Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Adam Wingard, 2024)
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a colorful spectacle, but the movie is so ape-centric that they might as well have called it ‘Kong Plus One, Or Two, Or Frankly Loads Of Other Apes’ and be done with it.
Not that there is anything wrong with that! Before Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) the Monsterverse was made up of two Godzilla movies - Godzilla (2014) and King Of The Monsters (2019) - while Kong had only Kong: Skull Island (2017) to show for. So a kind of reciprocity was definitely in order.
So if it’s apes you want, it’s apes you get. There’s Kong of course, who gets a new tooth early on and a new arm later in the movie. There is also a fabulous looking mini-Kong and I kept waiting for the moment that Kong would say ‘Mini-Kong, you complete me.’ But alack and alas…
There is the fearsome Skar King, who is the villain of this particular story. And there are lots of other apes to make up the numbers. So kudos to Warner Discovery for getting this movie out to the public before Disney’s Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes in early May.
Godzilla is used more sparingly by director Adam Wingard, who returns to active duty after the (mainly) positive reception of Godzilla vs. Kong and its cumulative worldwide gross of 470 million dollars and change.
At the beginning of the movie Godzilla is let loose on Rome, but after his early rampage there he goes into hiding for tactical reasons, but when he returns he has ‘supercharged’ himself and is ready to kick some ass. And there are some other Titans too, you just have to wait a while before the movie gets to them.
And then there’s the human element. Rebecca Hall is back as Dr. Ilene Andrews, who leads a team into Hollow Earth to investigate a distress signal.
Besides herself, the team consists of her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), an animal handler called Trapper, who is played by Dan Stevens in a way that would suggest he is channeling Matthew McConaughey from ten years ago, a sort of wild card annex added value element. The team is rounded out by pilot Mikael (Alex Ferns) and by the blogger and wannabe documentary maker Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), who played an important role saving the world in the previous movie and, who knows, might play an important role in this one too. It would have been even better if he was a Substacker, but I digress. So on to the story.
SYNOPSIS The new installment in the Monsterverse puts the mighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal deadly threat hidden within our world that threatens the existence of their species and our very own, as well as diving deep into the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond. Delving straight into the origins of Hollow Earth, the film explores the ancient Titan battle that brought man and monster together forever.
I think Rebecca Hall (The Gift, The Night House) is a great actress, and as the team leader she quite often takes center stage. She has some touching scenes with Jia, who is still reeling from the loss of her tribe. Since they didn’t have a spoken language, listening to each other’s thoughts instead, Ilene and Jia communicate through sign language. However, when Ilene does talk, her character is used far too often to explain in what direction the movie is heading.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is filled to the brim with exposition, and because the story is never allowed to flow freely, the clunky rhythm stops the movie from turning into a truly immersive experience.
The best scenes are the ones without dialogue, in particular the one where Kong and mini-Kong have a wander through Middle, sorry, Hollow Earth. Also good is the one in which King and Skar King tough it out and really go for the jugular.
But the special effects are a mixed bag too. Most of the creatures look really impressive, but the CGI used in the action scenes is less convincing - a problem shared with a lot of recent superhero movies.
And while Godzilla and Kong are basically superheroes themselves, you can also compare this movie to Aquaman (in the threat presented to the surface world as well as some shared ecological concerns) and even more obvious, to the Jurassic World and the aforementioned Planet Of The Apes movies.
Again, that’s not a criticism per se, but the Monsterverse operates in a crowded field without so far delivering a true knock-out blow to justify its existence. And even though Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire offers up a colorful spectacle, and will probably sell enough popcorn to warrant another sequel, it’s once again a three star movie for an audience that - especially after the unexpectedly strong performance of Godzilla Minus One - deserves a more artistically rewarding movie.
Note: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is released this week in most of the world, with countries like France and Germany to follow in early April and Japan (home of Godzilla!) on April 26.