Saw it this afternoon. Once you accept King of the Spectacle for what it truly is, the film is a lot of damn fun. I've only ever been a casual fan of the Godzilla films so my knowledge of its lore is pretty limited, although I already knew King Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra (soooo gorgeous!). Based on comments I've seen elsewhere, I take it the giant mastodon is new? I definitely want to see more of that monster!
I joked in the other thread how I expected the film to be Jane versus Godzilla, but it turns out I wasn't far from the mark!
Seeing Maddie's ballsy move to face off against King Ghidorah for the sake of the planet was worth the price of admission alone. In reality, of course, she would've died, but through the power of cinematic magic (or the Upside Down!), she managed to go down dozens of Fenway flights of stairs before King Ghidorah burned the whole place down.
Aside from Millie Bobby Brown charming us from beginning to the end, the surprise human star was the one and only Bradley Whitford! He had so many great lines, that it felt like he was channeling Josh Lyman. Ken Watanabe was also great as always and thankfully he actually got a lot more to do in this film than grimly mutter at the camera like he did for most of the last film.
But let's get back to what we were all there for: The epic monster fights! It's amazing how far special effects of gone since Godzilla's inception because now all of them are sights to behold. Some of the close-ups on Ghidorah's heads were a little dodgy but pretty much everything else was spectacular, with Mothra being the CGI MVP, hands down!
Not sure how I feel about the mad plan to awaken all of the monsters for the greater good of the planet long term because they bring stability and balance to Earth. I enjoy "humans are disease of the planet" as much as the next person (or perhaps more), but it seemed a bit ludicrous here. However, I realize that it's a very silly complaint in a film with giant monsters storming the planet.
