A City-Smashing Good Time: A Godzilla x Kong Review

Image c/o Legendary Pictures

By Matthew Colvin
Entertainment Columnist

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When Ishiro Honda’s original 1954 Godzilla film was first released, the eponymous giant monster was intended to be a creature that was all too relevant to the times; an allegory for the nuclear bomb. Godzilla was portrayed as a giant, unstoppable entity, with the desire and capability to do nothing but kill and destroy, powered by nuclear energy and setting its sights on leveling Japan. At the time it was a nation that, only nine years after being subjected to two atomic bombings, was still recovering from traumas both physical and mental. However, as I sat to watch Adam Wingard’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire on Saturday afternoon and witnessed that same monster being ridden by a giant ape into battle in an underground Hollow Earth against another giant ape riding a similar, ice-breathing giant lizard, all in the name of protecting humanity, I was struck by a single thought. This is not that Godzilla anymore. And that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Godzilla x Kong is silly and it knows it. Its premise builds on the previous Godzilla and King Kong films by Legendary Entertainment, though you hardly need any investment in the franchise to understand the film. All that matters is that at the start of the film, Godzilla and Kong are both tentatively on good terms with humanity, but on terrible terms with each other, and they ultimately will have to set aside their differences buddy-cop style to team up against a threat too great for either of them to defeat alone.

The film follows three concurrent plotlines; one for each of the titular kaiju, and one for the humans trying to convince them to fight together. The human plotline, while trying to carry most of the thematic weight of the film, is by and large deadly boring, and feels like a creative afterthought when compared to the level of fun the filmmakers are having with the monsters. In all fairness, the cast, led by Rebecca Hall as Dr. Ilene Andrews, aren’t doing a bad job here, they’re just given no material to work with and as immature as it sounds, I found it difficult not to spend all of their screen time just waiting for the monsters to show up again.

Despite Godzilla getting top billing in the film’s title, King Kong is the character who the film gives far more attention, galvanizing the whole plot and getting an entire found family character arc that took me by surprise. It’s not particularly poignant or profound, but given that he doesn’t speak a word for the entire film, I was impressed at the fact that the filmmakers were able to communicate a full, cohesive story for him.

The sound design is densely layered and well-designed, and Wingard knew it; I found myself grinning like an idiot at an extended fight sequence in the film’s finale where the music completely dropped away and the solid VFX and booming audio immersed me in the scale of the monster brawl completely. Cinematographer Ben Seresin crafted some goofily fun shots as well, from a tracking shot where the camera moved through a cresting wave as it froze over, to some wild rotations during a zero-gravity sequence within Hollow Earth. They’re cheap tricks, but for a movie like this, cheap tricks are all that are required.

So, is the film good? I’m tempted to say no. The story is borderline incomprehensible and if there are themes, they’re buried under a mountain of mindless action and circuitous plotting. But calling it bad seems beyond unfair, because I’ll be damned if this movie didn’t make me smile a whole lot. It’s not Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla. In fact, it’s probably the furthest thing possible from the original anti-war statement that Godzilla was meant to embody, to the point that it likely isn’t meant to represent much at all at this point. It’s also a far cry from Japanese publisher Toho’s recent Godzilla outings, such as the brilliant Godzilla Minus One. But if you’re looking for the specific kind of joy that only a giant ape smashing an airborne building to bits with a power glove can provide, this might be the film for you.

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