Godzilla (2014) - MONARCH: Legacy of Monstser - RECAP

This post is a mix of things, first I got curious about all three movies that link to MONARCH TV series

• Kong: Skull Island
• Godzilla (2014)
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters

By the time I made my first post about this new Monsterverse TV series I had only watch the latest Godzilla movie, Godzilla: King of the Monsters and it was very good in my opinion for the time, when I say for the time I mean there was not much interest on Godzilla and I would say it was one of the only movies when Godzilla and other monsters/titans show full body, clear image, during daylight because let me tell you this is the love and hate relationship with this movie, IT FUCKING SUX when it comes to showing Godzilla and the two other monsters in it that no body knew what the hell they were, my hope is that MONARCH make things right bringing a good story, few side stories from secondary characters and clear full body scenes from the monsters with details about from where the hell they come from and what type or category of monsters they are.

I could not post images of some of the scenes because they were dark as hell, even with my vr setup I had a hard time in a few occasions to identify the monsters and tell what was going on, I didn't watch the movie because I'm a Godzilla fan, well I think I'm becoming one now; mainly watch this movie and the others because MONARCH is suppose to tie them up all together and that to me is interesting.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/
RottenTomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godzilla_2014
Platform: Amazon

It's interesting to see Tomatometer higher than the audience score, usually is the other way since the Tomatometer reviews are more harsh and professional meaning they might find and criticize a few things regular viewers like me wont, to me it was a 6.5/10, so I agree with a 66% or acceptance, problem with audience score is that there is always someone who shits on the score giving a 1/10 to that screw everything up for the average ratio, between 6 and 7 is fine but no more than that.

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It feels very refreshing to watch this movie after watching a few episodes of MONARCH since this are the very same images and this is episode two, when they try to use a bomb to lure in Godzilla, at first the deal was to bring him close to the shore to study him, proof it exist but the ARMY decided to destroy it, detonating the bomb when it was close enough, after all they were funding MONARCH but no body expected Godzilla would survive the explosion absorbing all radiation so making the TV Series match exact scenes of the different movies is very cool and what everyone was expecting I think.

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The movie starts with Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham, at first I confuse Ishiro with Hiroshi from the TV series but they are not the same person, Ishiro was way before Hiroshi although the MONARCH founders do not appear on this movie, Dr. Keiko and Bill Randa, see where I'm going with this post, I'll be making reference to both the TV Series and the Movie like telling you watch the movies before the TV series.

Ishiro and Vivienne got a call from something they have found on a mine, inside a cave there was what look like a cocoon, there were two of them; but one of them was recently open and what ever came out of it left a huge hole on the side of mountain and a long trace, look like it either took off or got into the ocean, all this inside a way bigger skeleton probably the thing that put them there, Dr. Ishiro confirm it has to be a titan since there was a trace of radiation, second cocoon was inactive so they took it and put it a warehouse with other nuclear waste, stupid idea.

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Next there was the couple of Joe Brody and his wife Sandra Brody who had kid name Ford, latter on Ford turns into a bad ass, Joe and Sandra work at a nuclear plant in Japan, sensors at the plant has detected some signal, they think its an earthquake but its not, this signal is important to the story because is what so far everyone recognize as the first indication that Godzilla might show up, what they call the signal of G day.

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The Brody's story is one of the cool things about the movie, they give it proper continuation and closure, when Joe detected this signal it was too late, the titan was already getting closer and the target was the nuclear plant, it was after the reactor, Sandra was a technician at the plant and in this case she was in charge to check there was no breach, again too late, worst part is that Joe had to close the door on her to avoid all that radiation to come up and watch her die, same time young Ford had to watch the nuclear plant collapse very close from school.

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Ford latter on gets into the army, went on his first tour, had a wife and a kid, I feel Elizabeth Olsen aka Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlett Witch, mf hottest women on the MCU, could had a better part on this movie, she is a great actress in my opinion, she was Ford's wife.

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After the accident in Japan where Joe's wife died he got obsess with the what and why it happen, they were taken out of Japan with the excuse that it was not safe because of the radiation, several times got arrested for coming back and Ford had to take care of him but he agree to go back one last time to help his father finish this, no surprise to Joe there was no radiation, it was all a lie, he also found old 3.5 inch disks, those things are so fragile; kept saying in there was all his data, come on by the time he came back and the bad environment those disks were trash.

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For years after the attack the titan stay in a cocoon stage, so probably when it escape the island it didn't had wings that's why it left a trace on the ground and after it absorb all the radiation at the plant started his evolution.

Dr. Ishiro had a program where they were studding the cocoon, the reason MONARCH exist is not to kill this monsters but to study them because there is way more to know about them, specially where they come from, Joe and Ford got arrested at the base and while all this happen the monster got out of the cocoon and escapes but Joe got hit by a crane in the process and latter on dies when he was taken out of the island.

Here is when things start to get salty, fucking monsters are always on a very dark scenario, it was just a few times that I could get a proper screenshot of the monsters.

Military gets involve when the monster at Japan got out so they were tracking it down, they were not the only ones, Godzilla was also tracking down this monster so they met each other at sea where Ishiro insisted the Marine to leave Godzilla alone and let them fight, in the process cities would be destroy.

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In fact the bat-type monster attack Hawaii in the process of meeting with the female monster of the same specie, it was a mess all scenes were so dark, to give you an example this were probably the only clear shots from the monsters I could get from this fight scene, most of the fight scene become irrelevant as you cant see shit but then there were few moments specially from Godzilla that compensate things so imagine the roller coaster of WTF WHY SO DARK, CANT SEE SHIT!! and then HELL YEAH GODZILLA IS A BEAST!!!

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Remember how I mention it was stupid to put the second cocoon next to nuclear waste? fact it ate all the fucking nuclear waste absorbing radiation and getting huge stupid size to the moment the make bat monster was fully grown, this second monster escapes from the warehouse inside a mountain in Las Vegas to now meet with the male, destination San Francisco.

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This are the scenes that I mention that compensate, form the monsters, it look like it was on porpuse, like it was a budget thing, first was the attack on Hawaii that was dark as fuck, couldn't see a thing on top was at night, then when they arrive San Francisco everything was grey including the bay area like it was about to rain, I get it that when they started to move inside the city there was a lot of dust in the air from all the buildings that were getting destroy so is the part of the movie that compensate all the other dark scenes, although it is about to get WORST.

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This is another killer shot, army send out soldiers to disarm a bomb that they were going to use against the monsters but its now on the city after the male bat got it, that's the scene where it dive into the ocean grabbing the bomb from one of the army ship, soldiers jump from a plane with red flares, clouds of dust form staying below the sky so there was a air gap and all the red lines falling from the sky it was sick, another point for the movie, its going to fucking need it.

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WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL, this is when you end the movie so pissed off at it, the entire fight scene at San Francisco was so dark, sometimes gray some times just dark but in any case you could not fully seem them fight, obviously Godzilla kills both of the other monsters but as you can see on the image above before he killed the female Godzilla grab her by the head and shoot radioactive blue flames inside it melting the rest of the monster ripping its head off, bad ass ten seconds but over all very very very crappy fight scenes in my opinion.

If I had to split the movie into two parts, I could say that 50% of the movie was very cool with the clear monster shots, the soldiers falling from the sky, Joe quest to find out what really happen at the nuclear plant was very interesting, if you have watch MONARCH you would notice that it does makes sense with the Movies, there is continuation so for me it was not that bad because this movie was informative and entertaining but if MONARCH didn't exist and I only watch it or say went to the movies I would end thinking that all Godzilla movie sux and its piece of shit, it is not but it would be my first reaction probably after half of the movie was dark.