OnScreen Review: "Godzilla vs. Kong"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
Godzilla vs. Kong is one of the first big blockbusters of 2021. It’s building off of two previous Godzilla movies and one Kong movie, creating yet another shared universe (The MonsterVerse) that every studio has felt the need to create in recent years. The first Godzilla and the first Kong movies both showed promise, while the sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, faltered critically and financially. Godzilla vs. Kong is a step back in the right direction, but still leaves quite a bit to be desired.
When last we left both our intrepid Titans, Kong had saved his island back in the 1970s from underground monsters and Godzilla had made all the other Titans to heel and saved the planet from the three-headed dragon Ghidorah in the ruins of Boston, MA. Previously seen as a protector of the human race, this film opens with Godzilla seemingly turning heel and attacking an Apex Cybernetics facility for unknown reasons. Godzilla’s previous battle for supremacy with Ghidorah has convinced people working for Monarch that Kong’s presence needs to be shielded from Godzilla, or a longstanding rivalry between their ancestors will be re-ignited. With Godzilla rampaging, a company named Apex enlists the expertise of several scientists to take Kong on an expedition into the hollow center of Earth to locate a power source that can neutralize Godzilla’s threat. Of course, while the two Titans circle one another, a new potential threat emerges from Apex Cybernetics.
The Godzilla and Kong franchises, especially Godzilla, have been about spectacle, even when it was an actor in a monster suit rampaging in a miniature city fighting other monsters. Viewers aren’t drawn to these stories for the storytelling, they’re there for the action. For the most part, the action is good. Godzilla and Kong square off on more than one occasion, with the film trying to cram the monster equivalent of an entire Ali-Frazier trilogy into one movie. Both Titans are strong-willed and will refuse to bow to the other. Wrestling is more of an appropriate analogy than Ali-Frazier, frankly; in fact, it would not surprise me if Vince McMahon or someone associated with the industry was not a consultant on the movie. Also, it’s worth pointing out that with one or two tweaks, you’ve essentially got similar beats to the conflict between Batman and Superman in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, two entrenched sides of a conflict unwilling to tolerate the existence of the other.
The first encounter between the two takes place in the middle of the ocean and is as absurd and entertaining as the previews made it look, while the ultimate final showdown fittingly takes place in the middle of Hong Kong, a massive city doused in neo lights (Sadly, we’re now three movies in and Godzilla has not set foot in/on Tokyo). Finally, we get a movie like this where everything is not cloaked in darkness and rain making the action difficult to decipher. The ending even takes place in sunlight of the morning dawn. For the sake of comparison, the fighting is about on the level with what Pacific Rim had to offer.
In the moments which the movie is focused on the action with Godzilla or Kong are the strongest moments; the moments spent with the humans are by far the weakest. Human are like mosquitos in size compared to these two behemoths, and they are nearly as pesky to the story. The less attention paid to the plot and the “science” behind how they successfully navigate their way into the Hollow Earth the better. The action is good, but it’s not enough to completely make you ignore the nonsense of reverse-gravitational fields and specially designed aircrafts that can withstand the pressure of it. Godzilla vs. Kong spends way more time than it should on the ludicrous plot and grounding the stories of these two giant Titans in human beings that are emotionally invested in them. Kong has befriended a young child named Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a mute native of his island who has been adopted by the woman studying Kong, Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Godzilla still has the support of Millie Bobby Brown’s Madison Russell from the previous movie, who enlists the help of a classmate played by Julian Dennison and a conspiracy theory podcaster portrayed by Brian Tyree Henry to infiltrate Apex Cybernetics and figure out why Godzilla viewed them as a threat. Alexander Skarsgard is Dr. Nathan Lind, the leader of the expedition into the Hollow Earth who lost his brother on a previous expedition. Demian Bichir gets to do some mustache twirling as the founder of Apex Cybernetics.
I had some trepidation with the previous Godzilla movies regarding the wanton destruction of cityscapes in those movies. Frankly, it hasn’t just been them, though, this was also a critique I had about Man of Steel. Most movies that involve this massive level of destruction land differently in a post-9/11 world, though not all the time. Weirdly, this one did not have that same impact as the others, again, similarly to how Pacific Rim worked for me. Either the action was enough to make me turn that critical part of my brain off and just enjoy the spectacle, or I had resigned myself to the inevitability of it happening at this point. I want to believe it was the former and not the latter, but I have my doubts.
Godzilla vs. Kong aims to be a crowd-pleasing action film of two monsters going mano-a-mano in the ultimate battle for apex supremacy. It doesn’t skimp on the action or the special effects in bringing the monsters to life. The human characters and a lot of the plot is little more than empty calories, and the film spends more time than it should on these elements instead of more time on the action. However, the final half hour or so is everything you would expect it to be. If you can turn your brain off, this movie can entertain.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
(Godzilla vs. Kong is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max through April 30.)