Why a Human-less Godzilla movie just wouldn't work

So in the wake of KOTM's release, I've seen a lot of people around the web talking about how they want to see a movie that's just about Godzilla and not about "boring human drama", and how they're sick of humans and all that jazz.

But here’s the thing about human characters in Godzilla movies. As “annoying” as they may be, they’re actually essential to making them work. Having human characters reminds the audience of what the stakes are, and how dangerous these creatures are. A lot of people will tell you that Godzilla and the other monsters are the "real" story, but the more I watch these movies, the more I get the impression that the opposite is true, or at the very least the two go hand-in-hand. But either way, the human side of things is an important part of the movies

Let me give you an example from a film that is not my personal favorite, but is objectively the best movie in the franchise: The 1954 original. For me, the most striking scenes of the film aren’t the ones where Godzilla is pulling high-tension wires down or looking in on subway trains or melting tanks with his atomic breath;it’s the ones after the rampage, the ones where little children are being diagnosed with lethal doses of radiation; where the populace finds itself praying from deliverance from what seems to be a wrathful god of destruction; when Japan finds itself once again pulled into the nightmare of a potential atomic holocaust. That struck a chord with me, and it had nothing to do with how much kaiju action was being poured into my eyeballs.

Whether Godzilla is an allegory for the Hiroshima bomb or the folly of Man in general, the humans are an essential part of driving those messages home; they’re the ones who are affected by the creatures’ actions. Without them, the movies would collapse in on themselves. They’d basically devolve into speculative evolution documentaries or something; fun to watch, but ultimately with no meaning behind them whatsoever. Disposable entertainment. They really would become the mindless monster romps that people write the Godzilla franchise off as.

Now, admittedly, this argument kind of falls apart if the human characters aren't any good. And if there's one thing that KOTM proved, that's kind of based on personal opinion and/or level of perseverance, depending on how you look at it. But I think my point still stands. I'd rather have a Godzilla movie that at least tries to have a story than just throws up it's hands and goes full Michael Bay or whatever.

And let's be honest with ourselves: do we really want to watch a two-hour movie that's nothing but the monsters? I want you to stop and really think about it. Just the monsters, with absolutely no breaks in between. No dialogue, no explanations, no time to breath between scenes. Eventually even the monster fights would get dull. You know how everyone (even myself up above) jokes that the Transformer movies are nothing but Michael Bay explosion fantasies or whatever? Yeah. All that city destruction would get really old after a while.

And it probably wouldn't even be just the fighting. Do any of you guys think of how much time Godzilla spends in these movies just swimming from point A to point B? Or sleeping? Boring, menial, non-action stuff like that?

I'm fairly certain that if we did get a Godzilla movie that was just two hours of literally nothing but monsters, even the best of us would be bored out of our minds. The fact is, kaiju fights and destruction really work better in doses. You can't have a movie that's just that with no substance to back it up, however little of it may be there. And I'd rather have even a little substance over no substance at all. At least it's something.

Now maybe if they did an animated movie where the monsters were anthropomorphic, like The Lion King or whatnot, or if it was a nature-type documentary like Walking with Dinosaurs, a wall-to-wall monsters feature could work. But as typical, feature-length movie production? No. It wouldn't work at all.