Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Early Review

It’s probably safe to assume that nobody at Warner Bros. was expecting the release of their second Godzilla/King Kong crossover—revving up to the MonsterVerse’s first decennial, no less—to be overshadowed by an entirely different Godzilla film from the kaiju’s homeland. Yet, when Godzilla Minus One curb-stomped the American pop cultural sphere late last year, any regard for the flailing stateside branch of the franchise fell rather close to going completely extinct. And for good reason; even those skeptical of the massive acclaim for Minus One can’t deny that there was a sincerity to Takashi Yamakazi’s take on the classic Gojira that gave the film a necessary dramatic heft—one that audiences can at least appreciate if not entirely fall for. Alas, no level of earnest reverence for what this character initially stood for will ever steer a Hollywood blockbuster from its chosen path, and it’s precisely that stern adherence to ignorance that brings Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire to new tedious lows for this series.

At this point, one would traditionally move into a plot synopsis… but this is Godzilla x Kong, so in the spirit of keeping the effort for this review on equal footing with exactly what’s being reviewed, it would perhaps be worthwhile to keep this review’s setup as simple as director Adam Wingard and his team made it for the film proper. Godzilla’s back, and so is Kong. There’s a new threat disrupting the balance of the world—this time, a lankier, more gingery Kong—and it’s up to the buddy cops of Kaijus to link up once again and prevent this Scar King (yes, that’s what they’re calling the new villain…) from escaping Hollow Earth and wreaking havoc on the surface world.

There are, of course, human characters that populate this narrative, but as usual, they aren’t all that necessary to the appeal of a film like this. Then again, as Godzilla Minus One just demonstrated, perhaps treating one’s human characters as more than mere breathers between behemoth boxing matches could actually—strangely enough—get audiences to care about what’s going on. None of that is applied in Godzilla x Kong, obviously, for Hall and Henry return once again for the simple purpose of filling in the needed context clues for the convoluted story. At least this time, it has Stevens doing his best to channel the Crocodile Hunter, because it was supposedly time for Wingard to phone in that decade-in-waiting favour after The Guest put the actor on every genre fan’s radar.

The fact that a film called “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” even requires so much exposition should be a red flag in and of itself, as the only thing more needlessly confusing than the plot is the fact that these creators thought that a film about apes and lizards punching each other required that level of narrative scrutiny in the first place. And therein lies the biggest issue with the film: the team, understandably, is intent on making the next entry in the series bigger and better, but they seem to conflate the notion of “better” with “more.” More kaijus, more visual gimmicks, less gravity(?)… at a certain point, one has to wonder whether the complaints levied against this franchise of being “low effort” have been misconstrued to mean “not enough monsters” rather than “not enough reasons to care.”

It goes without saying that none of this—absolutely none of it!—should even remotely matter for a film of this nature if the action scenes get the blood pumping. In isolated moments, Godzilla x Kong meets that incredibly meagre threshold, but when it’s all said and done, one can count the number of head-turning moments on one hand with multiple amputated fingers. (Special mention goes to Kong’s unexpected use of a suspected ally as an impromptu battle axe when his own ends up just out of reach.) Any action film will necessarily involve some downtime to make the fight scenes that much sweeter, but a highlight reel of all the combat scenes in this nearly two-hour feature would likely boil down to roughly a dozen minutes of footage, and all of it feels just as weightless as it did the last time these beasts squared off; we are once again asking kaiju filmmakers to stop making their gargantuan monsters feel smaller than the manmade structures around them!

It may have been a foolhardy assumption that a franchise with a grand total of arguably one solid entry a decade ago would stick the landing on number 5, but by this point, it seems as if Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire signifies a certain level of comfort in Legendary’s approach to these iconic characters; it all boils down to “Don’t think about it, just enjoy it,” but even the realm of mindless action involves (or should involve) a certain hierarchy of standards. The kings deserve better…

still courtesy of Warner Bros.

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Julian Malandruccolo

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