Other than looking all military and stern, his part could have been cut and his lines given to someone else. David Strathairn from the previous film is here, too, but he’s on screen for maybe 10 minutes. It’s important to go backwards and remind the audience what is at stake for characters played by Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Milly Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Zhang Ziyi, and Sally Hawkins. The movie starts in 2014 which gives it an anchor to the present. By the end of the movie, we’ve seen Ghidorah, Rhodan, Mothra, MUTOS - which were created for the 2014 movie - and several I don’t know. I’m going to have to do more research because I can’t name that many. The whole mythos surrounding Godzilla - from the first movie in 1954, to the recent Kong: Skull Island - is referenced here. I’m going to write as “non-spoilerific” review as possible. This is exactly what a Godzilla movie should do. Well, hold onto your soda and popcorn because Godzilla shows up in the first five minutes of the movie and essentially never leaves. Director Michael Dougherty stated on Twitter he was aware of this criticism and we would be seeing more of Godzilla in this movie.
You don’t build the audience’s empathy for your title character when you don’t see him. One of the biggest criticism of 2014’s Godzilla was the king of the monsters himself getting only 8 minutes of screen time.
