Godzilla: King of the Monsters - The Dramatic Cut

I saw Godzilla: KOTM in theaters and have spent the subsequent years trying to erase most of the Human parts of this movie from my brain (haven't seen it since). I wanted to see a modern Hollywood Blockbuster version of Godzilla monsters all fighting each other. While I absolutely got what I wanted on that front, I also got a super cliché story about a 14 year old girl in a tug of war between her mommy and daddy, complete with horrible dialogue and cheesy one liners.

INIGHTMARES has remedied 90% of that, plain and simple, and I for one am grateful for it!

While I didn't watch this as critically as I've watched other edits, I did read the cutlist, and I watched and listened for big errors. I am happy to report that didn't notice a single one, even when I was looking specifically for a cut!

A fine job here my friend. I will forever pretend that THIS was the movie I saw in theaters, and will remember it as such :) in fact.....was it?

First, allow me to say that the original of this movie was one of the most disappointing watch experiences I’ve ever had. The dialogue was cheap, reductive, and followed the style of the worst action-comedy films have to offer.

The dramatic cut skillfully does away with all of this disappointment and leaves a refreshingly strong entry into the Godzilla franchise that I cannot recommend highly enough.

The only issue I found was a brief, almost unnoticeable audio cut about halfway through the movie (apologies for not thinking to write down the exact time). It was so slight that I genuinely believe this might have been apart of the source audio and not due to the edit and thus I cannot redact any points.

Continuing on to our review, INIGHTMARES delivers a tense, sometimes chill inducing version of Godzilla: King of Monsters that has broken free of the chains of “Well THAT just happened” writing. It never takes away too much from the original, just enough to make a diamond in the rough shine true.

If you are searching for a fantastic monster movie night, this is the edit for you.

Excellent video quality, audio occasionally a little muffled and appears to lag slightly but this may be an issue with my playback rather than the edit itself.

Despite having seen the original film from 2014 I never bothered watching the sequel, perhaps a consequence of getting bored out of my mind by Kong: Skull Island. Seeing this edit’s listing prompted me to visit it at last and try it before the theatrical cut so I would have no prior knowledge or expectation, thus while I cannot comment on how much of an improvement this cut is the stated aim of achieving tonal consistency has certainly been achieved.

While some moments of the drama do feel a bit overwrought, the sense of dread is unbroken throughout by the described “lighter” moments present in the original: an exception would be presence of the news pages during the end credits, after the somber ending I found it a bit jarring to see the comparatively upbeat proclamations of how the monsters are the solution to the world’s ecological issues!

While not a film I am personally interested in revisiting, it is a decent piece of work and an amazing achievement for a first time editor!

A much, much more palatable experience than the original cut, with dumb jokes reduced and a sense of menace maintained throughout. It still feels like a story written by 10 years olds and populated with adults with the intelligence of 5 year-olds, but that's par for the course in most monster movies. The beasts/titans/kaiju are the stars and are afforded all of the emotional maturity, leaving the human actors high-and-dry. In all, a shelf-replacer for sure for the original movie, although I have to admit having to turn the volume up and down between the dialogue and the special effect (edit: this may have just been my basic-ass audio set-up, so "grain-of-salt"). Still, a taut entry in the Titanverse (or whatever we're calling it) series and I look forward to seeing what this editor does next.

You did it, you frigging did it! I always KNEW there was a decent movie in there somewhere, and this edit proves it once and for all. I wanted to love this movie so badly when I saw it in the theater, but the awful jokes and quips just absolutely ruined the experience. The most disappointing thing was knowing that if you cut a bunch of things, there really was a solid movie hidden underneath. I was so sure of it that I was actually considering getting into making a fan edit of my own. Thank god for you though, you handled it much better than I ever would have.

To be clear, this edit fixes EVERYTHING I had an issue with regarding the theatrical cut. The pervy jokes are all gone, the terrible dialogue has been trimmed, and we're treated to an atmosphere that much more aligns with the movie's predecessor. Aside from the jokes, there are two PAINFUL parts that I am so glad this cut finally eliminates. The first is Emma's embarrassingly expositional speech regarding why she's gone bad. My god, I wanted to walk out of the theater watching that special piece of cringe. The second (and this brought a tear of happiness to my eye) was the removal of her "Long live the king" line before her death. All I can say is THANK YOU for erasing this from the film.

The only small criticism I can lend is at one point there was a slightly awkward audio/music transition, for a like a second. That's about it.

This is the ONLY way this film should be experienced. You've taken a 3/10 film and made it a 9/10. This is the sequel I had hoped for ever since it was announced, and now I have zero issues telling anyone I am a fan of this universe once more.