Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Released March 29, 2024

Directed by Adam Wingard

* No Spoilers - though I do comment on some action beats and a few stand out scenes *

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a two hour, live action, saturday morning cartoon. This is not a serious drama with deeper social commentary, it’s an action packed “superhero movie” full of monster fights and brightly coloured elemental laser beams. If thats what you’re looking for it will be a fun time, no matter how simplistic and hollow.

The story is straightforward and they don’t try to go into convoluted plot lines or character arcs. A monster in the “Hollow Earth” poses a threat to the world and the humans have to get Godzilla and Kong together to stop it. We do get a bit of lore and world building but it’s only there to set up the action sequences. The writing is definitely an improvement over Godzilla vs. Kong’s (2021) horrendous moustache twirling villains and weak supporting characters but it’s still not great.

This movie is pure spectacle. I went to the theatre to see giant monsters smashing each other and it delivers lots of that. If you aren’t going to watch it in a theatre I wouldn’t even bother. There is no other reason to see this other than the visuals and action. That said the direction is a mixed bag. Where it shines it is impressive but where it fails it is disappointing. I didn’t expect anything profound or groundbreaking but the varying quality makes Godzilla x Kong’s missteps that much more apparent.

There way too much exposition. Most of the dialogue with the exception of some extremely limited character moments, are explaining the lore, explaining the threat, explaining why Godzilla is where he is, explaining why this creature is doing what it’s doing, and so on. It’s dense, bland, and boring but somewhat of an unfortunate necessity.

This is clearest in what I call an “exposition sandwich”. The main antagonist is the Skar King, another giant ape inside Hollow Earth. Right before Kong finally meets his new nemesis we get a heavy exposition dump about him. The humans literally recite his backstory as they discover a series of images carved on stone tablets. It’s contrived and drawn out an example of why I hate when movies tell rather than show.

However, what comes next was the best scene in the movie. There is no dialogue at all as Kong confronts the Skar King in his lair. We are shown everything we need to know about the villain and his tribe with gestures, facial expressions, and visual cues. It pays off on some foreshadowing from earlier scenes, and Kong’s story leading up to this was similarly devoid of dialogue or expository narration. This is a great example of visual storytelling.

I call it a “sandwich” because immediately after the aforementioned scene we get yet another exposition dump. The humans lay out their plan and what they have to do next in the most obtuse way. I get that this may be necessary based on the movie’s structure but it doesn’t make it any less painful. The amazing visual storytelling of the last scene (which I don’t often compliment in these movies) only exacerbated how much of a regression it was to go back to more abysmal exposition.

Rebecca Hall (The Town) is back as Dr. Andrews along with Kaylee Hottle (Godzilla vs. Kong) as Jia, the last survivor of a tribe from Skull Island. They have a few moments highlighting their mother-daughter relationship but they worked mainly because of Hall’s performance. She is a great actor and does a lot with limited material. Brian Tyree Henry (Bullet Train) returns as comic relief conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes and is thankfully not as annoying as he was in the last movie. Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) plays Trapper, a titan veterinarian. He is goofy and weird but the cheese factor is so deliberate that I can’t help but have fun. I especially enjoyed his ironically “heroic” moments accompanied by iconic rock and R n B songs. Brian Tyree Henry’s character is actually made way more endearing because of the odd-couple bromance between him and Stevens’ character.

No one should watch this movie expecting deep narrative character arcs but I was happy that the movie wasn’t shy about that. Previous entries made half-assed attempts but they were so poor and forced that they’d be be better off skipping them. Thankfully that is the case here. They keep the characters lean, leaving their arcs more impactful because they are simple and straightforward

Visually this is an overwhelming feast for the eyes…if that feast was made up of energy drinks and neon coloured dessert. That’s not a bad thing. Though it is a sensory overload, I’m impressed with how awesome the action scenes look. While visually appealing this isn’t the most artistic cinematography, it’s serviceable and functional. Things are clear and give a good sense of where characters are and who is fighting who. This easily could have been a blurred mess amid all the chaos and debris but the production design, specifically the colours and silhouettes of the main creature characters, made it work. Likewise, I appreciate the varied and distinct colour palette. The orange glowing molten lava with dark grey rocks made Skar King’s lair a memorable location. The neon blues and pinks contrasted with the icy white arctic environments made for a striking display of Godzilla’s power The monsters also have unique silhouettes, Kong is a grey furred muscular brute while Skar King is a lanky acrobat with red fur. Everything is distinct so the action scenes were much easier to follow.

The CGI is remarkable. The fur, scars, and wrinkles on these monsters is super detailed and realistic, especially when we see Kong in close up. Unfortunately that realism doesn’t translate to the movement of Godzilla. His gestures are too human and seeing him run, jump, and using wrestling moves (I know it’s a call back to the older Godzilla movies) stripped away any gravitas or weight because it was so goofy. Aside from a few scenes the sense of scale was way off. More than half of the movie takes place in Hollow Earth, where there are giant trees, giant wolves and giant everything. It left me with little frame of reference. Colossal titans don’t feel as big when everything else around them is huge. As creative as it was to have a fight scene in zero gravity, it didn’t help give these behemoths weight when they are literally floating around. That did change in the climax where we got some amazing ground level shots of the monsters clashing, but It was short lived and the movie would have benefited with more use of that perspective.

The sound design was weak over all. Audio was muddled and there was too much going on all at once. The few times they quieted down and isolated the sounds were great. I loved hearing the roars, crashes, and cracking ice but most of the time it was lost because the movie throws everything at your ears all at once. Definitely the weakest part of the movie on a technical level.

Kong is clearly the star of this movie. He is treated like a super hero and despite the abrupt ending, has a pretty solid arc. I loved the “Home Alone” style traps he uses and there is a hysterical moment where he beats other apes using a smaller ape as a weapon…I feel bad for laughing but it was ridiculous in the most entertaining way. I know it’s a minor gripe but towards the start of the movie there is one of the works examples of a product placement I have ever seen. Hall’s character picks up Jia from school and the camera cuts to an unnecessary wide shot showing a car parked at 45 degree angle with its logo front and centre. It’s one of the most brazen examples of bad product placement and the audience actually laughed because of how obvious it was.

6/10* - This met and at times exceeded my expectations. It’s over the top bombastic action with bright colours and lots of destruction. It will satisfy anime fans to see laser blasts and neon power ups because this is truly a saturday morning cartoon brought to live action. The story has substance and you shouldn’t expect deeper themes or character moments, but Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a popcorn movie that is fun if you turn your brain off and enjoy the spectacle. A fun action adventure that is definitely not for everyone, but it does what it set out to do and, for the most part, does it pretty well.

*I struggled between giving this a 5 or a 6 but it was undeniably fun and the scene introducing Skar King probably pushed it up a point

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