Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire 🦍🦖 REVIEW:

Two ancient titans, Godzilla and Kong, clash in an epic battle as humans unravel their intertwined origins and connection to Skull Island's mysteries. Let’s just get the obvious out of the way. Godzilla Minus One was a remarkable achievement for the monster movie genre that had complex characters and a fully fleshed out story. If you are looking for Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire to reach that same level of depth or quality, then I would highly suggest tempering those expectations. These are two very different monster movies with two vastly different purposes, which is why I am ecstatic to report that Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is a total blast, reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon come to glorious life in live action, with state of the art visual effects, a killer 80’s soundtrack, cheesy dialogue, and all of the big slobber-knocking titan battles a die hard Kaiji fan could ever dream of.

This time around, director Adam Wingard makes the brilliant decision to have Kong be the main and central protagonist. I know this might irk some Godzilla fans but for me personally, Kong works a lot better as the frontman for these movies while Godzilla adds the supporting wallop. I’m dead serious when I say that there are 5 to 10 minute portions of movie that have zero dialogue whatsoever and completely zeroes in on what Kong is up to on Hollow Earth. He’s fighting other creatures, asserting dominion over the territory, but ultimately feels lonely, as he believes himself to be the last of his kind. Kong forms a sort of father-son relationship with this infant ape and what’s so great about this is that a lot of the story is told through the incredible facial expressions and body language expressed by these CGI creatures. What really surprised me is that Kong becomes this sort of leader with a Caesar from the Planet of the Apes-like complex to him. It adds a new dimension to Kong as a character and part of that is due to the fleshing out of the lore on Hollow Earth. Some genuinely interesting world building there.

Judging from the trailers, I was a bit nervous about the CGI, but after seeing the movie, it’s 95% top tier, with impeccable detail on each and every titan and creature on Hollow Earth. As I said before, Godzilla is very much the supporting character here, and his screen-time is conservatively sprinkled throughout the film, so when he does make an appearance, it has a huge impact. Both Godzilla and Kong have different roles in protecting the world from dangerous monsters and I liked how the movie built up to them eventually working together. I’ll be completely honest in saying that while the human characters are thinly written, they actually were never annoying and each character had a very specific job to do in furthering the story. Rebecca Hall’s character dumps exposition, Kaylee Hottle’s little girl character tries to reconnect with her long lost tribe from Skull Island, Brian Tyree Henry is the fish out of water “everything is wow” comedic relief stereotype, and Dan Stevens is just being an 80’s goofball. No, they’re not deep or anything like that, and are not supposed to be, but they all played their part in being serviceable human characters to move the plot along.

The first half of the movie can be a bit disjointed and there’s a point where I wasn’t sure what direction it was going, but I appreciated that it was a lot of world building, development for Kong, and set up for a totally bonkers second half. Once the movie introduces its villain in the Scar King, it goes all in on the CGI monster mayhem and never looks back. I would’ve liked to have seen a bit more of Scar King in general, but for what his role is in the movie, he is quite intimidating and has an interesting alpha complex going on down in Hollow Earth. Definitely saw some parallels to the Planet of the Apes movies in terms of the power dynamics regarding the Scar King and slave apes of the Hollow Earth kingdom. Wingard smartly doubles down on the tone of the first Godzilla versus Kong movie with just the right balance of silliness and genuinely awesome spectacle so that it never comes off as insincere when it goes all out in its epic throw-downs. Speaking of throw-downs, the final thirty or so minutes of this movie contains some of the most exciting and crowd pleasing big budget CGI titan battles in recent memory.

Thankfully, Wingard chooses to mostly stay focused on these battles and rarely ever cuts away to the humans, correcting a pitfall that has plagued some of the previous Monsterverse movies. There are quite a few creative fight moves performed from both Kong and Godzilla that had me grinning ear to ear like a kid in a candy shop. It’s the kind of thing a seven year old smashing together their favorite dinosaur action figures could only ever imagine. The collateral damage done in the final act alone is astonishing and there are probably more human casualties in here than any other monster or superhero flick. Tom Holkenborg’s score is predictably epic, with a cool 80’s style synth to it, and the song selection is superb, whether it’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You Baby” by KISS or “Day After Day” by Badfinger.

At the end of the day, you need to know what you are getting into with this movie. If you’re a big fan of Kaiju movies, a Kong fan, or Godzilla fan, then I can almost guarantee that you will have an absolute blast with this film. You have to turn your brain off though, for nothing makes sense and the plot is thinner than a patty from Steak ‘n Shake. I would say my favorite entry in the Monsterverse remains Kong: Skull Island, with the first Godzilla versus Kong flick and this as second and third rankings respectively. Legendary and WB need to double down and continue to crank out these movies. In the realm of current shared cinematic universes, the Monsterverse is one of the few that I would not mind seeing much more of. Overall, with the tone, logic, and IQ of a Saturday morning cartoon, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is yet another wildly entertaining entry in the Monsterverse, one that heavily benefits from director Adam Wingard’s emphasis on the titans as main characters, exploring the vast lore/mythology of Hollow Earth, and putting on display some of the most exciting and crowd pleasing monster throw-downs a Kaiju fan could ever ask for.