Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire - A Review: The Bigger They Are, the Harder Empires Fall

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Popcorn Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: One of the weaker MonsterVerse movies, but it still features some pretty cool monster brawls. Ultimately, a mindless monster movie that unfortunately speaks to our current moment in all the wrong ways.

Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire, directed by Adam Wingard, is the fifth film in the Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse and is a sequel to the 2021 film Godzilla vs Kong.

Godzilla x Kong is the second Godzilla movie to hit theatres in the last six months, following in the large footsteps of the Academy Award winning blockbuster Godzilla Minus One. The big difference between the two films is that Godzilla Minus One is a Japanese production and Godzilla x Kong is in every way, shape and form, an American production…up to and including having the word “Empire” in the title.

I am a huge Godzilla fan and have been since I was a kid watching the Toho films of old which featured a guy in a Godzilla suit destroying model Japanese cities. I loved those movies and am a total sucker for all things Godzilla because of it.

That said, I’ve never truly loved any American Godzilla films. Starting with Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), the atrocious Americanized version of the fantastic original 1954 Japanese film Godzilla.

Then there was the 1998 film Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick, or as I call it, “Ferris Bueller Fights Godzilla”. Not a good Godzilla movie.

Then after a long dry spell came the Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse, which started in 2014 with Godzilla – a film I was lukewarm on. This was followed by Kong: Skull Island in 2017, a film I disliked. In 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters hit the big screens and I liked it a bit but it wasn’t great. Then in 2021 we got Godzilla vs Kong, a flawed but fun brawl. Which brings us to today and Godzilla x Kong.

In preparation for Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire I spent the last week rewatching the Legendary MonsterVerse movies….but this time I watched them with my 8-year-old son, who had never seen any Godzilla movies until Godzilla Minus One this past fall, but has grown up hearing me tell endless tales of Godzilla’s exploits.

Rewatching the MonsterVerse with my son was a great deal of fun…as is watching every movie with my son. Seeing movies through his young, unjaded, uncynical eyes, is refreshing for a bitter old cinema war horse like me. My son doesn’t roll his eyes at cliches or tired tropes, he shakes with excitement and joy and it makes me very happy. In order to maintain his cinematic purity, I never tell my son I dislike a movie…ever. I let him bask in the glow of the fun and in fact encourage it, always adding positive thoughts to our discussions post-movie.

Upon rewatching the MonsterVerse, I discovered a few things.

The first is that some of the movies were better than I remembered or at first believed. To be clear, none of the films are as good as say Godzilla Minus One, but they have their moments.

For example, I thought my son would be bored watching Godzilla (2014) because it takes a long time for Godzilla to show up and when he does you don’t see him all that clearly. But the opposite was true, my son was totally sucked into the story and thoroughly enjoyed it. As a result, I ended up liking Godzilla (2014) more as well.

My son liked Kong: Skull Island more than me, but I still thought it had some cool moments, and thought the premise was top-notch but the execution had some issues.

Upon rewatch I really liked Godzilla: King of the Monsters, as did my son. This is just an old school monster movie banger. Big monsters kicking the hell out of each other…lots of fun but never silly – which is vitally important.

Then came Godzilla vs Kong, which was, like the Toho movies of my youth, a fun and solid monster movie too. But Godzilla vs Kong also marked a major shift in the franchise. This was Adam Wingard’s directorial debut in the MonsterVerse, and he changes the tone of the franchise dramatically.

Toho’s Godzilla Minus One was so impactful because the damage Godzilla brings to the real world kills real people and those people have value and meaning to those who survive.

In the first three MonsterVerse films the monsters, be they Godzilla, Kong or any of their adversaries, were destructive and deadly, and a major dramatic throughline of those films is the trauma inflicted upon mankind by the death and destruction caused by the monsters.

For example, Godzilla (2014) opens with Juliette Binoche getting killed as a result of monster movement, which spurs the rest of the film. A major plot point in Godzilla: King of the Monsters is that a father’s young son is killed during Godzilla’s rampage in San Francisco in Godzilla. In Kong: Skull Island, Samuel L. Jackson moves heaven and earth to kill Kong because Kong killed men in his military unit.

Real people die as a result of these monsters in the first three MonsterVerse films, and those deaths resonate throughout all the living characters. That sentiment disappears once Wingard takes the helm.

That said, Wingard choreographs some pretty sweet monster brawls in Godzilla vs Kong so it’s cool, but it just doesn’t really mean much of anything.

Which brings us to Godzilla x Kong. Let me start by saying my son loved the movie….which makes sense as seeing big monsters on the big screen is pretty awesome even if the movie is not so great…and Godzilla x Kong is…well…not so great.

It seemed to me that Godzilla x Kong was a bit of a jumping of the shark for the MonsterVerse, as it featured an incoherently elaborate plot, a plethora of silliness, and a dearth of life and death consequences that reduced the proceedings to utter absurdity.

Yes, there are some cool monster fights and I enjoyed them no end, but there’s a tone of frivolity infused in the film that makes it feel tongue-in cheek and winking (literally), which I dislike.

To get into the plot is sort of a foolish endeavor, I’ll just say that Godzilla and Kong are not fighting each other at the film’s open because Godzilla lives on the surface of the earth and Kong lives in the hollow earth. But then there’s trouble in hollow earth when a super-secret extra hollow earth is discovered. The story goes from there and involves the Iwi tribe from Skull Island, a tyrannical ape-king, an ice-breathing monster and lots of strange science regarding inverted gravity.

If you’re looking for big monster fights, you’ll definitely get your fair share in this film as there’s spectacle galore, featuring some of earth’s most well-known tourist attractions being stomped by pissed off monsters.

Some of the fights are better than others, and there’s not enough Godzilla in the movie for my liking, but that said, if you’re just looking for some empty-headed monster brawls, the movie gives it to you. Unfortunately for me I like movies like Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which rest on the premise that these monsters are real and exist in a real world with real people. Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire is not that.

Speaking of real world and real people, it is striking to me that this movie has the term “Empire” in its title, as does the new Ghostbusters movie Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.

As someone who notices these sorts of things, it is quite fascinating that as the American Empire erodes and crumbles in real time before our eyes, we are given signs of a “new empire” and a “frozen empire”. If I had to choose, I’d say our empire is well on its way to “freezing” and a new empire is rising to take its place – maybe/probably centered in Beijing.

There’s a recurring visual in Godzilla x Kong which shows Godzilla curling up in the Roman Colosseum, sleeping in the belly of an empire long past. Then there’s the battle between Godzilla and Kong at the pyramids, a symbol of an empire even deeper in history.

This all ties in with the lack of humanity featured in these last two Wingard directed Godzilla movies.

What is striking about this symbolism and wordplay regarding “empire” and the elimination of concerns about human life, is that a real-world drama involving empire and a disregard for humanity is playing out right before our eyes if we only had the courage to look and see it clearly.

The American Empire is directly responsible for the bloodbath in Ukraine, as it has made it very clear it is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in its narcissistic proxy war against Russia.

The American Empire, led around by its nose by its Israeli paymasters, is also responsible for the wicked slaughter in Gaza, where more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, have been massacred by the vile Israeli regime, armed by America.

The American Empire is losing on every front and no longer has the skill or will to win a fight for its survival. That, of course, doesn’t mean it won’t violently flail as it sinks into the graveyard of history, killing thousands, if not millions, on its way down.

The symbolism throughout Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire certainly kept me thinking, but only a certified lunatic like myself would ever notice these things. Most other people will only see the big monsters beating the hell out of each other and the poor performances of the cast, most notably Dan Stevens, giving one of the most vacuous and phony performances in recent cinematic history as Trapper, the most derivative character in recent cinematic history.

The bottom line is that if you want to watch truly mindless death and destruction nowadays you have two choices…you can either turn on the news and watch the bloody and brutal fruits of America’s demonic foreign policy in Ukraine and Gaza dance across your screen…or you can go watch Godzilla and Kong dance across the big screen at the local cineplex.

Regardless of which choice you make, the end result will be the same, and that is that America and its allies will slaughter more innocent people across the globe, and American Empire will slowly suffocate under the immense weight of its own endless moral corruption.

 FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo

©2024

Godzilla Minus One: A Review - The Glories and Horror of the God Encounter

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. As good as it gets in terms of Godzilla moviemaking. Not just a great Godzilla movie, but a really fantastic film all its own.

Language: Japanese with English Subtitles.

Godzilla Minus One, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, is the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise, and the 33rd film produced by Japan’s Toho Studio, the place where Godzilla got his start back in 1954.

That original Godzilla movie, aptly titled Godzilla, wasn’t just the birth of the great kaiju film in modern cinema, it was also a truly fantastic piece of cinema. Every Godzilla movie since has paled in comparison, even the good ones, and there have been plenty of good ones…at least from Toho.

Godzilla Minus One is a reboot of the franchise and a remake of sorts of the first Godzilla movie. It tells the origin story of Godzilla and his first foray into his favorite sport…destroying Japanese cities.

The film is set at the tail end of World War II and in the early post-war years and it follows its protagonist, Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), as he tries to integrate back into civilian life after a deeply traumatic war experience.

Shikishima is a failed kamikaze pilot who ditched his suicide mission on the pretense that his plane malfunctioned. He ends up on a small Pacific Island used for airplane maintenance by the Japanese. It is here that Shikishima is confronted by not only his cowardice, but by a youthful and spry, mysterious sea monster the locals call Godzilla.

After the war, Shikishima is haunted by his shameful wartime cowardice, which he wears like a scarlet letter. He tries to build a life in the ruins of Japan and his mental state, and becomes a step-father and de facto husband to a young woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and the infant child she rescued during the war. He also gets a job aboard a ship that must destroy mines in the Pacific left over from the war.

While working this job, you’ll never guess who he runs into…his old foe Godzilla. But this time Godzilla is bigger and badder than ever thanks to the testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific by the U.S., which triggered Godzilla to grow bigger and stronger and angrier.

What makes Godzilla such a compelling movie monster is that he is, as Jungian psychology would describe him, the “God encounter”. Godzilla is, to quote the Bhagavad Gita and Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, “death, destroyer of worlds.” Godzilla is the void. He is both the immovable object and the irresistible force. One cannot help but feel insignificant and helpless in the face of such astonishing, horrifying destructive power.

In terms of the mythology of Godzilla, the foundation of it is that Godzilla is born both as a symbol of the dangers of the atomic age as well as the manifestation of Japan’s guilt and divine punishment for their aggression. In other words, he is God’s revenge on mankind for deploying nuclear weapons on earth, and hubris for Japan’s imperial ambition and heinous war time behavior.

The original Godzilla film resonated because it understood this mythology. As the Godzilla franchise has moved along over the decades, that mythology has been watered down if not entirely neutered, turning Godzilla into some sort of cuddly friend, or fierce environmental warrior.

Godzilla Minus One makes no such error. Here, Godzilla is not cute and cuddly, or friendly in the least. He is a dead-eyed and destructive killing machine that cannot be reasoned with, only endured.

The politics of Godzilla Minus One show a Japanese people exhausted by war and the malignant government that got it into one, and the incompetent government that survives after war. In this vulnerable state, the people of Japan are forced to do for themselves in the battle against Godzilla.

I won’t go into too much detail in order to avoid spoilers, but I will say that Godzilla Minus One is easily the second-best Godzilla movie ever made, behind the original – which is only the best in this instance because it is the original.

The sequences where we see Godzilla in action are spectacular, and considering the film had a budget of a measly $15 million, which is just 10% of what the most recent American Godzilla movie cost to make, is remarkable.

But this is exactly how you make a monster movie. You give people what they want…namely Godzilla wreaking havoc, and doing it in a realistic setting, with real-world consequences, inhabited by complex yet compelling characters. In other words, take the Godzilla subject matter seriously, something the recent spate…hell…ALL OF, the American Godzilla movies have failed to do.

Ironically enough, while reading the news this morning I read that the Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer will finally be released in Japan after months of controversy. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, is not exactly a hero in Japan, where his handiwork slaughtered roughly 225,000 Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Oppenheimer famously does not show the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nor does it show their gruesome aftermath. When Godzilla comes to shore in Godzilla Minus One and makes his way through a Japanese city, what happens, and its aftermath, are undeniably evocative of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the hell on Earth that Oppenheimer’s genius unleashed.

Accordingly, I think, as odd as this sounds, that Oppenheimer and Godzilla Minus One would make for a splendid double feature, as the former sets the stage for the death and destruction in the latter.

Take away the psychological musings, and as a pure piece of entertainment, Godzilla Minus One still works incredibly well. I went to the film with my wife and young son, who is too young to read the subtitles quickly enough – but he saw the trailer and wanted to see the film. My son had a few questions about the plot throughout, but not that many, and he could understand what was happening for the most part without reading the subtitles. He absolutely loved the film…for the same reason I grew up loving Godzilla…because Godzilla is awesome in the truest sense of that word.

Watching Godzilla unleash his destructive powers and fury onto the world is both horrifying and highly entertaining, and the fact that it is treated seriously and that characters you care about are in great peril when Godzilla rampages, makes that rampage all the more compelling.

In terms of the filmmaking, Yamazaki does a stupendous job directing this film. Godzilla Minus One pays homage to the original Godzilla in numerous ways, and does the same with a diverse array of films, from Jaws to Dunkirk.

The cast are terrific, without a bad note among them. And the special effects are better than anything I’ve seen in recent years from any of the American studios.

If, like me, you’re a huge fan of Godzilla movies, Godzilla Minus One is a dream come true, as it’s not only a great Godzilla movie, it’s a fantastic film in its own right.

If, like my wife, you couldn’t care less about Godzilla, you should still see this movie, as she didn’t just endure Godzilla Minus One, she actually enjoyed it.

At a time when blockbuster filmmaking from American Studios is at an all-time, ghetto-dwelling, nadir, Toho’s Godzilla Minus One is a glorious, shining city on a hill. Of course, that city is shining because Godzilla just stomped all over it and set it on fire with his atomic breath.

Godzilla’s back, baby!!!

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 109 - Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV+)

On this episode, Barry and I navigate the maze that is Apple TV+ in order to review the first two episodes of the Godzilla-adjacent tv series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Topics discussed include my bizarre obsession with all things Godzilla, how spending money doesn't always translate into quality filmmaking, and if a Godzilla shrieks on a podcast but the mic doesn't pick up...did it really happen?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 109 - Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 36 - Godzilla vs Kong

In this episode Barry and I head out to Skull Island to discuss 2021's first blockbuster, Godzilla v. Kong. The spirited conversation touches on an array of diverse topics, including but not limited to...God of the Old Testament, the Dark Knight trilogy, Robert Downey Jr., the hollow earth theory and how Raymond Burr ruins everything.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 36 - Godzilla vs Kong

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Godzilla vs Kong: Review and Commentary

****WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Popcorn Movie Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. If you love monster movies you should like this one. If you are ambivalent about monster movies then don’t waste your time.

Godzilla vs Kong, directed by Adam Wingard, made a big splash at the box office when it premiered internationally last weekend, and has generated a lot of attention in the U.S. as it opened on Wednesday in both theatres and on HBO Max.

The film, which stars Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry among many others, is a sequel to both Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Kong: Skull Island (2017), and is the fourth film in Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise which kicked off in 2014 with Godzilla.

I’m always interested in monster movies because they feature rich myths that express deeper truths regarding their time and place and are ripe with opportunities for insightful metaphor and allegory.

For instance, beginning with the first King Kong film in 1933, the Kong story was an allegory for colonialism and slavery, as he was stolen from his tropical homeland by outsiders and brought to America in chains and exploited for profit.

Cinematically born in post-war Japan by Toho Studios in 1954, Godzilla was a metaphor for the perils of atomic weapons and American imperialism, and the embodiment of nuclear age anxiety.

As the world has changed, so has the metaphorical meaning of the monsters. Kong has grown to represent, at least in American eyes, the U.S. He is a primate, warm blooded and big hearted, who is ferociously protective of those he loves, and Americans are delusional enough to see themselves and their nation in his good qualities.

Godzilla has transformed from being a lizard-brained menace to being a hero, and even the previous Legendary films Godzilla and King of the Monsters paint the cold-blooded beast as a guardian of humanity and environmental protector.

In this context, Godzilla vs Kong strikes me as an allegory about the transition from a uni-polar world with America the lone superpower to a multi-polar one where China and the U.S. are equals, with Godzilla representing China and its bid for global dominance and Kong the U.S. fighting to maintain its alpha standing.

The cinematic evidence supporting this thesis is that American favorite Kong is the main protagonist in the story, and that the U.S. military fights on Kong’s side when the monsters battle.

In a nod to China’s status and power, Godzilla proves his alpha dominance by forcing Kong to submit and also obliterates the U.S Navy when it defends Kong.

It’s also conspicuous that the moviemakers set the climactic battle between Kong and Godzilla in Hong Kong, which is a city which can simultaneously represent different things to the film’s two largest target audiences…China and the U.S.

To Americans, the Let’s Get it on In Hong Kong battle can be interpreted as Kong (U.S.A.) fighting for democracy against the tyranny of China. In China it can be interpreted as the city merely being collateral damage in the wider battle against the imperialism of the west.

Of course, with the film ending with both Kong and Godzilla saving face and being victorious, Hollywood is simply trying to kiss two asses at once and stay in the good graces of both China and the U.S. and their massive audiences.

Another interpretation could be that the third monster in the movie, Mecha-Godzilla, is supposed to be representative of the corporate titans of the tech world that are maneuvering to rule us all, and that Kong (U.S.A.) and Godzilla (China) must work together to stop the seemingly all-powerful globalist tech behemoth. Considering that the tech industry, the U.S. and Chinese government, and Hollywood are like the evil three-headed monster Ghidorah, and work in unison to horde profits, power and spread propaganda, this interpretation isn’t as compelling.

A more likely scenario is that I’m just reading way too much into the popcorn delivery system that is a mindless monster movie.

The bottom line is that as a piece of cinematic art, Godzilla vs Kong isn’t exactly Citizen Kane, but as a monster movie it’s entertaining, especially in contrast to the three Monsterverse films leading up to it which were decidedly disappointing.

Sure, the film gets bogged down in a bevy of exposition and entirely incomprehensible plots involving conspiracy theories, hollow earth and some corporate nefariousness, but all that tomfoolery fades away once the CGI creations start stomping the earth and beating the crap out of each other.

Thankfully the movie also eschews the emotional preening so prevalent in the earlier Legendary ventures and simply lets the monsters battle it out. And the big fights are well executed, proficiently filmed and efficiently choreographed for prime viewing of the carnage, something also lacking in the muddled visuals of previous Monsterverse movies.

As for the fights, my critique is that Kong is like former Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in that he is much too reliant on big right hands. Kong needs to develop and then utilize a jab to keep a short-armed in-fighter like Godzilla at bay. To Kong’s credit though he is a great closer with his signature double fisted beat down move.

Godzilla is just a monster…literally. Despite short arms he has a long and powerful tail that can cause serious damage when whipped, and of course boasts some of the deadliest atomic breath around. Godzilla is sort of like George Foreman before the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974…just a horrifyingly big, strong and brutal fighter.

The Godzilla-Kong fights are what everybody is tuning in to see, and while there weren’t enough of them for my taste…the ones that did happen were pretty good so I will take what I can get.

As for whether Godzilla vs Kong is good or its deeper meaning, the film business couldn’t care less, it just cares that the movie raked in $123 million from overseas markets in its opening weekend, a Covid era record.

This seems to indicate that the Hollywood beast is awakening from its Covid slumber and is prepared once again to slouch across the globe asserting its malign influence. The U.S. and Chinese governments will be thrilled to have their reliably pliable Hollywood propaganda monster back in the game.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021