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

5. The Monsters Have Personalities

The human cast can only go so far and this franchise is called the Monsterverse rather than the Humans Escape The Monsterverse-Verse, so any of the films released under this banner have an obligation to make sure they develop the monster characters properly.

2014's Godzilla captured that special Jaws magic of keeping the big monster out of sight as much as possible and letting the audience's imaginations do the heavy lifting, but it's different here. Here, we don't need an origin and Godzilla ends up with more of a personality - aided a fair bit by the extensive work into making him emote a little more (facial expressions go a long way). He makes you feel for him and cheer him, which is key when he's ostensibly the only hero who matters.

As well as the titular star, we also get lots of Ghidorah as the villain of the piece and there's definitely personality there too, which helps hide the fact that it's a bit of a goofy ask of the audience to accept a creature of that nature. That's actually the key to us whooping in celebration of Mothra and Rodan and the other kaiju rather than just seeing them as soulless beasts.

We also get some key relationships between kaiju, which is crucial to adding another level of complexity and personality. And while being invited to think one of the kaiju is a bit sexy (I kid you not, this is clearly a conscious agenda) is weird, it genuinely does help build up your appreciation of each of the monsters. That's the best foundation possible for pushing this shared universe even further.