What makes a good Godzilla movie versus a bad Godzilla movie?

Are you asking because KOTM has a 45% on Rotten Tomatos?

Besides just being overall fun, a big part of it for me comes down to doing the character justice. Godzilla's supposed to be an epic force of nature that can't be put down by conventional weapons and breathes atomic fire; like a tsunami, a hurricane, and an atomic bomb rolled into one and given flesh. 

They tend not to score highly with critics as by their very nature they're absurd escapism, but that's what I enjoy about them.

 Was reading one review, and just over 3 paragraphs in, I see they actually went ahead and used the....

I think I'm ready to see it now, some day down the line. And by ready, I mean prepared. With my expectations not only set by precedent, but tempered with this new knowledge.

I feel kinda bad for being negative, but felt compelled to post this.

Hope it turns out for y'all. Pacific Rim forever!

Well, I saw it, and I got exactly what I wanted; giant monsters beating, biting, and blasting the daylights out of each other in spectacular fashion. 

And crucially, at least for me, it's clearly crafted with love and respect for the character and the franchise.

It's not high art or masterclass cinema, but that's fine by me. Sometimes I want to just leave my brain at the door and enjoy the ride.

Saw it yesterday. Thought it was great but it suffer from the same thing so many of these movies suffer from, instead of showing us the monsters fighting we follow the human characters.

This is why, aside from watching the first trailer to get an idea of the approach they were taking, I deliberately avoided all further trailers and marketing. I learned my lesson from when most of the best bits of Skull Island were spoiled ahead of time, and I think I enjoyed the film a lot more as a result. I do find it annoying that Hollywood does this nowadays.

Still, having watched the later trailers after seeing the film, while they do show a bit too much for my tastes, I still think I would've enjoyed the movie had I watched them. They don't spoil everything, and it's one of those films where seeing it on a big screen with a powerful sound system brings it to life in a way that watching it online just can't come close to.

That's pretty much my policy. I actually kinda liked Skull Island, like nowhere near as much as I liked this film, but I thought it was okay. To each their own of course.

That's fair enough; compared both the 2014 Godzilla reboot and King of the Monsters, Skull Island is definitely more mainstream and "Hollywood" stylistically, and hence to my tastes less interesting. I do prefer the somewhat darker and more apocalyptic tones of the Godzilla films with their greater emphasis on scale, worldbuilding, and treating the monsters in an almost mythic way.

Admittedly, a big part of why I still found Skull Island mildly enjoyable was cos it took place in the shared universe with Godzilla and I was curious to see how they would add to the lore. As a standalone film I probably wouldn't have been all that interested in it.

If I ever wanted to have sex with CGI then I'd keep this movie on my list. Other than that it has got to be terrible.