To preface, there is no denying here that movies are allowed to be silly. Poignancy and sincerity can make for great films, but sometimes all you want to see is a 400-foot gorilla RKO a lizard into the Pyramids of Giza.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the latest instalment of the Monsterverse, provides those almost slapstick-silly battle scenes that fans have come to recognise and love as trademarks of the series. However, giant ragdoll wrestling wasn’t enough to save the film from getting a zealous thumbs down.
It should have been the team-up of the century. Instead, it was the biggest swing-and-miss conceivable. How badly can you f*ck up Godzilla and King Kong tag-teaming other monsters? Very badly, it turns out.
The first hour and a half severely lacks any silliness, making it bland, boring and objectively bad. Kong’s moments somewhat redeem this. The several quick zooms into his face, where he gives a Giga-Chad smirk were remarkable.
Kong’s journey through Hollow Earth, the area inside Earth where his kind hails from, is interesting, fun, and full of silly battle sequences. However, the other perspective we follow in the film is a human one and that is where the boredom stems from.
Dr Ilene Andrews, who first appeared in Godzilla v Kong, has her band of mish-mashed misfits who provide no sustenance to the film. They are there to speak, punctuating the roars and screeches of the Titans, explaining their behaviour in a more understandable and human format.
However, the non-verbal Kong and Godzilla were perhaps easier to follow the plot through, as you paid attention to what they were doing and cared about what they were up to. That can’t be said for the human plot line.
Luckily, they didn’t hog the screen too much. It was a blessing that the screen time between people and Titans was pretty evenly halved. Just before a nap would become a necessity rather than just a good idea, Kong, Godzilla, or some other Titan would blast their way onto the screen to bulldoze over yet another national monument.
Although, whilst the fight scenes were the highlights, some of them did also drag. Again, Kong was the saving grace of most of the fight scenes. It’s not every day you see a big gorilla use a smaller monkey as a nunchuck to batter a big monkey before chucking said small monkey at that big monkey to finish it off. Not to mention the small monkey sounded exactly like Toad from Super Mario Bros whenever it shrieked- which was often. This, at least, was funny and attention-grabbing.
A part of the film’s flatness came from the fact that the Titans mostly didn’t feel… titanic. At points, Kong could’ve been 20 feet, at most. The scaling was all off, and their godliness was minimised. Their size is what makes the Titans who they are, and this film chose to not utilise their height- and suffered because of it.
The last 15 to 20 minutes is where the film plays its silly strengths. A Titan battle royale created utter hilarity- tears were streaming, sides were shot with pain, and cheeks stinging, from the sheer amount of laughing at the absurdity. Which, hopefully, was the aim.
Godzilla Vs. Kong seems like a fun idea and, at the end of all things, it was. You watch this film with company, so you can all point and laugh together. Plus, you can talk over the other hour and a half’s worth of content, to not suffer from pure boredom. Then, laugh at the Twitter (X) content afterwards.
Feature Image credit: Warner Bros Pictures
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