For all the thrills, pleasures and delectable goofiness inherent in a Kaiju film, the problem has always been the human characters. But we understand the mechanism of storytelling so we do not complain when the scene cuts away from Godzilla aglow with rage and radiation to puny little human characters talking about their feelings or whatever.
For some reason, 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire' amplifies this shortcoming of its genre by making the giant monsters as human as their human characters, which ironically increases the goofiness, and renders it somewhat enjoyable. However, the ecstatic feeling of watching giant, other-worldly creatures, these forces of nature humbling all of humanity with a single stride, is supplanted with an action film full of overgrown circus-trained animals. The only exception to this seems to be Godzilla—who feels like a proper monster, but our favourite radioactive Kaiju is relegated to an extended cameo appearance, with barely anything to do until the climax kicks in.
At the beginning of the film, we see Kong going through everyday life in his new home, the Hollow Earth. He goes through the regular grind like an unemployed bachelor, has dental issues, and hunts for food only to slouch back in his cave soon after. The anthropomorphization is only punched up even more when we are introduced to a mini-Kong and the father-son relationship between Kong and his new son is explored through entertainingly cheesy scenes.
However, in the beginning, Kong yearns to find members of his own species, a longing mirrored in the Iwi girl Jia, who also feels out of place in her new home at the Monarch base, where she lives with her adopted mom Dr. Ilene Andrews. Smart writing choices like character arcs mirroring each other are all effectively ruined when the film decides to over-explain these nuances through unbearably simplistic expository dialogues. Even when the camera is panning away to show us something else, we still hear the characters rushing through the plot points.
These expositions are not annoying because they condescend us but it is the audacity to think the story is complicated enough that we need to be spoon-fed these details, that angers us. While these are run-of-the-mill blockbuster sci-fi/fantasy issues, the most irredeemable part of the film is Dan Stevens’ Trapper. While Brian Tyree Henry’s streamer stereotype and Rebecca Hall’s scientist/mother character are no less annoying, Stevens’ hippie Titan-veterinarian is instantly hateable on account of how hard the film tries to make us like him. Rock music, flying skills, chilled-out attitude, flirting with the female lead; they try everything in the book to make him look cool. However, we hope it is all just a red herring and that some Hollow Earth creature might bite off his head out of nowhere in a jump-scare fashion—that sadly never happens.
With all these issues, you wonder what emboldened the filmmakers to make these many poor choices. It is possible that they thought if the Titan fights were extravagant enough the audience would be satisfied and forgive the other shortcomings, and hence decided to focus less on the writing. In which case, their calculations are right because the scenes where the Titans clash with each other are wonderfully excessive that we cannot complain that the film gave us anything lesser than what we wanted.
The film definitely could have given us a lot more but a WWE-esque zero-gravity fight between two Kaiju teams is a glorious payoff indeed. The last act of the film goes full throttle with its Kaiju madness but it hardly feels like Titans fighting. The sense of dread present in the previous films is absent here and is instead replaced with unapologetic Titan-on-Titan action. The Monsterverse franchise finally embraces the goofiness of its genre but this tonal pivot comes at the cost of weak storytelling.
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is best enjoyed with a group of friends who understand why it is awesome to watch a giant ape take down a lizard the size of a skyscraper with a suplex move and then two scenes later they shake hands like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers from Predator, to take down a common enemy. And if you do have to endure ‘plot’ and human ‘characters’ to get to these glorious action sequences, then so be it.
Director: Adam Wingard
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens
Rating: 2.5/5