Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

It was a bold move to make this a rollerblading movie.

“Rise Together or Fall Alone”

Directed by Adam Wingard (Death Note)
Starring Rebecca Hall (The Prestige), Brian Tyree Henry (Joker), Dan Stevens (The Guest), Kaylee Hottle (Godzilla vs. Kong), Alex Ferns (The Batman), Fala Chen (Shang-Chi and the Legend Of the Ten Rings) and Rachel House (Moana)

Another period of relative quiet is broken when a mysterious signal begins to emanate from Hollow Earth, provoking Godzilla to deviate from his pattern of Titan policing, collateral damage and sleeping in monuments and start cruising around, soaking up radiation from reactors and the like. Meanwhile, Kong comes to the surface because he has toothache, and is lonely.

Straight up, this film is a wild ride.

Jia (Hottle), the last of the Skull Island Iwi, begins to pick up the signal and suffer hallucinations and dissociative episodes, worrying her adoptive mother, Dr Ilene Andrews (Hall). When contact with Monarch’s Hollow Earth station is lost, they travel back with Kong, accompanied by Titan podcaster Bernie (Henry), Titan veteranarian (and Kong’s dentist) Trapper (Stevens), and definitely-not-going-to-die-early angry security man Mikael (Ferns).

Kong meets a mini-Kong (notionally called Suko, although I don’t think it’s mentioned in the film,) explores a sinkhole, fights a bunch of jerk apes, fights the leader jerk ape the Skar King (yes, with a k) and wins, only for Skar King to set his pet ice lizard Shimu on him.

Godzilla defeats the Titan Tiamat in order to yoink her sunbeam, a stream of solar radiation which blasts through her lair and allows Big G to emerge stronger than ever, able to drive haters into apoplexy with only the power of his healthy pink glow.

The humans manage to locate a hidden Iwi settlement and learn that Kong’s search for more great apes opened the path to a land beneath Hollow Earth where the Skar King’s followers were imprisoned, after he betrayed the great apes role as guardians of humanity in aeons past. Godzilla thwarted his first attempt to conquer the surface world, and the signal is being sent by the Iwi’s gravitational technology to call him to do so again.

Kong goes to get Godzilla to help, but Godzilla goes steaming in. Fortunately, Jia is able to wake a new Mothra, who breaks up the fight, tells Kong and Godzilla to play nice, and leads them to battle the Skar King’s forces. Trapper leads a bunch of horny lightning pterosaurs to provide support and there are gravity shennanigans.

Skar King and Shimu get to the surface and are kicking butt, until Suko busts his Shimu controlling crystal and the boot is on the other foot.

Adam Wingard is not a director with a spotless record, but he does make a decent monster movie. Godzilla x Kong (sadly, the x is silent and not, as I had presumed, pronounced ‘kiss’) is a big, daft movie which puts the focus squarely on the monsters, with extended sequences with no human observers, just Godzilla wrecking other kaiju or Kong beating up the Skar King’s apes using the baby ape that tried to bite his face off as a club. Peter ‘Three T-Rexes’ Jackson didn’t have that.

The action also manages some variation in style and pace. Kong effortlessly overpowers three of Skar King’s heavies, but struggles with the more agile King and his gloriously gruesome spine whip. I also appreciate his attempt to block Shimu’s breath weapon with his axe the way he did Godzilla’s, only to realise that ice breath works differently.

Kong’s attempt to placate and reason with the charged and charging Godzilla through sign language was adorkable.

I’m very impressed that they put these two in the film, made them old flames, and had basically zero romance.

Speaking of, after the introduction of ‘mini-Kong’ in the trailers, it was honestly a relief to see that he’s a right little face-biting bastard in the film, and not some adorable moppet. It made his bonding with Kong as he tries to kill the larger ape and realises that maybe Kong isn’t interested in killing him, much more compelling.

The limited time spent with the humans makes them easily the least annoying in any Monarchverse Godzilla movie, and while she is strongly tagged with the mother archetype, Andrews is less of a sexy lamp than most.

Andrews, Trapper and Bernie provide a strong set of viewpoint characters, providing insight into the Iwi, kaiju and Monarch without overloading the film with the usual human drama which not only distracts from the monster action, but devalues the novelty and engagement to be drawn from the interactions between the kaiju.

The film manages to build on the mysterious Iwi technology mentioned in Kong with their gravity manipulation technology and Mothra-silk cloaking screens.

Also impressive is that the Iwi got their dignity back, after being wiped out off screen.

I struggle not to think of the villain of the piece as the Ska King, mostly because a giant, gangly ape in a pork pie hat and sunglasses is a hilarious image.

The Pyramids? Really? Again.

Trapper raises two questions that are never answered: 1) how high is he? and 2) is he an homage to M*A*S*H‘s Trapper John or not? He has a certain vibe of the version of Trapper John in Robert Altman’s movie, but thankfully without the heavy notes of toxic misogyny.

And that this adorable moppet turned out to be a right little bastard.

Godzilla x Kong is a big, dumb tentpole movie that doesn’t aspire to be much more than that. It’s great fun, as long as you’re not offended by non-US monuments being demolished by monsters, and honestly pretty good even if you don’t want to see the pyramids destroyed by Godzilla’s atomic flame, and I find myself really conflicted because it looks amazing, but god damnit, leave the monuments alone.

Ratings

“There! Sure glad I don’t look fabulous in this!”*

Production values – GxK, as the kids are calling it, maintains the standards of the Monarchverse in terms of look and sound. 2
Dialogue and performances – A solid cast play limited roles, but that’s the point. Stevens and Hottle get the lion’s share here as Trapper – who is fun – and Jia – who is important. Hottle’s ability to convey both teenage frustration and ‘harbinger of Mothra’ gravitas is impressive. Hall also deserves recognition; I shudder to think of the skeletal damage from carying that much exposition. The mocap for the monsters is amazing, and as much as I mock the poster, they are clearly not roller-skating in the actual movie. 4
Plot and execution – The three threads of the movie take a while to come together, but the increase in actual kaiju screen time is refreshing. 5
Randomness – “Hey, don’t we have a Kong power fist back at camp?” 7
Waste of potential – GxK is probably a stronger offering than GvK, and certainly avoids getting bogged down in human family drama like King of the Monsters. 4