Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
A middling monster movie that would be fun for kids of a certain age, but doesn’t really do anything to advance the genre or provide much beyond expensive CGI thrills.
Full Disclosure: I’m not the biggest fan of the monster movie genre. While the original Godzilla movies from the 50s were famously a metaphor for the destructive effects of nuclear weapons and the dangers of nuclear testing, most recent movies have lost any semblance of deeper meaning, devolving into “big CGI monster fights big CGI monster” slugfests. Those can be entertaining at times, but also get a bit repetitive. I was hoping this movie might add something new.
Review
Godzilla is having a bit of a moment. The past six months has brought us Godzilla Minus One (winner of the Oscar for Best Special Effects), the Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and now Godzilla x Kong. It seems kaiju are rampaging across our screens everywhere we look.
Godzilla x Kong picks up where 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong left off, with the two dominant kaiju having reached an uneasy truce where they both stick to their territories, with Kong living a lonely existence exploring the “hollow earth” for any more of his kind, and Godzilla protecting the earth’s surface by battling any other emergent kaiju. All of this is being closely monitored by the quasi-government agency Monarch, one of whose leaders is Ilene Andrews (played by Rebecca Hall), accompanied by her young adopted daughter Jia, the last of the Iwi people from Kong’s Skull Island.
Just on a side note, Jia is played by 11-year-old Kaylee Hottle, reprising her role from the last movie. I didn’t realize at that time that in addition to playing a deaf character, Hottle is actually a deaf actress. And she’s really good for her age. Kudos to the writers and producers of this franchise for including a prominent deaf character and providing us an opportunity to see the talents of someone like Hottle.
Kaylee Hottle reprising her role as Jia. I’m so glad there are big roles for us to see talent like hers.
Despite the Godzilla-Kong truce, things start to go wrong which threatens the kaiju balance on the planet. Kong gets a toothache and needs to come to the surface to see a monster dentist (no I’m not making that part up), and Godzilla starts acting erratically. More concerning is that both Monarch’s computers systems and Jia start receiving strange electromagnetic messages. When Monarch’s experts can’t figure out what’s going on, Ilene seeks out the help of conspiracy theorist Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), who helped save the world in the last movie but is still seeking validation.
Tyree Henry’s character is deliberately annoying for most of the movie, but Henry is undoubtedly the scene stealer in this movie. Every scene he’s in is instantly given more life and energy by his very presence. I wish he had more to do in the film.
It’s a pretty long build up, but we can all see what’s coming. Ilene, Jia, Bernie, their pilot Mikael, and the monster doctor/dentist Trapper (Dan Stevens) head down to hollow earth to figure out what’s going on. Soon after their arrival, the pilot gets eaten by a giant plant. It’s a harrowing, dramatic moment that serves to emphasize the fragility of human lif—I’m just kidding, it’s immediately glossed over and never mentioned again for the rest of the movie. That’s a part of the problem with Godzilla x Kong – there are no real emotional consequences for anything. None of the kaiju’s destruction seems menacing enough because we really don’t see its impact, aside from the annihilation of a few historical landmarks by the supposedly friendly Kong and Godzilla, which again, are never mentioned again.
The group blunders about in unexplored territory of hollow earth without any sort of protective suits, and very little equipment before we finally see what’s behind all of the recent events. None of this speaks very well of Monarch as an organization that this is the best plan that they can come up with. I really think the world needs a better kaiju monitoring agency.
One final comment before I move onto the spoilers section. There were a few kids (probably in the 8 to 12-year-old range) in the theater when I saw the movie, and they loved it. The sight of big monsters fighting will likely always be exciting for kids of a certain age. So while I personally had issues with some of the storyline and lack of meaning in the film, kids of that age aren’t going to give a shit as long as there are cool monsters on screen. If you’re looking to occupy their attention for a couple of hours, take them to see Godzilla x Kong.
Spoilers Ahead
This is what you go to this movie to see - monster fight!!!
Just a hint for viewers, any time someone says “they’re the last of their kind”, you can bet that they aren’t. In Godzilla x Kong, this applies to both Kong and Jia. While Kong discovers a community of fellow giant apes (and is led there by what we’ll just call “Baby Kong” from now on), the human explorers discover the existence of a hollow earth civilization of Jia’s people. The truth is finally revealed: the messages have been a distress call because of the (surprise surprise!) imminent threat of even more monsters.
In this case the big baddies are a Kong-like ape named the Skar King, who dominates his people like an evil dictator, and holds in thrall through torture a giant lizard named Shimo, who shoots ice from his atomic breath and was supposedly responsible for earth’s last ice age. The Skar King’s goal is to get to the surface and dominate the whole planet. This is a challenge that Kong can’t face alone. Luckily as the fulfillment of a prophesy, Jia is able to awaken Mothra, who helps Kong recruit Godzilla (after a fight that causes the casual destruction of the Egyptian pyramids), and the three head back down to hollow earth to defeat the Skar King.
The final battle includes a poorly explained sequence where everyone is fighting in zero gravity for about 2 minutes. This really serves no purpose other than to make the action sequences more confusing and give Baby Kong an opportunity to kick another bad Kong to his death the moment gravity kicks back in. The fight inevitably heads back to the surface for the destruction of another city before the “good” kaiju win out.
The movie ends with the only legitimately emotional moment in the movie, where Jia, who has felt like she doesn’t really belong anywhere, chooses to stay with her adopted mom Ilene, instead of with the subterranean Iwi people.
In short – lots of big CGI monsters fighting, a few quippy lines from Tyree Henry’s character, and nothing that advances the monster genre in any way. So if that’s your thing, go see Godzilla x Kong. If not, give it a miss. This movie isn’t horrible, it’s just not particularly interesting.
Brian Tyree Henry steals every scene he’s in. But I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it is that his character does.
5 Quick Hits
I know it’s a small thing to nitpick in a fantasy world full of gigantic monsters, but how the hell does light work in the hollow earth? There are some glowing crystals, I guess, but everything is lit as though the inside of the world has its own sun. Perhaps this was explained in the previous movie and I just don’t remember whatever absurd reason was given, but it was really bugging more than it should have as I watched.
Rebecca Hall has had a solid career that I’m sure 99% of working actors would love to have. She’s undoubtedly a success. And yet, I can’t help but feel that she hasn’t really found her groove yet. I first became aware of her in 2010’s The Town, and she’s bounced around in all sorts of different kinds of movies since. It feels like she’s got one of those out-of-nowhere indie movie Oscar campaign runs in her future at some point.
The Baby Kong is cute, but overall I’d say the CGI pales in comparison to the kinds of emotive simian expressiveness that we’ve seen in the recent Planet of the Apes movies. That’s probably more a compliment for the latter than it is a criticism of the former.
I really thought that Kong’s dental implant was going to have some kind of effect later on in the movie. It seemed like a very obvious plant-and-payoff possibility, like maybe he was going to chew through a massive restraint or something in the climactic sequence, but it never really came up again. Very disappointing.
It’s too bad that some of the characters from the Monarch TV series didn’t make an appearance in this movie, especially the magnetic Anna Sawai, who is currently in the process of becoming a star on the excellent FX series Shogun.
