Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ latest MonsterVerse movie, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is now on streaming platforms. The studios seem to be riding the coattails of Toho’s Academy Award-winning film, Godzilla: Minus One. It may pale compared to the 2023 film, but on the quality of entertainment, it is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom levels of ‘mid’. It has cool ideas but ‘mid’ execution. It seems the screenwriters behind this cinematic universe just gave up on how to make this world logically intriguing. It’s whatever the writers throw on the screen to get two legendary monsters to fight two other antagonistic monsters.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures
Two years after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong, the world has fully embraced co-existence with the Titans. Godzilla, the King of the Monsters, resides in the old Roman Colosseum in Italy, while Kong resides in the Hollow Earth. Kong longs to find any remains of his lost civilization until he discovers a new world underneath Hollow Earth that makes him more curious. Meanwhile, Monarch scientist Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her adoptive daughter of the lost Iwi civilization, Jia (Kaylee Hottle), reteam with Titan podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), and fellow Monarch specialist Trapper (Dan Stevens) as they discover new mysteries and dangers that challenges humanity’s existence.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros Pictures/Legendary Pictures
How should I start this? It’s a mixed bag of shallow good and questionably bad. The best Monsterverse movies like Kong: Skull Island, and the first Godzilla vs Kong movie are “turn your brain off” fun. But in this movie, the parts that will make your brain turn itself back on are the human characters. They do nothing but provide exposition for whatever is happening between the monsters and the random scientific explanations of what is happening in the Subterranean Realm. Henry’s manic-obsessed podcast character should have been cut from this movie, despite him doing the best he could with the role. His character feels like he belongs in a Roland Emmerich/Michael Bay movie. Some of his parts were genuinely funny, and others felt forced. He and Steven’s Trapper seem like a good comedic duo, but the comedy feels manufactured. If they wanted to keep Henry’s character in this movie, he should have brief scenes of him doing a podcast during a monster battle. Trapper himself feels like a character that belongs in the MonsterVerse, but he is there for special conveniences like providing Kong with a new tooth and an armored exoskeleton glove. All of these conveniences scream coincidence and boy does the movie reek of it.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures
As for Hall’s Andrews and Hottle’s Jia, they were okay. Hottle is the best out of the bunch as she was in the previous film. The plot about her lost Iwi tribe living deep in the Subterranean Realm of Hollow Earth makes zero sense whatsoever. Andrews, like Hayes, is a walking info dump of what the Monarch organization is doing and what the “jump the shark” monster lore is about.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures
The monster portion of the film was fine. Even though Godzilla appeared first, Kong is the protagonist of the series. He is a very well-rounded character physically and emotionally. He’s the last of his kind and was hoping to see if somebody else like him still existed. He comes across Suko in his trek, turning him into a father figure for the little ape. He finds out that his species survived and is being enslaved by an evil ape called the Scar King. This revelation motivated him to fight against the big bad ape villain.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures
I hate to talk about another movie in this review, but I can’t help but notice the comparisons between this movie and the recent Planet of the Apes reboot series. The Scar King is a copycat version of Toby Kebbell’s Koba, Woody Harrelson’s Colonel McCullough, and the new movie’s villain, Proximus Caesar, portrayed by Kevin Durand. Kong and Suko trekking across the Subterranean Realm is just a repeat of Caesar and Co.’s trek through the California winter from War for the Planet of the Apes. Kong, at this point of the franchise, is Andy Serkis’s Caesar who will be the leader of his species once the movie is over. Since this movie was released before Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes came to theaters, it felt like they were trying to capitalize on apes in such unoriginal ways that it just seemed noticeable…well for me at least.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures
Meanwhile, Godzilla had one mindset in this movie: be angry and fight another titan threatening his territory or tear something up in the world. In one of the best scenes of the movie, he kills one monster with his familiar atomic blast, which uniquely turns pink. As I mentioned before with the exposition problem, the humans have to relay to the audience what Godzilla is doing at all times since the only emotion he has in this movie is being angry. It only took Jia and a rejuvenated Mothra to have Big G get his head straight for the real fight with him, Kong, and Suko, against the Scar King and Scylla. The climax of the film is like every climax of all of the movies so far: monsters fight, chaos ensues, and people either get smashed or blown to pieces while they fight for whoever reigns supreme.
Image via IMDb/Warner Bros. Pictures/Legendary Pictures
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a fun time when audiences turn their brain off and go along with it. However, these types of CGI monsters/Transformer “beat-em-up” movies are becoming noticeably dull and tiring. I can throw in the many Marvel/DC movies that use CGI as a crutch in that category. But here, it’s a hodgepodge regurgitation of what we’ve seen before, and … whatever happens, happens. The kids will get a kick seeing giant monsters fight each other. As for the adults, it’s a ‘mid’ product that produces shallow fun. It may be fun for fans of the MonsterVerse, but other people might watch something else with substance.
Rating: 2.5/5
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