“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” is the first American “Godzilla” film that I actually enjoyed. The 1998 one had a monster that was nothing like Godzilla and the 2014 did not show us enough monster action. This is a sequel to the 2014 film and the filmmakers seem to have got the message that we want more monsters but they still have not worked out how to shoot the fight scenes.

A group of environmental terrorists decide to use a special device to awaken the giant monsters of the world. Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah will have to battle it out to claim the throne. Meanwhile, the secretive Monarch organisation seeks to try and save humanity from the threat of the monsters.

I’m still not overly pleased with the design of Godzilla. He looked great in some of the Japanese films from the 90s and 2000s so why not just copy that design? King Ghidorah is my favourite monster from the franchise and he looks great here. Mothra and Rodan look okay. Some of the other monsters that they briefly show look rather disappointing. Kyle Chandler (“Argo”), Ken Watanabe (“The Last Samurai”) and Charles Dance (“Last Action Hero”) give good performances but pretty much everybody else was underwhelming and some were even irritating.

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” could have been terrific because has a lot of fancy effects and lots of destruction. However, we still spend far too much time with the humans and the fight sequences could have been a lot better. It’s particularly frustrating considering this takes place in the same universe as “Kong: Skull Island”, which got the fights spot on. I do like the fact that they throw in lots of references to the earlier Japanese movies and I cannot deny that this is probably much more accessible for non-fans than almost all of the Japanese movies. I’m looking forward to seeing Godzilla and King Kong do battle in the next one.