Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire

When I originally saw the trailer for Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire I thought Wait didn't we already see this movie? Everything in the trailer looked like something from Adam Wingard's 2021 offering Godzilla vs. Kong. As it turns out, this is a sequel to that movie, and it has new monsters if not new visuals.

 

I love monsters, so yes I went to see this movie, but I didn't like Godzilla vs. Kong, so I also went in knowing what I was going to get and expecting it to be nonsense. The monsters were cool. I was especially into the new pink Gojira and the Ice Princess Gojira. But y’all this movie is so dumb. The script, especially, is so. fucking. dumb. Honestly the most fun part of the movie was making jokes about it with my companion.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but Mothra shows up as a kind of hippy Grandmother Willow in act three, and Brian Tyree Henry’s explanations of the faux-Indigenous science and engineering in this movie are so stupid they make Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs seem like Oppenheimer by comparison. 

 One thing I did find cute: Godzilla curls up to sleep in the Coliseum. I guess we know how often he thinks of the Roman Empire.

Godzilla vs. Kong – Allegedly

Call it Godzilla vs. Kong if you want, but then put them in the movie more! 

I was bored by this movie, and the reason for that is that there are like two plots and neither of them really has anything at all to do with monsters fighting. There's this corporate corruption subplot that is supposed to be funny and is filled with jokes (apparently) but Brian Tyree Henry is not funny at all in this, and he runs around with Millie Bobby Brown (also not funny in this) and Julian Dennison, and one can see where there are supposed to be jokes, but this entire plot is not funny, and there are no monsters. This takes up a lot of the movie. 

There is also a whole thing where a small child can talk to Kong using sign language. Kong never really says anything, though. His communicative abilities are restricted to I'm sad and Home and I don't trust your conniving ass. The CGI is cool, and Kong has neat fur. And, listen, I love Godzilla. But he's just barely in this damn movie.