Oh dear, what has happened to the ‘King of the Monsters’? People rightly complained about the 1998 American “Godzilla” because it barely resembled the Japanese films and lost most of what made some of them likeable. However, “Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters” seems to miss the mark by an even greater distance.

After monsters such as Godzilla left the world in ruins, a small group of humans left Earth in search of a new home. After what has been mere decades for the humans but millennia for the Earth, what is left of mankind decides to return to reclaim their planet. However, it is still inhabited by Godzilla and other monsters. If they want their home back, they will have to pay a heavy price.

I normally like the visual style of anime films but “Planet of the Monsters” looks terrible. The lighting and the shadows are poorly done and the film looks stripped of colour. The characters suffer badly due to the terrible animation and they look completely lifeless. They are also not very interesting and a lot of the dialog feels very generic. Godzilla looks absolutely awful. There was something fun about seeing a guy in a rubber suit play him but there is no fun in watching a cartoon Godzilla. We only briefly see some of the other monsters.

“Planet of the Monsters” is intended to be the first instalment in a new anime trilogy of “Godzilla” films and I can safely say that my expectations for the sequels are incredibly low. I get that maybe the makers wanted to do something that was different and not just a rehash but this is extremely bad. This is worse than the 1998 American film and worse than any of the live-action Japanese “Godzilla” movies. It seems to have more in common with a film such as “Avatar” than any of the “Godzilla” films. The animation is horrendous, I did not care for the plot and I just did not enjoy any of this movie.