“You are murdering the world.”

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is for all the haters who didn’t like the bold choices made by Gareth Edwards in 2014’s Godzilla. You know, the very things that, for better or worse, helped distinguish it from all the other big budget green screen action schmutz that stands in for cinema these days. Didn’t like the bland lead of the first film (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), whose dullness augmented the otherworldly majesty of the title character and emphasized humanity’s powerlessness? He’s gone, with several fussily-arced, personalityless protagonists (Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown) to take his place and drive the plot. Upset that Edwards went the Jaws route and mostly withheld the fearsome antediluvian behemoth until the final act, enhancing the sense of dread until the film unleashed itself in a burst of mayhem? He’s all over the place in King of the Monsters, even though he still doesn’t really do much until the very end anyway. Hated that the film took pains to ensure the audience felt a real sense of scale, that they might actually gasp at the sheer alien nature of the towering beast instead of just munching popcorn with glazed eyes while virtual cameras whipped through virtual environments? Okay, yeah, now I’m just taking cheapshots. But, like, this film gets itself worked up over every little bit of melodrama and helicopter landing, blaring everything in your face so forcefully that the monster action it holds up as its centerpiece fails to distinguish itself.

I’m willing to chalk it up to ambition: after all, this is not merely a sequel to Godzilla, but also a sequel to Kong: Skull Island. But where the umpteen sequels to the original Godzilla didn’t have an ounce of pretense about a continuous mythology and all clock in about an hour shorter than King of the Monsters, Michael Dougherty’s stopgap slugfest is all about setting up the long game in the same way the Iron Man 2 fell on its sword to lay the groundwork for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It pretends to want us to care about its slew of techno babbling scientists and ecoterrorists and whatnots (Charles Dance, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, Zhang Ziyi), and about what they are seeing on their computer readouts, and about the arrivals of King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan, and about its voguish environmental concerns, but what it really cares about is your future purchase of a ticket to see Godzilla vs. Kong, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (and oh goodness how did they talk Kurt Russell into starring in a spinoff television show?). There are worse Godzilla films (someday I’ll start at the beginning and work my way through), but they didn’t cost $200M and also had some life to them. It’s a real shame that so many promising filmmakers get called up to the big leagues only to have their personalities totally lost in the process. Add Dougherty to this list, whose Trick ‘r Treat and Krampus stand head and shoulders above Godzilla: King of the Monsters.