There’s a rumor going around town that Warner Bros. and Legendary are hosting a test screening of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Michael Dougherty’s creature feature slated for a release in May of 2019.
It’s packed to the rafters with Toho creations (Mothra! Rodan! King Ghidorah!) and promises to be a visual spectacle – the SDCC trailer featuring a haunting rendition of “Clair de Lune” was enough to sell us on Dougherty’s MonsterVerse follow-up.
But it seems not everyone’s convinced. Over on Reddit (h/t Screen Geek), one user claiming to have seen the opening 40 minutes of Godzilla: King of the Monsters says the sequel’s a mixed bag. Now, before we get into the weeds, we should warn you that the post has been unearthed from March, back when Warner Bros. allegedly staged its first screening for King of the Monsters as a sort of litmus test. It’s since been claimed that the studio’s hosted a second screening, though the jury’s still out on that one.
Be that as it may, here’s an early reaction to the first:
…it was really nice. It’s really atmospheric, but I liked that even though I feel the movie is going to be long( not like the first, but still long) that it was going fast. There are many plot-lines they started in the first 20 minutes. I can’t say much, because of embargo, but can say that I’m really satisfied with the route they went. Acting and cinematography are really nice and even though the effects were not finished and some not even half-finished it looked really great. We are introduced to a family and the acting by every single one of them especially Vera Farmiga was great.
It feels like a continuation of the first and there are a lot of new characters introduced in the first 20 minutes. I think there was a cut in these 40 minutes like 15 minutes before it finished where I felt was the middle of the movie. O’Shea Jackson was good and I think you are going to like how much of the other creatures you are going to see in this movie (especially Godzilla). For what I saw, I’m very pleased and can honestly say it will probably be the most original from this universe and loved every single [piece of] casting.
While it’s seemingly “better and more original” than your average monster movie, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is not without its flaws, as the film seems to have come up short in the character department.
But again, even if this screening reaction is true, it’s certainly not indicative of the final product, as a vertical slice is typically filled with effects that need to be finished and performances that need to be tweaked or edited. So, take this Reddit piece with a grain of salt…
The effects for [Mothra] weren’t finished, but the design was something that I really enjoyed… If you remember this Enchantress thing in SS with this blackness that boils from here there is a similar thing to Mothra here, but with something like yellow pollen. I don’t if it will be in the movie, because as I said, the effects are not in their final form. I honestly don’t know how she looked in the old movies, but just have heard of her and she looks like a huge, beautiful bug although she has that gritty look of the monsters like Godzilla and Kong. The hair on the wings looked really fucking good, this was the thing that I really remember as a standout about the design and the colours too.
In closing, the Redditor hints at the inevitable connections to Skull Island:
It is a continuation to the story. And probably not only to this story, but to Skull Island too. I feel that the idea of bringing the other monsters and their respective worlds or just stories are going to make this movie really interesting, and from everything I watched it just looked better and more original than your typical Monster movie.
That’s not all that surprising, really, as Gojira is expected to go up against cinema’s greatest ape for Godzilla Vs. Kong in 2020. But first comes the super-sized Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which currently has its gigantic crosshairs placed on May 31st, 2019.