Godzilla vs. Kong

 A review by Forrest Humphrey 

So here we are at last, and a little late to the party. Nevertheless, the four film Monsterverse was leading here, the great rematch between King Kong and Godzilla. Perhaps surprisingly the film did extremely well given the odds stacked against it. with the world is still in the grip of the pandemic and the poor reception and box office haul of its predecessor, “King of the Monsters” fresh in people's minds. Released in theaters and HBO Max at the same time, “Godzilla vs. Kong” was a huge success, but how well does the film actually hold up?

Well, that's a mixed bag, as this is the most polarizing film of the Monsterverse. All the problems with the monster action in the previous two Godzilla films have been addressed. There are nowhere near as many cuts in the action, finally giving the audience the multiple minute fight scenes they've been begging to see for years. Almost every set piece is set in the daytime, and the one night scene is in a neon-lit Hong Kong, gone are the murky darkness and obscuring weather effects. This makes for, hands down, the best kaiju experience of the whole series. 

Godzilla and Kong (and a third player I wont spoil just in case some people haven't seen it) are rendered fantastically here, with amazing CGI effects bringing them to life. Both monsters are expressive and full of personality, which is always a huge plus in my book. Special mention has to go to Kong, who is effectively the protagonist of the film and it really works, he's sympathetic and easy to root for as the underdog in this legendary fight. 

Godzilla, at least on the surface, is played more as a villain here attacking cities and chasing both Kong and....something else, which the human cast are trying to find. There's more to it, but Godzilla being a more destructive and angry monster gives the movie a very classic feel since the big guy has always worked best as an antagonistic force, where even if he's fighting an even worse monster he's not exactly on humanity's side. But like I said there's a little more to it I wont spoil. 

All of that sounds so promising and it is. The monster sequences are an absolute damn treat, but, this might be THE worst human cast of the entire bunch. No longer content to simply be boring, many of the human cast here are downright insufferable. Kyle Chandler is back in a mere cameo, and Millie Bobby Brown gets a big subplot to herself this time. She and a couple of other characters are the one's trying to find out why Godzilla is suddenly on the attack, and its the worst part of the film. Millie's character has a totally different personality, and her two co-stars are just terrible characters that I actively disliked. The other team centers around Kong and the little girl he's become friends with, the last survivor of the Skull Island tribe. She's deaf and talks with Kong via sign language, and to her credit, young actress Kayle Hottle is the human heart of the film and kudos to WB for actually hiring a deaf actress for the role. Her bond with Kong is very charming and easily the most enjoyable non-monster part of the film. Their plot revolves around getting to the Hollow Earth (By the way the Hollow Earth is really visually interesting and inspired, a great treat) first referenced in Skull Island to find a power source for the villains' mysterious plan to fight back against the angry Godzilla. The company who contacts them are obviously evil but don't tell our heroes that. 

While Team Kong isn't too bad to spend time with, the villains get nothing to do. I mean that literally. There's two of them and one of them is a very important character related to the previous films but does not get a single freaking line to explain his motivations. The other villain does get a few lines, but its the most paper thin nonsense imaginable. Its possible there was meant to be a lot more here, but the film is under two hours, likely hacked to the bone so there would never be too long a stretch before the big monkey and big lizard would be trying to kill each other again and yet, it would still be so easy to hack Millie Bobby Brown's entire subplot out of the movie and give the antagonists some damn time to develop their story. Its repeated the mistake of the last film, having this huge sprawling cast and giving none of them anything remotely resembling character development. It moves along really fast but its still a chore to get through. 

The music by Tod Holkenborg is decent enough. Kong and Godzilla have solid new themes and there's some nice electronic elements of the score, but it just cant stand up to how good Bear McCreary's excellent score for “King of the Monsters” was. The cinematography is, however, a step up from the last film, with some really neat and creative shot sequences, though for my money Godzilla (2014) is still the most consistently well shot film of the bunch. 

Its kind of fascinating how these films went along. “Skull Island” is the outlier here since that film is the only one where I actually like spending time with the humans, but for the three movies featuring Godzilla, the monster action kept improving but the humans kept getting even worse. For now,  I can say if you just want to see Lizard vs. Monkey, it is worth seeing for those sequences, it really is a hell of a treat to see Godzilla and King Kong scrapping it out again with such a big budget behind it. For now the fate of the Monsterverse is uncertain. Contracts and licensees will be up soon and this movie WAS the endgame of the whole thing, but considering how massive a box office hit this film was, its hard to imagine WB wont be speaking with Toho about the possibility of more movies in the future.