Legendary Pictures released the first full trailer for the upcoming 2019 release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It’s a surrealistic trailer set to a re-imagining of Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, giving it a dream-like feel to its nightmarish destruction.
The trailer centers around a family, starring Millie Bobby Brown, Vera Farminga, and Kyle Chandler. Based on the trailer it appears that the parents are divorced and there’s some strife taking place between Millie Bobby Brown’s character and her parents.
The family strife works as a backdrop to a story about the titans that used to rule Earth before humans came along. Farminga goes on monologue about how they have to find the titans because they’re the ones that can save humanity. You can check out the trailer below courtesy of Movieclips Trailers.
The whole family story plot is intertwined between images of the titans being unearthed, and we get clips of what look like Mothra and Ghidorah, the three-headed beast.
There’s a lot of striking contrasts in the hues based on the different scenes. For instance, the scenes with Godzilla and the family are electric blue, while Ghidorah has a destructive orangish-brown tint.
They don’t show any of the fight in the trailer, just the outcome of the destruction. Between the music and the imagery it seems to be going for a visually nocturnal tone. It’s very different from the more boots-on-the-ground, horror-themed approach that Gareth Edwards depicted for his 2014 outing.
Heck, the one shot of Ghidorah’s silhouette coming out of the mist is indicative of the kind of style they’re going for, like a Jakub Różalski painting come to life.
It’s hard to say whether the movie will be good or not based on the trailer alone. It’s definitely visually striking and seems to have an experimental, oneiric tone to the way the action and destruction is filmed. Whether or not it pays off depends on how cohesive the movie is. It definitely seems to be a departure from the 2014 outing.
The trailer also seems to make sure to give cameos to showcase how diverse the film is. That’s never a good sign.
Even still, if the action and destruction is good then maybe it will pay off. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is due out May, 2019.
