Godzilla and King Kong unite once again to fight a common kaiju enemy in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Booms and pows ensue. If that's all you need, close this window.
As I've noted before, I'm detecting a pattern in the way Godzilla sequels (d)evolve. Back in the day, we began with a powerful post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki dirge in the form of 1954's Godzilla -- originally named Gojira in Japan and later needlessly retooled for American viewers -- and before you knew it, the once-terrifying titular beast (who had seemed so large and imposing a few movies ago) was sliding forth on his tail and drop-kicking his "enemy of the week" in flicks that later became Mystery Science Theater subjects.
And now, decades later, we have the Monsterverse, which started out with 9/11-esque images of horror and has now culminated in a kaiju wrestling match where a big ape rides upon a big lizard to go fight another ape on another lizard. To make things funnier, the Japanese seem to have come full circle and returned to making Godzilla films that are deep and resonant -- using the monster as a "ghost of World War II" as Ebert once put it -- in the form of the phenomenal, Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One.
Following the release of that film, it's hard to accept the defense that Godzilla x Kong is "just a monster movie" and that it doesn't make sense to expect more from it than "monsters punching each other". I'm afraid we've all seen the truth; we know we could be getting more.
But never mind what I would like to see from the kaiju genre. How does Godzilla x Kong fare as a monster brawl? Well, now's the time to tell you that my issue isn't that it's inherently wrong to opt for mindless fun over trying to achieve thematic resonance through more grounded action -- it's that the attempt at mindless monster fun isn't that great.
I suppose it delivers what you came for, even as we waste some time on stupid prophecy nonsense and questionable interludes of cuteness (there's a scene where King Kong basically goes to the dentist). As for the battles themselves, they're no doubt well-made but they left me in a state of "so what". That's part of why it's hard for me to not compare it to its direct franchise predecessor:
Yes, sometimes simians clobbering reptiles is enough. But imagine these fight scenes if we also cared and there was emotional gravity to the action -- or even regular gravity. Better yet, what if they leaned further into a Toho sequel homage and didn't seem to genuinely think King Kong floating around with a magical axe in Hollow Earth is epic and cool? As is, I can feel myself starting to forget most of what I saw in here. Was the axe even magical?
Something I did like about the previous film, Godzilla vs. Kong, is Adam Wingard's direction. Even as the human characters in these films still aren't anything to cheer for (although I thought the human drama worked fine in the early bits of the 2014 original, and last year's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters partly warmed me up to the idea of learning more about the homo sapien side of the lore), Wingard at least made the GvK dialogue scenes look great -- atmospheric, prismatic, and bathed in "line of purples" neon. Here, we get similarly colorful sequences, yet they do very little to make the material more interesting.
I understand if I sound too demanding or even "spoiled". It's worth reminding oneself what an amazing age of F/X we live in and how doubly amazing it must be for the OG nerds. Imagine watching 1933's original King Kong or any of the Ray Harryhausen classics as a kid -- not to mention that film from 1962 where a massively re-sized Kong finally did meet Godzilla, both played by actors in shoddy suits. Could you ever have dreamed that we'd one day see movies -- spectacles -- like the ones we have now?
If you were that kid, I guess you shouldn't let me stop you -- even as you might have nitpicks of your own regarding lore or whether the monsters should really move like this (especially considering the sense of scale and weight that Gareth Edwards gave to these things when this particular 'verse was established). I do think you should go see it; I cannot promise you will remember much about it. I think you might have fun; I also think Godzilla himself, being a recent Oscar winner and all, deserves more.
Regardless: Happy 70th, Godzilla. May you either evoke the horrors of man-made annihilation or brofist a photo-realistic Gamera in whatever's next. Either way, we'll be seated.
As I've noted before, I'm detecting a pattern in the way Godzilla sequels (d)evolve. Back in the day, we began with a powerful post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki dirge in the form of 1954's Godzilla -- originally named Gojira in Japan and later needlessly retooled for American viewers -- and before you knew it, the once-terrifying titular beast (who had seemed so large and imposing a few movies ago) was sliding forth on his tail and drop-kicking his "enemy of the week" in flicks that later became Mystery Science Theater subjects.
And now, decades later, we have the Monsterverse, which started out with 9/11-esque images of horror and has now culminated in a kaiju wrestling match where a big ape rides upon a big lizard to go fight another ape on another lizard. To make things funnier, the Japanese seem to have come full circle and returned to making Godzilla films that are deep and resonant -- using the monster as a "ghost of World War II" as Ebert once put it -- in the form of the phenomenal, Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One.
Following the release of that film, it's hard to accept the defense that Godzilla x Kong is "just a monster movie" and that it doesn't make sense to expect more from it than "monsters punching each other". I'm afraid we've all seen the truth; we know we could be getting more.
But never mind what I would like to see from the kaiju genre. How does Godzilla x Kong fare as a monster brawl? Well, now's the time to tell you that my issue isn't that it's inherently wrong to opt for mindless fun over trying to achieve thematic resonance through more grounded action -- it's that the attempt at mindless monster fun isn't that great.
I suppose it delivers what you came for, even as we waste some time on stupid prophecy nonsense and questionable interludes of cuteness (there's a scene where King Kong basically goes to the dentist). As for the battles themselves, they're no doubt well-made but they left me in a state of "so what". That's part of why it's hard for me to not compare it to its direct franchise predecessor:
Yes, sometimes simians clobbering reptiles is enough. But imagine these fight scenes if we also cared and there was emotional gravity to the action -- or even regular gravity. Better yet, what if they leaned further into a Toho sequel homage and didn't seem to genuinely think King Kong floating around with a magical axe in Hollow Earth is epic and cool? As is, I can feel myself starting to forget most of what I saw in here. Was the axe even magical?
Something I did like about the previous film, Godzilla vs. Kong, is Adam Wingard's direction. Even as the human characters in these films still aren't anything to cheer for (although I thought the human drama worked fine in the early bits of the 2014 original, and last year's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters partly warmed me up to the idea of learning more about the homo sapien side of the lore), Wingard at least made the GvK dialogue scenes look great -- atmospheric, prismatic, and bathed in "line of purples" neon. Here, we get similarly colorful sequences, yet they do very little to make the material more interesting.
I understand if I sound too demanding or even "spoiled". It's worth reminding oneself what an amazing age of F/X we live in and how doubly amazing it must be for the OG nerds. Imagine watching 1933's original King Kong or any of the Ray Harryhausen classics as a kid -- not to mention that film from 1962 where a massively re-sized Kong finally did meet Godzilla, both played by actors in shoddy suits. Could you ever have dreamed that we'd one day see movies -- spectacles -- like the ones we have now?
If you were that kid, I guess you shouldn't let me stop you -- even as you might have nitpicks of your own regarding lore or whether the monsters should really move like this (especially considering the sense of scale and weight that Gareth Edwards gave to these things when this particular 'verse was established). I do think you should go see it; I cannot promise you will remember much about it. I think you might have fun; I also think Godzilla himself, being a recent Oscar winner and all, deserves more.
Regardless: Happy 70th, Godzilla. May you either evoke the horrors of man-made annihilation or brofist a photo-realistic Gamera in whatever's next. Either way, we'll be seated.