Godzilla: King of the Monsters?

First of all, I quite liked the 2014 Godzilla. I understand the frustration with the lack of action, weak characterization and constant cutting away from the big G, but Gareth Edwards is one of the few modern directors who understands both scale and building anticipation slowly, and his Godzilla excelled in both those areas. Unfortunately, Godzilla: King of the Monsters takes the wrong lessons from the first film, giving us more monster on monster action while failing in pretty much every other respect. 

The human characters are both paper thin and have ridiculous motivations (the "villains" want to end the world to save it, I think). Talented actors such as Vera Farmiga and Millie Bobby Brown try hard to make us care about their characters, but it’s impossible to understand what makes them tick. The attempts at humor are also fairly pathetic, which makes the talking scenes between the monster action a chore to sit through. That would be more forgivable if the fight scenes really popped, but unfortunately the filmmakers decided they were making a mid-nineties popcorn movie that needs to hide its CGI, so every single monster rumble takes place in snow, rain, darkness or a combination of two of those. What we do see of the monsters, especially Mothra, is stunning, so it’s a shame the movie rarely shows them clearly. 

I love the idea of Godzilla as a force of nature protecting the Earth from worse threats (while not giving a shit who gets crushed along the way) but unless Warner Bros. really turns things around for Godzilla vs. Kong and focus on a decent script, this MonsterVerse is pretty much dead in the water.