The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+
First of all, how am I supposed to pronounce the title of this movie? Is it supposed to be “Godzilla and Kong?” If so, when did “x” start to mean “and?” It isn’t “Godzilla versus Kong” because that was the last movie. Is it a math problem, like “Godzilla Times Kong?” Or does “Godzilla Equal X Kong” and I need to divide Godzilla by Kong to solve for X? What the fuck are we doing here?
However I am supposed to say it, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a big, dumb, mindless popcorn movie and I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult. This movie knows what it is and embraces its own stupidity and I find that self-awareness to be somewhat endearing. Out of the Monsterverse movies, which now date back a decade to 2014’s Godzilla, only Kong: Skull Island has been a legitimately good film. The other entries have been varying levels of forgettable fluff, but this entry is perhaps the most entertaining bit of fluff so far. I still won’t remember it, but it was entertaining enough during the moment.
Following the events of 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, it’s been decided that Godzilla and Kong must be kept separate because they are both alphas and will just repeatedly fight each other. As a solution, Kong is kept in Hollow Earth while Godzilla is kept on the surface. I’m not sure why they put the friendlier one in Hollow Earth and kept the more destructive one on the surface, but whatever. This arrangement is going pretty well with Kong establishing a new home for himself and Godzilla only occasionally awakening from his slumber in the Roman Coliseum (which he has made his bed) to fight a monster and inadvertently kills thousands of people and cause billions in property damage. Humanity has apparently just grown to shrug off Godzilla’s massive collateral damage as a necessary nuisance.
The peace is broken when Kong discovers a clan of evil gorillas in Hollow Earth that control a giant ice dragon. These gorillas are led by the Skar King, who forces the other gorillas to, um, endlessly move rocks around. I honestly have no idea what they are doing. They don’t seem to be building anything, they just dig and move rocks. Meanwhile, Godzilla hears a distress signal coming from Hollow Earth and starts bulking up for a fight by absorbing nuclear energy from power plants and other titans. Yada yada yada, it turns out that Godzilla is an ancient enemy of the Skar King and the distress signal has something to do with Mothra, leading to battle lines being drawn with Kong, Godzilla and Mothra on one side and Skar King, the gorilla army and the ice dragon on the other side. There are also human characters involved, I guess.
As a quick aside, there are conflicting reports on whether or not Mothra was supposed to be in this movie. When the film was first screened for test audiences, there was a bat-monster named Phosphera in place of Mothra and online rumors said that Phosphera was replaced by Mothra because test audiences didn’t like the new monster. However, the filmmakers claim that Mothra was in the original script and that Phosphera was just a place-holder while they secured the rights to use Mothra. Given that Mothra clearly makes sense in the context of the movie, I’m inclined to believe the filmmakers.
The plot is sensical in only the most cartoonish sense of the word, but the monster battles are as entertaining as ever. Watching Kong establish dominance in Hollow Earth could have been its own movie and I laughed out loud at an early moment of Kong kicking a challenger off the side of a cliff. Godzilla and Kong again fight briefly, mainly because Godzilla is a dick in this universe, and the sequence it straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon with Godzilla suplexing Kong and Kong repeatedly punching Godzilla in the face. The final battle is a giant monster mash with a zero gravity sequence and mass destruction galore, truly satisfying the ten-year-old kid sensibilities within me. The effects are all solid, especially when the humans aren’t on screen, although the film does have an issue with scale transitions between Hollow Earth and regular Earth. The biggest drawback among the creatures is that the new additions are pretty lackluster. The Skar King is basically just an evil counterpart to Kong and the baby Kong could either just be a cynical merchandising ploy or a homage to 1933’s Son of Kong. Even if it’s the latter, there is a reason why nobody talks about Son of Kong.
Aside from Kong: Skull Island, the Achilles heel of this franchise has been the human characters and, boy, does this movie not fix that problem. To put this as eloquently as I can, I don’t give a flying fuck about these people. The lead is a scientist played by Rebecca Hall and, while I assume that all of these characters were in the other movies, she’s the only one that I remember and that’s only because she’s played by Rebecca Hall. She needs to lead a team into Hollow Earth, presumably for reasons, and she assembles quite a squad to bring with her: a little girl, a conspiracy theorist and a veterinarian. If I was venturing into a new realm that’s filled with giant monsters that are making Godzilla nervous, I would probably opt to bring a SEALS team with me instead of this group, but that’s just me. Although then we would miss out on….um, whatever these people do. I’ll be honest, it’s been a week since I saw this movie and I honestly can’t remember a damn thing that the human characters do or say. There is just no reason for them to be there. The monsters can carry these movies on their own and we don’t need human characters awkwardly shoehorned into these movies to drag out the running time.
I’m a picky man when it comes to Godzilla lately, as Godzilla Minus One was too serious for me and this movie is too silly for me. I’m like Goldilocks looking for that Godzilla movie that’s just right. If you check your brain at the door, you can have a fun enough time with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, but I’m disappointed that this series has failed to live up to the potential promised by Kong: Skull Island.
