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SYFY WIRE Godzilla

Breaking down the trailer for Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, which should win every Oscar

By Daniel Dockery
godzilla

It's here, kaiju fans. The trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters dropped today, and if you're anything like me, you couldn't help but feel a little anxious about it. The last Godzilla-centric film in the Legendary "Monsterverse" was four years ago (Godzilla made a cameo as a cave painting and a roar in the post-credits scene of Kong: Skull Island, but that doesn't count). In modern times, considering that a new Marvel film comes out roughly every 10 minutes, 2014 is basically the medieval age.

So this had four years of hype to live up to, and MAN, DID IT NOT DISAPPOINT. I know that writing things in capital letters makes it seem like I'm shouting at you, but I actually intend it to feel that way. If you react to the return of Godzilla with anything less than shouting, applause, and numerous rounds of shots dedicated to the Big G, you're probably King Ghidorah.

But let's dive into the trailer. First off, we see Millie Bobby Brown, most notable for playing the character Eleven in Stranger Things. She looks fairly perturbed, which is expected, considering that the earth is full of skyscraper-sized laser beasts.

Next we have Vera Farmiga talking about how humanity is an "infection," and I could listen to her talk about how humans are a plague on the earth forever. If you watched Vera Farmiga in Bates Motel, you know that she can make any piece of dialogue work at any time. She could read a Randy Savage wrestling promo from 1987, and it would move me to tears.

vera farmiga


She starts talking about the "titans," which have "for thousands of years... been hiding around the world." Not really sure why King Ghidorah, who in older Godzilla films seems to have been loaned from extraterrestrial warlord to extraterrestrial warlord whenever someone wanted to destroy a planet, would need to hide. He's certainly never "hidden" before, as his M.O. is coming cackling out of the sky to beat the sh&t out of Godzilla, but maybe he's shy. Maybe he's self-conscious about one of his heads being smaller than another.

king ghidorah


Anyway, we see King Ghidorah trapped in ice while Vera says that "unless all the titans are found, our planet will perish, and so will we." So it's a "gotta catch 'em all" scenario, huh?

Oh, Vera. Count. Me. IN.

We then see Brown's character interacting with the Mothra larvae, who look way more shiny than they did in the '60s Godzilla films (where they looked like something that you'd want to sweep off your back deck while you screamed at it).

mothra larvae

And finally, we get Godzilla, who rises out of the water and shoots his atomic breath into the sky. I assume he means for this to be kind of like how you say "I'm here!" whenever you walk into a party. Just gotta let everybody know that the King has arrived and that there better be some appetizers.

From there, the slow pace of the trailer picks up and we see Mothra's wings unfurling...

mothra

...a lot of explosions, including Rodan looking like he's bursting from a volcano (this just became my new desktop background, by the way)...

rodan

...Kyle Chandler's character telling Vera Farmiga's character that she's "out of your goddamn mind," which isn't very nice, but considering Vera Farmiga's performance in things like, again, Bates Motel, it's easy to see why someone would want to cast her as a wonderful, insane demi-goddess.

We get a lot of shots of the monsters' powers (Rodan's winds and King Ghidorah's trademark yellow lightning), along with a lot of people running and looking pensive and screaming, which is pretty typical end-of-the-world action movie stuff.

ghidorah laser

And then Charles Dance says, "Long like the King," and that would be a heinously corny line if it was said by 99 percent of the actors in the world, but Dance turns it into music.

And finally we get a quick montage followed by Godzilla roaring. Oh my, did you shiver during that, too? I did. I never went to prom, but I feel like this trailer might replicate what it would've been like. I truly feel the love.

Thank you, director Mike Dougherty. You did great work on Trick 'r Treat, and pulled off some rad monster terror in Krampus. If this trailer is any indication of what the actual film will be like, I will throw my TV off my roof if it doesn't win an Oscar. Can you win an Oscar for "Best Godzilla"? Can we invent an Oscar for that?

I'm only half kidding.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters comes out on May 31, 2019.