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 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

Godzilla: King of the Monsters - A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. It isn’t awful, but unless you are an avid Godzilla and monster movie fan like me, there is really no need to make the effort to see this one in the theatre.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters, directed by Michael Dougherty and written by Dougherty and Zach Shields, is the story of the Russell family, Mark, Emma and Madison, as they come to grips with their grief and with famed monster Godzilla. The film stars Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga and Millie Bobby Brown as Mark, Emma and Madison respectively, with supporting turns from a cavalcade of actors such as Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Charles Dance, Sally Hawkins, Bradley Whitford and O’Shea Jackson, to name just a few. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the 35th film in the Godzilla franchise and is the third film in Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse (Godzilla 2014, Kong: Skull Island 2017).

As I have stated before, I am a confirmed Godzilla fan. As a kid growing up, as all the other kids were going crazy for Star Wars…I was obsessed with Godzilla and Planet of the Apes. During my childhood, if on a Saturday one of the local UHF channels just happened to be showing a Godzilla movie, it felt like Christmas. As a kid I also maintained a treasure trove of Godzilla toys and that compulsion has stayed with me well into adulthood. As a young and eligible bachelor living the high life in Brooklyn in the 90’s and 00’s, I had a circular table in my living room that was covered with Godzilla action figures which I proudly dubbed “Monster Island”. As you can imagine it was a huge attraction that brought many ladies into my lair and acted as a powerful aphrodisiac upon them. Nothing gets panties to drop quicker than a prominent display of Godzilla figurines.

It was during this time that Hollywood ventured into the Godzilla waters with Roland Emmerich’s accurately titled Godzilla (1998). Being the idiot fan that I am I rushed out to see this Godzilla reboot as fast as I could. The film, which I’ve since re-named Ferris Bueller’s Godzilla because it starred Matthew Broderick of all godforsaken people, was atrociously bad.

It took another 16 years, but Hollywood got back in the Godzilla business with 2014’s also aptly titled, Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards. Once again I rushed out to theatres to see my favorite monster and once again I left the theatre deflated after suffering through a truly terrible monster movie.

For further proof of my Godzilla nerd-dom bona fides, one need look no further than the fact that I actually wrote a very controversial and polarizing piece of Godzilla fan fiction and posted it to this website to coincide with the release of Godzilla (2014). This piece was so culturally radioactive it was met with an avalanche derision and scorn, up to and including death threats.

In 2016, much to my relief the Japanese studio and originator of the Godzilla franchise, Toho, released Shin Godzilla. I am such a fan of Godzilla (and Toho), that I actually waited in line early on a Sunday morning outside the Royal Laemmle Theatre to get tickets to see it. Thankfully, this was an enjoyable Godzilla movie experience.

In terms of the recent Hollywood Godzilla franchise, the 2014 Godzilla was the first film in Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse, and it definitely got that franchise off on the wrong foot. It was followed by Kong: Skull Island, starring the dead-eyed and empty-headed Brie Larson, which was so awful it made my teeth hurt. Kong: Skull Island was so bad it did the impossible, it made Godzilla (2014) look like Citizen Kane in comparison. Which brings us to the most recent film in the Legendary Monsterverse…Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

After my checkered Godzilla movie-going past, you might have thought I'd be hesitant to rush out and see Godzilla: King of the Monsters, well…you greatly over-estimate my intelligence. While I certainly did not have high expectations, in fact, my expectations were incredibly low, that didn’t stop me from going to see the very first showing of the film on opening day…which ended up being a 4 pm show on Thursday afternoon.

My basic takeaway from King of the Monsters is this…it isn’t good…but with that said I also must admit… it could have been a hell of a lot worse. The biggest problem with the Hollywood Godzilla movies is that they use Godzilla as a prop for human drama as opposed to using humans as a prop for Godzilla drama. These movies spend so much time trying to get us to care about stupid people doing stupid things instead of just giving us what we came to see…Godzilla. I mean, Godzilla’s name isn’t above the title…IT IS THE TITLE.

To King of the Monsters credit, it does give us much more Godzilla than its predecessor did…but that isn’t exactly a high bar as Godzilla (2014) had so little Godzilla it should have been titled Waiting for Godzilla. Why studios need to stick to the usual formula of spending time trying to get audiences attached to second rate actors like Kyle Chandler or Vera Formiga is beyond me. You can show them, and spend a wee bit of time developing them, but then just leave them to try and survive the ultimate god encounter…namely…Godzilla.

King of the Monsters goes through the motions of trying to be a real drama, and uses certain cliched narrative devices…over and over and over and over again…in an effort to give deeper meaning to the monster festivities, but this all rings monotonous and hollow. It is like the film gets stuck in a plot loop and can’t get out of it so it simply repeats the same dramatic pattern every half hour except with different characters.

The cast are all fine I guess. I mean, I totally get how difficult it is to act in such an absurd movie with such terrible dialogue, so I cut the cast excessive amounts of slack. That said…the ever-awful Bradley Whitford does his very best to ruin the movie all by himself. Whitford is so repellent a screen presence he needs to be thrown into a volcano and sacrificed to Rodan for the good of all humanity.

On the bright side, 15 year old Millie Bobbie Brown is a really good actress. Brown has hit it big after her captivating work on Netflix’s break out hit Stranger Things. Brown’s greatest asset is that she is alive on screen and pulsates with a palpable humanity. She is also very beautiful, and I have to admit I find myself very concerned for her well-being, as Hollywood is a tough town for anyone, nevermind young people, and it is riddled with predators who use their power to prey upon the young and the weak. It is disconcerting to see Brown being “sexxed-up” by the industry and her handlers, and I only hope she can keep her wits about her as success can be very disorienting at such a young age.

Another plus is seeing Ziyi Zhang in a prominent supporting role. Zhang, who you may remember from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is a beguiling beauty and formidable actress and it is a shame she has been missing from American cinema for so long.

As for the monsters…well…the results are mixed. Godzilla looks great, really great, and we do get to see more of him and his rampages than we did in Godzilla (2014), but not enough of him. The other monsters, King Ghidorah, Rodan and Mothra are all just ok. I actually thought Ghidorah was pretty underwhelming visually especially compared to the dragons on Game of Thrones, which surprised me as you’d expect a feature film to have better effects than a tv show. Rodan also felt a bit off visually and that was a disappointment as he has historically been a good foil for Godzilla.

Mothra makes an appearance and is also not the most captivating visual presence. To be fair though, I have never liked Mothra at all. I always thought it was moronic to have a moth be this powerful being…I mean…it is a fucking moth for goodness sake.

The visuals of King of the Monsters are, much like its predecessor, decidedly dark, although this time around there is a higher level of clarity and coherence with the cinematography. We do get to see some clear shots of Godzilla and have a better idea of what is happening during his big fights, but I could use a hell of a lot more of it.

There are a few notable shots in the movie as well…including the usual iconic posing from Godzilla himself. There is one gorgeous shot of Ghidorah that is bursting with symbolic and thematic power, where Ghidorah spreads his wings atop a mountain with a cross in the foreground, that is really well executed. But then the impact of that shot was diluted when the filmmakers made the curious decision to literally show it about four more times.

The plot of King of the Monsters is riddled with illogic and inconsistencies and makes little to no sense. The movie also has little sense of time and space which can make it somewhat dizzying affair. The reality is that the film needlessly tries to explain everything and by doing so just confuses things even more.

In conclusion, if you love Godzilla movies you will find this one to be passable but not particularly great. If you are lukewarm on Godzilla movies and are looking for some mindless fun…stay away from this one as it is a little too mindless and a little short on fun. At the end of the day, Godzilla: King of the Monsters isn’t good enough to do anything more than preach to the most adamant of the Kaiju faithful.

©2019