Director: Adam Wingard
Writers: Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, Eric Pearson, Max Borenstein
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Kaylee Hottle
Runtime: 113 mins.
2021
Godzilla vs. Kong is the capper to Legendary Entertainment's 'MonsterVerse' quadrilogy that began in 2014 with Gareth Edwards' Godzilla. That film, imperfect as it was, had a real artistic vision guiding it. Godzilla uses impressive CGI, restrained pacing, and painstakingly careful cinematography to capture the sublime terror of a godlike creature. The opening minutes of Godzilla vs. Kong unwittingly demonstrate the folly of jamming this iconography into a shared universe model. Kong casually lumbers around the jungle with no sense of suspense, reveal, or scale. It gets immediately worse once the first lines of dialogue kick in. Bored actors immediately inform us that they need to protect Kong because Godzilla is coming and, wouldn't you know it, two Alpha Predators (tm) are bound to fight.
This is one of the worst, most dully written movies I have seen in a while, stacked to the brim with talented actors pumping out insipid exposition while standing awkwardly around neutral spaces. These shambling bodies can barely be called characters-- everyone is given between zero and one piece of characterization that ranges from 'cares about Kong' to 'used to have a wife.' This is partially owing to the caked up shared universe mythology being ported in from previous lazy films. The result is a slate of new and recurring characters doing absolutely nothing.
Let's look at these quote unquote characters shall we? There's the little deaf-mute native girl* who is apparently the only one who Kong will talk to, and therefore hilariously gets dragged along on perilous military missions in experimental hovercrafts. There's the loopy latinx capitalist who shows up every so often on TV or in peoples' living rooms to drone on about energy sources and Hollow Earth.** There's the incomparable Lance Reddick, who seems to be in the movie for about seven seconds and whose dialogue amounts to, "What are you doing here?" And of course, there's Millie Bobby Brown and her intrepid band of conspiracy unravelers, Brian Tyree Henry and Julian Dennison, who are far too talented to be slumming like this. Their B-plot has them investigate the shady dealings of a corporation that Godzilla keeps attacking for some reason. I was flabbergasted to find that, after watching these chuckleheads run around for the whole movie, they fail to connect at all with the A-plot, and they contribute nothing to the entire film beyond pouring some liquid onto a computer console.
*One of the several instances of this film's casual racism is revealed in a throwaway line: this character, Jia, is formerly a native of Skull Island, and was adopted by Rebecca Hall's scientist character out of obligation because the rest of her people were wiped out. The way the film uses her is so calculated and gross.
**A bit weird that the only two blockbusters to be properly released this year both feature insane latinx capitalists committing atrocities?
I want to circle back to the Hollow Earth business to emphasize that this movie is not just boring and sloppy, but incredibly stupid as well. It would be lunacy to delve too deep into the logic of the plot, but suffice it to say everything centers around a plan to transport Kong to Antarctica (?), then follow him back to the center of the earth where he came from (??), the place he is 'evolutionarily programmed' to return to (???). Yes, there is apparently a Jules Verne-esque kaijutopia a few miles beneath the surface of the earth, a boondoggling revelation that all humans involved respond to with heavylidded apathy. Upon returning to this place of primordial origin, Kong learns nothing about his history, his ancestry, or himself. He does find a cool axe though, then jumps to Hong Kong via a hole that Godzilla blasted from the surface.
All that remains is for the two to duke it out and, I do not consider it a spoiler to say, eventually join forces to combat a greater evil, as is obligatory in all of these 'vs.' films. It may be a spoiler to reveal that this greater foe is none other than Mechagodzilla, evilly created by the evil capitalist using the Hollow Earth power source (????), so I'll steer clear of mentioning that particular plot detail.
What merit to be found in Godzilla vs. Kong exists entirely in the sequences where we get to watch the monkey and the lizard fight. They're not great, they're not terrible, think of it like a really dope tech demo and you might enjoy yourself quite a bit. There's some particularly nice lighting in the nighttime Hong Kong scuffle. Yet these fights all lack the most important anchoring aspect of monster movies: the humanity. Edwards' Godzilla was already pretty weak in the human drama department. It's amazing how each subsequent film has gotten somehow worse. At least Edwards' project succeeded in demonstrating how incomprehensibly terrifying the experience of encountering this creature would be. Godzilla vs. Kong has a couple of brief shots of panicked people that barely even register. They are treated like bipedal debris, as if the total destruction of Hong Kong is nothing more than a lark. The Earth ain't the only hollow thing in this movie.
0.5 / 5 BLOBS
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