Here, that impressive legacy of big-screen destruction gets a nostalgic assist from humans known for comfort-food television: Stranger Things‘ breakout actor Millie Bobby Brown gets more dialogue than Eleven did, and briefly shares the screen with Randy Havens, who played the show’s enthusiastic science teacher Kyle Chandler, as her father, recalls the fiercely virtuous protectiveness of Friday Night Lights‘ Coach Taylor and kibitzing in situation rooms, Bradley Whitford hails from The West Wing, that fantasy of presidential intelligence whose stock shot up at approximately 2:30 a.m. Their success depends on the pacing and execution of action sequences the sweaty brows and urgent voices of scientists speaking to generals and the subplots screenwriters must use to fill time before a giant lizard thwacks a skyscraper with his tail.
Whether embodied by a man in a rubber suit or a vast team of digital artists, the eponymous radiation-breathing monster can’t be counted on to carry the films he stars in.
In the recent words of the polymath artist and great thinker John Lurie: “Though Godzilla has appeared in 47 different movies, his acting has never improved.” Lurie’s count may be quite a bit off, but he’s on to something.
