“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” Review

Godzilla and King Kong must combine their strength to save their worlds in “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire”, the fifth film in The Monsterverse.

While many films in Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse have given me great entertainment, like “Kong: Skull Island” and “Godzilla vs. Kong”, I have found myself becoming more distant from these popcorn films. I can only watch bland human characters watching giant monsters fight for so long before I tune out. This is how I felt watching “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” because the monster fights, while entertaining, are too few and so much of the film feels unnecessarily expository. While I’m sure big fans of the Monsterverse will enjoy this film enough, I think we can all agree that this isn’t the strongest offering in the franchise. 

After King Kong and Godzilla fought each other and only put their differences aside to defeat MechaGodzilla, the gigantic lizard titan has maintained a residency on the surface of Earth while Kong lives in the subterranean world called Hollow Earth. As long as these two remain separate, there is order. But when another ape titan called the Skar King finds a way to escape his prison in Hollow Earth and plans to take over the surface, a group of scientists who study these titans must call upon both Kong and Godzilla to take out this threat together. 

For me, it’s pretty easy to say what works about this film and what doesn’t. When the film focuses solely on the monsters, it’s a pretty good time. Whenever the film cuts to its human characters, it’s a bore. Don’t get me wrong, most of these monster movies are often lacking in people that you empathize with and are really rooting for but usually there’s a monster right around the corner to keep things interesting. Most of the time, whenever the human characters are depicted in “Godzilla x Kong”, both titular titans are nowhere to be found. Despite some attempts by actors like Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Dan Stevens to give their characters personality and charm, they’re mostly stuck with a ton of expository dialogue that explains what Godzilla and Kong are doing. 

However, the inverse of this is where the film picks up for me. Much of the film shows Kong on his own as he discovers a whole tribe of great apes which deeply affects him since he thought he was the last of his kind. He even takes on a child ape called Suko as an adoptive son and the kid actually helps with the story instead of being some plot device for Kong to save. All of this is shown visually through expression and action and it’s a lot of fun. The realm of Hollow Earth is explored much more in this installment and it’s an interesting environment that I was happy to learn more about. It’s because of this world that I was invested in one of the people, a deaf girl named Jia (Kaylee Hottle) who can communicate with Kong, because she was able to inform the viewer about her feelings and the world she inhabits in a way that didn’t make me wonder if this came from the first draft of the script. 

With titans like Godzilla, King Kong, the Skar King and several others making appearances, the action of the film doesn’t disappoint. These fights are exciting and the climax really got a jolt out of me as these two titular sworn enemies join forces once more. There’s just one thing about “Godzilla x Kong” that is lacking: Godzilla and Kong. These two are barely seen together until the climax and, for that matter, Godzilla is hardly in this movie. Occasionally you see him defeating other titans and absorbing massive amounts of energy for the inevitable massive climax but he’s not in the film enough to warrant having his name before Kong’s. Calling this film “Godzilla x Kong” is like calling “Captain America: Civil War” “Spider-Man and Captain America Go to Germany” instead. It’s not technically wrong but you are misleading the audience a bit with that title. 

But at least “Captain America: Civil War” acknowledged the collateral damage and civilian casualties that accompany superhero battles and had tough conversations about it. In this film, even when they’re saving humanity, Kong and Godzilla, the latter especially, are probably killing a lot of people and no one acknowledges this. I know I shouldn’t think too hard about this but even when Godzilla is just swimming through a river to leave some place, he’s flooding massive amounts of roads and even destroying bridges with cars on them and not one guy is wondering if Godzilla is doing the best job saving humanity. It’s a nit-pick but maybe if the film was paced better, I wouldn’t be thinking about this. 

Between occasional scenes with Godzilla, the sequences with the human characters and those with Kong, the whole film feels disjointed as opposed to a film like “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” or “Oppenheimer” which tackle a lot of storylines and effectively space them out. There are several boring sequences to the point where I thought that 20 minutes could have been cut from “Godzilla x Kong”. 

While I know that “Godzilla x Kong” is meant purely for thrills and not to be taken too seriously, I did expect consistency with the entertainment. If you’re willing to put up with ten minutes of boring exposition from people you don’t care about in order to see monsters fight in spectacular ways then have at this film. As for me, my patience can wear thin even when I’m waiting for an ape and a lizard to team up.