‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ is as Messy as it Looks

Godzilla is having a moment. The classic kaiju is in the middle of a monster renaissance following the critical and commercial success of Toho’s $15 million Godzilla Minus One – which also netted the big guy his first Oscar for special effects – and now his American counterpart is stomping the box office alongside King Kong in Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

I will preface this by saying I’m not always the biggest fan of the films in this MonsterVerse franchise. Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla left me cold when I first watched it – I still struggle with its pacing – and its sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, was exciting to me at first but it doesn’t hold up on rewatches. Meanwhile, Kong: Skull Island is criminally underrated as a fun creature feature period piece with a wild ensemble cast.

This brings us to Godzilla vs. Kong which, I feel, is the strongest film in this franchise. Despite the weird Hollow Earth science (more on that later), this movie gave me everything I wanted out of a movie in which Godzilla and Kong, well, fight each other. The set pieces are satisfying, the human cast doesn’t get in the way, and the inevitable conclusion in which the Titans team up to battle a common foe – in this case, Mechagodzilla – was great even though we all saw it coming. Director Adam Wingard nailed it, and I was confident that Godzilla x Kong would be just as big of a crowd pleaser. It is … but it also very much isn’t.

To start with what I liked most about this movie, I thought the finale was FANTASTIC. Seeing Godzilla and Kong form the biggest tag team of all kind against common enemies – all while a baby Kong-esque ape named Suko scurries around the battlefield – is an absolute delight. I sat with a stupid grin on my face watching monsters pull off honest-to-goodness wrestling moves, use buildings as weapons, fight in  zero gravity, and perform crazy anime-esque team-up attacks. And sometimes, that’s all you need to walk out of a theater happy.

Unfortunately, that action only accounts for a few minutes of the overall running time. In fact, Godzilla and Kong don’t even really interact with each other until the final battle as the film inexplicably chooses to keep them separated for most of the movie. You see, even though Kong saved Godzilla’s life in the last film, Big G would absolutely MAUL Kong if he ever left Hollow Earth. So, while Kong is dealing with Hollow Earth ape adversary Scar King, his captive ice monster Shimo, and an army of simian servants, Godzilla is … sleeping.

Yes, Godzilla sleeps a lot in this movie. Whether he’s celebrating a victory over a giant spider in Rome by napping in the Coliseum or he’s powering up with an arctic catnap to change into his new, slimmer, and massively toyetic new form, Godzilla spends a lot of time not being in the movie at all. This serves a narrative purpose for the most part (he senses danger in Hollow Earth and is evolving so he can deal with it), but one wonders why you would sideline the dude with top billing in the title for so much of the film.

That danger in Hollow Earth leads us to the human cast. Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle return as Kong expert Dr. Ilene Andrews and her adopted daughter Jia, who has a strong connection with the native people who inhabit Hollow Earth. Brian Tyree Henry is back as Titan-obsessed conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes and Dan Stevens joins the group as Trapper, who is introduced while extracting and replacing a broken tooth from Kong’s mouth. Yep, kaiju dentistry is a thing.

The human cast does a fine job – Henry gets most of the one-liners and laughs here – but unfortunately the movie stops dead whenever it focuses on them. I know that’s a given in these types of movies, but I can’t stress enough how boring this movie is whenever it isn’t showing us giant monsters. And yet, here are the humans droning on and on about Hollow Earth science, gravitational wells and, oh, a “Chosen One” prophecy that both pulls the attention even further away from the main stars and seemingly retcons another movie in this franchise. Cool, cool, cool.

But from the Hollow Earth to the haphazard expansion of Titan lore, it’s beginning to feel like these movies are becoming a lot more complicated and confusing than they need to be. Although it’s almost unfair to compare the two at this point, I can’t help but think of how Godzilla Minus One told a compelling human story with characters that I cared about while also delivering on the spectacle I would expect from a modern Godzilla movie. There’s something to be learned here.

Overall, though, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a bewildering homage to the kaiju flicks of yesteryear – for better and for worse.  You’ll probably love the giant monster fights when they actually happen, but you’ll be tempted to look at your phone during just about everything else.