Movie Review - "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"

I think it's pretty fair to say Godzilla is currently having a bit of a pop culture "moment." Not only did "Godzilla Minus One" exceed literally every expectation at the box office, it just won an Oscar, the first time in the 70-year history of the franchise. 

©Warner Bros

That goodwill has certainly benefited "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," which has done extremely well since its release on March 29. That success will surely result in more movies in the Monsterverse, but before we think about the future, let's take a look at this movie. Obviously, it's not as good as "Minus One," but is it a good movie on its own?

Uhhh ... sort of? Spoilers to follow. You've been warned.

Let's talk about the positives first, and there are quite a few. First and foremost is Kong. Everyone's favorite giant ape is really the center of this movie; he gets an honest-to-goodness character arc that really does him justice. He starts off alone and clearly despondent, as he's been searching for others of his kind for years now, and he ends up leading an entire kingdom of kaiju apes. This would be the new empire in the subtitle. Really, all the Kongs (giant monkeys? kaiju apes? What do you call Kong's species, anyway?) are done very well. Obviously, not all of them get personalities, but the major ones do, and this is honestly probably the movie's greatest strength: It's able to tell a story about these titans who don't speak. There's no dialogue, no subtitles, the story is conveyed entirely through body language. And it works very well. You know exactly what the apes are thinking. It does help that they have human-like faces capable of human-like expressions, but credit's where it's due.

Another thing that I liked, oddly enough, was the human storyline. Bad human drama is hardly a Monsterverse-only problem, but between 2014 killing off the movie's best actor halfway through, King of the Monsters' "My God" "... Zilla" moment, and Godzilla vs. Kong's extreme overabundance of characters and plotlines that go nowhere, GxK made the excellent decision to trim the fat and focus on a small group of people doing one specific thing: Getting Jia (Kong's human companion) down to a tribe of people living in the Hollow Earth so she can resurrect Mothra. It's a completely bonkers and silly storyline, but it's a bonkers and silly movie, and the people never get in the way of the monster action. It can't hold a candle to "Minus One," obviously, but it's serviceable, and you can't ask for more than that.

©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Now, I think, it's time to get into something a little more contentious, and that's Godzilla. You know, the main character of the franchise, the first monster named in the title, star of nearly 40 movies over 70 years. Kong may be older, but Godzilla's a lot more prolific. 

Yeah, Godzilla's not in this movie very much. And when he is, he's doing stuff, but it's not exactly the most compelling. Basically, to make a long story short, the Iwi tribe (the people living in Hollow Earth) have sent out a psychic distress call warning that Scar King (the evil Kong leading the tribe at the start of the movie) is close to breaking out of his prison and reaching the surface. Oh, and he's got a gigantic ice-breathing lizard called Shimo at his beck and call, courtesy of what's basically a pain collar. Godzilla hears this distress call, decides that he's going to need a power-up to deal with this threat, and spends the movie absorbing a nuclear power plant, killing two titans that are in his way, and reaching a so-called "evolved" state. This pink-colored form is ... interesting; he's much thinner and has spikes at the end of his tail. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either.

Anyway, the problem with Godzilla in this movie is that he's ridiculously overprepared and really doesn't do much in the big final battle. See, he does all this prep work because he thinks he'll have to take on Scar King and Shimo on his own. Something he's already done, according to the movie. He's the one who put Scar King in his prison to begin with. But, of course, Godzilla's not alone. Kong and Mothra (who's been resurrected for the hundredth time) are both there to help (and so is Kong's mini-Kong friend he made along the way). This kind of saps the tension out of the big finale. Kong and Godzilla don't ever feel like they're threatened, and Mothra doesn't even bother coming along for the portion of the fight that takes place on the surface, staying in Hollow Earth to do, uh, something. Godzilla's only there to occasionally tackle Shimo when she fires off her ice breath at Kong, who ostensibly can't deal with that attack. And then when Kong finally destroys Scar King's hold over Shimo, the fight is over, as Shimo immediately turns on Scar King. 

©Warner Bros

I hesitate to call a giant monster fight lame, because the action and choreography is very cool, but the fight does just sort of end, and I was definitely like "is that it?" Ninety-plus minutes of tension and build-up for Scar King to die like a little punk. At the very least, the ending does place Kong in a good place, with his story concluded. Hopefully the next movie lets him live in peace and we can follow Godzilla again, since Godzilla's story isn't at an end.

My other big issue, and this is a fairly common perspective, is that Hollow Earth presents a tricky dilemma for giant monster battles. Do you want to know why Godzilla always does his thing in cities? Well, other than it's cool seeing big buildings get destroyed, it's helpful for perspective. Godzilla feels enormous when wandering through skyscrapers; we know the scale of a city, and seeing Godzilla peering over a skyscraper is awe-inspiring. Hollow Earth lacks that sense of perspective. Too often it felt like Kong was just a normal-sized ape, a problem not helped by the "Planet of the Apes" preview that played just before the movie. Obviously, these monster battles are all just massive animations, elaborate cartoons, but when they take place in human cities, there's an illusion of verisimilitude. That illusion is broken during the Hollow Earth segments. It's a shame, because I like the idea of Hollow Earth in theory, but practically, it needs to be used sparingly.

Those are the major highlights and lowlights of the movie, but one little thing that I liked and wanted to point out is Godzilla turning the Colosseum into his personal cat bed; he starts off the movie curled up inside it, asleep, and he ends it curled up inside the Colosseum, asleep. It's a cute moment, and I immediately thought, "I wonder if it reminds him of his old home, the temple that got blown up during KOTM." An ancient megastructure, the one such building big enough to house him, it made sense. So much sense that apparently the novelization confirms exactly that; Godzilla likes Rome because of the giant ancient architecture. I'm not sure if that will help or hurt Rome's tourism business. I'd go to Rome to check out a sleeping Godzilla. 

Anyway, I think that's pretty much all I have to say about this movie. It's definitely fun in a turn-your-brain-off blockbuster sort of way, even if the conclusion is a bit foregone. I think, in terms of rating, I'll give it a 6.5 out of 10, slightly better that Godzilla vs. Kong, but not on the same level as 2014 or KOTM. 

Picture of the Day #1

I present to you one of the greatest pictures I have ever seen, and trust me, I've seen a lot of really great stuff. I've been on the internet before.

That's right, it's Godzilla playing basketball.

This glorious (and official) image comes from a special 1992 issue by Dark Horse Comics entitled Godzilla vs. Barkley. Apparently it's based on a Nike commercial from that same year in which Godzilla played Charles Barkley in a little one on one.

I'm hoping to do this on a fairly regular basis, find some picture, either one I found or one I took myself, and post it up on here. You know, something to break up the long pauses between more substantial content, like my ongoing updates on Pluto, or my golf course reviews.

A Bit of Godzilla News

I guess Japan has gotten sick and tired of throwing their entire military at trying to stop Godzilla, so today, they're going for a new strategy: making Godzilla a citizen of Japan. Not only, but they've given him a job and made him the ambassador of tourism for the city of Shinjuku. Not the most obvious choice of city, but apparently Godzilla has visited a few times. It's an interesting move for Godzilla, moving onto a whole new career in his 60's, only a few years from retirement, and considering he's got a movie career in the U.S now, and he's making a return to Japan cinema next year after more than a decade. I guess ambassador of tourism isn't a very time consuming job.

Godzilla Review

A theater nearby had a special showing of the new Godzilla movie at 7 this evening, so I went out and saw it.  This was a big deal for me, I've been watching Godzilla movies for a long time.  I saw the first American Godzilla movie back in 1998, and back when Blockbuster was still a thing, my family rented a bunch of the old Japanese movies.  They were cheesy, with bad acting, terrible plots, and at least until the 1980's reboot series, the monsters looked really dumb.  But that was part of their charm, and the fights were pretty good.  Of course, I've seen the original, which is actually a very good movie.  As for the 1998 Godzilla, well, let's just say the best thing that came out of that movie was the cartoon they followed it up with.  It was very Saturday morning, but the Godzilla in that actually did things, actually fought monsters, and didn't get killed by a couple of missiles after getting tangled in some cables.  Honestly, the bar for this Godzilla wasn't very high after our last attempt.  Even so, this was a big deal for me, I really, really wanted this movie to be good.

Fortunately, it was good.  The story wasn't the most compelling, but Godzilla movies have never been about that.  I don't go to a Godzilla movie to care about the human characters and whatever nonsense they get into.  Actually, I thought there was a little too much human action in the second half of the movie, and not enough monster action.  There was a thing with the nuclear bomb that needed deactivating, but it kind of detracted from the main attraction.  I suppose it was necessary for the main character to be there so that he could torch the eggs of the Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organism, or MUTO.  There won't be any more of those things running around.

Enough about the people though.  Some people might care about the actors and the acting, but I don't.  What I care about is the monsters.  We're introduced to the MUTO's first, and yes, there are two of them.  They're a male and female of the same species, the male flies from Japan to San Francisco by way of Hawaii, stopping there long enough to torch Honolulu, and the female, who was stored in Yucca Mountain with a bunch of nuclear waste, crosses the desert, runs right through Vegas, and to San Francisco.  When I heard there was a flying monster, I thought immediately that it was going to be Rodan, but I was wrong, and I'm glad I was.  If there are sequels, then maybe they can go to the old monsters, but I think it was good to bring in new ones for this movie.  I'm not sure I agree with the design, they were a bit weird, but they worked.

Godzilla is unamused by tiny monsters

And now to the main attraction.  It was almost exactly one hour into the movie when he first appears on screen, aside from a brief moment in the opening credits.  He looked good, very reminiscent of the Japanese Godzilla from the 80's and 90's.  For some reason, we seem to like giving our Godzillas a square head, but that was my only complaint.  He was big, and interestingly enough, not all that mean.  He wasn't really all that interested in humans, and he never actively destroyed anything.  I like that, I like that this Godzilla wasn't a bad guy, and I liked that the military didn't even try to fight him.  There was one scene where the Navy is following Godzilla to San Francisco, and they are right there next to him, not more than a couple hundred feet away.  They must be brave people, even if Godzilla wasn't trying to kill me, I would maintain a bit more distance than that.

With multiple monsters, a fight is inevitable.  Godzilla is presented as a balancing force, who is bent on destroying these new monsters, who are disrupting the order of the world.  So, he's the good guy.  The battle goes down in downtown San Francisco, and while I wish there was a bit more of it, the fight is very, very good.  This Godzilla fights like the Japanese version, which is to say, a bit dopey.  He forgets multiple times about the flying MUTO and is constantly being surprised by it.  He lets a building fall on him for no good reason.  I chuckled at that, because I don't know how many times I've seen that, and it's never worked once.  The entire fight is very well done, but there are several points of levity in there, especially if you know Godzilla.  Minor spoiler if you don't know how these movies work, but Godzilla finishes off the second monster with one of the greatest moves I've ever seen, in any movie, anywhere.  I won't tell you what it is, but it was amazing.

I guess I've come to the all important rating part of the review.  I'll give it an 8.5 out of 10.  When it was good, it was very good, but I got too much people stuff, and not enough monsters beating each other up.  That's a shame, because when we did get to that part, it was very impressive.  I would recommend watching it, and I'll probably go again.  And buy it on DVD when it comes out.  I do love me some Godzilla.

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