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

4. It's A Great Escalation

A sequel has to do several things that King Of The Monsters absolutely achieves. First, it has to take everything that worked in the first movie and dial it up, while also filling in some of the gaps that its predecessor maybe fell down into. The further use of Godzilla (at least in the second half) absolutely addresses both of those points.

More importantly, the stakes must be pushed on and everything has to be escalated. If an original movie sits at 10 on the intensity scale, its follow-up has to go to eleven. It's just how audience expectation works. For us, implicitly, a sequel means bigger, more expensive and more threatening. If you don't think your brain works like that, you're kidding yourself.

In terms of pure escalation, KIng Of The Monsters is a great sequel. It takes absolutely no prisoners and threatens to assault your senses for huge chunks of its run-time and it somehow manages to do it without obfuscating anything that you'd want to see. Seeing it in IMAX undoubtedly helps sell that too.