Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Godzilla has had a complicated movie history. If you're just coming off the red hot “Godzilla Minus One” and that's you're only exposure to the big guy, then you're going to be disappointed or at least surprised. Whereas GMO is an incredible, deathly serious movie about regaining honour and fighting insurmountable odds, GxK is a wonderful throwback to Godzilla's most silly moments throughout his glorious 60s,70s, and 80s films. That's what makes Godzilla so complicated. The character can be a villain, a hero, almost an anime protagonist, a force of nature, a friend to children, a father figure, and so much more.
If you're unfamiliar with the earlier Godzilla films, they went to all the deepest reaches of Sci-Fi. Aliens, psychics, prophecies, human greed, other dimensions, divine intervention, reincarnation, even robots. All these themes can be found all over the original films. So when I walked out of GxK I feel very comfortable saying that when Adam Wingard was given the director chair for “Godzilla vs Kong” and now GxK, he understood the assignment.
Much like it's predecessor, this is much more of a Kong movie than it is a Godzilla movie, and once again I'm fine with that. Kong has been so well represented in the Monsterverse through absolutely top notch CGI and great fight scenes that almost have a “Dragon Ball Z” flair here. I would argue that the CGI in this film is the best currently out there, on par with my previous standard of excellence which would be the “Planet of The Apes” movies. Kong interacts with the humans in a fine way to move the story along, but we finally get long extended sequences of Kong doing stuff on his own, and it all goes over great.
Also like the previous film, Godzilla basically just shows up to throw hands. It's almost like they're unsure where to go with Godzilla because he's been made into just such a powerful, awesome figure. But his fight scenes are incredible and like I said, it's really Kong that drives the story, so it's fine. But you can tell they're at a bit of a loss of what to do with the most powerful figure in their universe. It's definitely the Goku problem – how do we keep coming up with bigger and badder threats.
The monsters carry this movie like always, but here especially, probably half the movie or more is Kong or Godzilla or their adversaries. The humans are getting less and less screen time, and that's a great thing. Not that the human cast is bad here. We have Rebecca Hall, Kaylee Hottle and Brian Tyree Henry returning from the last film, with the new addition of Dan Stevens. Stevens is awesome in just about everything he's in, and this is no different. He has some funny moments and is a nice, silly addition as a monster veterinarian. It works as a light addition without giving it too much thought. There's actually some good human character stuff with Kaylee Hottle that leads to a fairly large surprise I had no idea about going in. The surprise hearkens back to some of the best moments of the 60s Godzilla films. But that's all I can say for spoiler sake. It's just cool I was able to actually enjoy the surprise in a world where pretty much everything is spoiled by the internet before you go in.
The villain is built up in essentially two scenes, but I've got to say, I was fully onboard. Both Skar King and his servant Shimo look awesome and deliver some great fight scenes. They were definitely more in the old style vein of characters with cartoon personalities (like classic “Gigan”), but as the movies thankfully try to get away from the ungodly boring realism “Godzilla” (2014) tried to establish, I'm happy to see it.
This isn't a perfect movie by any means, but it's an incredibly fun ride. And if you're a Godzilla fan, you'll surely love it. If you aren't, then this won't be the one to convert you. Go watch “Godzilla Minus One” if you want a more realistic, character driven masterpiece. But if you want a beautifully crafted monster movie, with amazing and over the top fight scenes that remind you of the good ol' original films, “Godzilla x Kong: New Empire” has got you covered.
8/10
