This has been a pretty poor year for summer blockbusters. Disney generated billions from four movies (five if you count "Spider-man"), and everyone else was left scrambling. However, it's hard to feel sorry for them when many of the offerings were so lackluster. Let's take "Men in Black: International" and "Godzilla: King of Monsters" as prime examples. These were franchise films that looked promising at the outset. They had good casts and interesting talent behind the cameras. However, both movies turned out to be painfully mediocre for various reasons, some of them shared.
"Men in Black: International" is a sort-of spinoff, sort-of reboot where Tessa Thompson's rookie Agent M joins Chris Hemsworth's hotshot Agent H on a globetrotting adventure, trying to fend off an alien invasion by a conqueror species known as The Hive. Our newbies get some support from Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson as more senior Agents, T and O, and new alien comic-relief from the pint-sized Pawny, voiced by Kumail Nanjiani. All the usual pieces of the franchise's formula are present and accounted for. And it doesn't work. It's actually kind of fascinating how much it doesn't work.
Thompson and Hemsworth are good performers, but their characters are bland and unexciting. Hardly anything I enjoyed about the original "Men in Black" movies remains. The fish-out-of-water comedy is gone. The odd couple dynamics are barely there. The CGI aliens are pretty old hat by this time, and there's none of the wild visual inventiveness that distinguished the original movie. A couple of fun sight gags and action sequences remain, leaning heavily on the audience's nostalgia and goodwill for the previous movies. There seems to be a reluctance to try anything new, despite all the different settings and parts of the story trying to riff on James Bond. Considering the talent involved, this is a disappointment on every level.
"Godzilla: King of the Monsters" fares a little better. Its monster brawls are pretty decently set up and executed. Unfortunately, those brawls take up maybe thirty minutes of screen time, and the movie runs over two hours. A direct sequel to the 2014 "Godzilla," it brings back a handful of characters, including Ken Watanabe's Dr. Serizawa, Godzilla's biggest cheerleader. However, most of the drama is centered on scientists Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) and Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), and their daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown). The Russells have split since the death of their son during the events of the first film, and get swept up in the latest crisis, where eco-terrorists led by Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) set loose many of the monstrous "Titans" to wreak havoc on the world.
The spectacle of the monsters, this time including old Toho favorites Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidora, is perfectly fine. They've all been lovingly redesigned into new CGI forms, and each get their time in the spotlight. Rodan makes mincemeat of fighter planes. King Ghidora summons electrical storms. Benevolent Mothra isn't much of a fighter, but she sure brings some wow factor. This installment is much more successful at getting across the idea that some of the Titans are positive balancing forces and should be aided by humanity, even if they are destructive. Others are pure baddies who we are encouraged to root against.
The humans, alas, are mostly left to flounder in crisis mode, saddled with awful dialogue and nonsensical plot developments. New members of the ensemble include Bradley Whitford, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O'Shea Jackson Jr., and Ziyi Zhang as twins, who I didn't realize were two different people. Ken Watanabe's Serizawa is the only one who comes off well, being as much of an over-the-top caricature as his beloved monsters, and given a nice hero moment in the second act.
And where does that leave these franchises? "Godzilla" will be rolling along to fight King Kong next year, despite "King of the Monsters" being a box office bust. "Men in Black International" has broken even, and I wouldn't be surprised if it got a sequel. I'm not opposed to either continuation, since these series exist in universes that still have plenty of material left to explore, and offer cinematic joys that are easy and uncomplicated. However, creative shakeups and course corrections are desperately needed.
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