Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) on Netflix
PG-1320192h 12mActionAdventureFantasySci-Fi
Dr. Emma Russell and her daughter Madison watch a giant larva emerge at a Monarch facility. Emma uses the Orca, a device that alters Titan behavior, until eco-terrorists storm the base.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.0/10232,458 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes42%
Trailer
Plot summary
Five years after the world learned that giant creatures called Titans exist, Dr. Emma Russell, a paleobiologist with the Titan-studying agency Monarch, and her twelve-year-old daughter Madison watch a giant larva, Mothra, emerge at a facility in China. Emma settles the creature with the Orca, a device her ex-husband Mark helped invent, which broadcasts bioacoustic frequencies that draw or calm Titans. A band of eco-terrorists under former British colonel Alan Jonah raids the site and seizes Emma, Madison and the Orca. Monarch scientists Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham bring Mark back to help find them; Mark blames Godzilla for the death of his son Andrew in San Francisco and wants nothing to do with the Titans. The agency tracks Godzilla toward Antarctica, where Jonah's team has planted explosives around a three-headed Titan buried in the ice.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Borenstein had originally written Mechagodzilla into the film, but Dougherty scrapped the character during development. Early drafts also had full sequences of non-Toho Titans rising after Ghidorah's call, trimmed later because of the budget.
SPOILER
Dougherty and co-writer Shields chose to have Godzilla killed at the film's mid-point, an idea they picked because it had not been done in previous Godzilla films.- Dougherty had hoped Legendary would acquire other Toho monsters such as Anguirus, Biollante and Gigan, but the film's budget prevented the studio from acquiring additional Toho characters.
- An earlier cut of the film ran nearly three hours. Dougherty affectionately nicknamed it Godzilla: The Miniseries and considered splitting the film into two parts before deciding against it.
- Serj Tankian recorded a cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Godzilla" for the soundtrack, with Dethklok members Brendon Small and Gene Hoglan contributing. Composer McCreary called it the most audacious piece of music of his career, built on orchestra, choir, taiko chanting and drumming and a heavy metal rhythm section.
- Dougherty gave each of King Ghidorah's three heads its own personality, with the center head as the alpha and the others as its lackeys, and studied king cobras to make the design realistic, working closely with Toho to honor past incarnations.
- The director gave his sound designers a "super cut" of monster roars from the Shōwa Godzilla films as a starting point, and had those roars played over a massive speaker system on set for scenes where actors had to run from or react to the monsters.
- The film is dedicated to Yoshimitsu Banno, who directed Godzilla vs. Hedorah, and original Godzilla suit performer Haruo Nakajima; both men died in 2017.
