Godzilla: King Of The Monsters IMAX Review - 7 Ups & 4 Downs

3. Some Characters Are Entirely Superfluous

You know that a film has too many characters for it to care about when it very obviously stops caring about them halfway through the movie. The decision with King Of The Monsters to have a human focus is a smart one, because it provides balance and no matter how great it sounds, nobody wants hours of kaiju on kaiju action porn, but taking it too far was an error.

We're introduced to a lot of characters who are simply completely superfluous and seem to have been included as a means to sell more tickets based on talent names. There is largely no reason for Sally Hawkins to be involved at all and anyone who came in hoping to see more of her excellent work will be dismayed by how she's treated. O'Shea Jackson, meanwhile could have been replaced by a cannon firing t-shirt slogans at the screen to the exact same effect.

And as for Charles Dance - while it's great to see him in anything - he's painfully underused here and you'll be left wishing they'd gone for more Tywin Lannister. It's not just a matter of them being not fully fleshed out either: the characters are problematic because they're initially set up as important but then merely fade out. It suggests that greater focus was probably needed in the planning stages.