Next week, as I write this, Godzilla vs. Kong is coming out to a limited theatrical run and on HBO Max. I have a personal prediction that I’m going to make because all of the Legendary Monsterverse movies have been sub-standard in my opinion. Keep in mind this is only my opinion and I’m entitled to it.

I think it’s going to suck.Every single one of them, and there’s been three to date, have had terrible human characters with absolutely uninteresting backstories and very little monster action. Why? Because the actors are expensive and it costs too much to throw these CGI monstrosities up on the screen.

We’ll see if I’m right.

Note: I wrote this a week ago and I completely forgot to publish it. My bad. Still, I haven’t seen it, nor have I watched any reviews, so my views are still valid. So anyhow, back to the review.

I haven’t actually cared for any of the characters in any of the movies yet. Some of the actors and actresses I like, in general. I think that for a child actress, Millie Bobby Brown is pretty good. I just never got attached to her character in the last movie. I like Ken Watanabe in a lot of things. I’ve seen him in Japanese roles and I’ve seen him internationally. He’s a good actor. He just wandered through King of Monsters like he was phoning it in. He did a good job in Detective Pikachu. Godzilla was not his finest hour.

Don’t get me wrong, I own all of these films on Bluray. I’ll buy this one too, just to be complete. The Japanese don’t always get their movies right either. I thought Shin Godzilla was absurd as a political drama with a bizarrely-evolving Godzilla, yet I still own the commercial copy. I’ll probably never watch it again, any more than I’ve watched any of the Legendary movies again, with the possible exception of the first one that I sat through, just to see if I’d been too harsh and no, I hadn’t been. I just have no confidence that this one is going to be the movie that breaks the previous unimpressive rule.

These are Hollywood movies made by Hollywood rules and that, by their very nature, makes them poor Godzilla movies. Look at what they did with the 1998 movie. That was American sensibilities for an American audience and it sucked. It’s not bad as a comedy but it has nothing at all to do with Godzilla. I own that one too. There have been plenty of silly Godzilla flicks in Japan and there are some I really don’t love, but I think most have a place in the mythology. I’m a big fan of things like Godzilla vs. Megalon. I won’t go as far as to say I like Son of Godzilla that much.

I really don’t enjoy most of the Legendary movies. The first one hardly had any Godzilla in it and while the end fight was… interesting, I suppose, I never warmed to the MUTOs at all. Kong: Skull Island had really terrible human actors that could have been cut from the film almost entirely without causing much damage. King of Monsters, while it was better, it was still clearly written for the Hollywood focus groups. Make more monster fighting! Okay, that’s what they did. They still had a really stupid human story going on because, at the rates they’re paying those actors, they have to put them front and center! I don’t care about your financials, I care about your story and it’s just never been there!

I get that a lot of people just don’t agree and that’s fine. You do you. You have your opinion and I’ll have mine. They don’t have to agree. I’m just not holding my breath for Godzilla vs. Kong. I figure it’s going to follow the same predictable and definitely non-Godzilla track that the rest of them have. Now that Toho’s agreement with Legendary has expired, back in 2020, this is likely  going to be the last movie they get to do. The Monsterverse will become Kong alone and I’m fine with that. Godzilla deserves better. I just hope Toho can find a way back to making actual giant monster fare. It would be sad if they were all Shin Godzillas from here on out.