is a screaming CGI assault on storytelling as well as the senses.
As giant reptiles threaten all human life, it’s up to Godzilla to restore order and balance to the planet, aided by a plucky band of scientists and soldiers armed with nothing but hi-tech bunkers, battleships and fighter jets.
Neither Aaron Taylor-Johnson or Elizabeth Olsen return, so humanity’s survival rests on the ability of B-list middle-aged leading man Kyle Chandler to deliver pitifully poor dialogue with the maximum dignity a fine actor can muster knowing his agent has sold him a ginormous pup.
As Dr Mark Russell, he’s determined to rescue his teenage daughter and ex wife, played by Millie Bobby Brown and Vera Farmiga respectively, from a host of ancient monsters that are battling it out for supremacy.
Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe reprise their roles as a pair of anxious and awe-filled scientists who stand around and throw scraps of info to the audience.
While this delivers on its promise of epic monster action, this is an adventure which manages to make a staggeringly dull spectacle of someone scrabbling through an ancient lost city being consumed by lava to defibrillate a giant monster with a nuclear warhead.
Plus, the script suggests we live in a world where massively powerful secretive global corporations are a force for good, while eco warriors are evil, and nuclear weapons have health-giving properties.
Any film with the smallest degree of self-awareness or irony could have a lot of fun with these topsy-turvy concepts, but not this one.
While the beasts have every excuse to be lumbering, incoherent and boring, this expensively assembled wannabe blockbuster has none whatsoever.
Cert 12A
Running time 131mins
