Godzilla began the Monsterverse ten years ago with Gareth Edwards' film, released in May 2014. It was a serious, dark (in every sense), realistic film that focused on human characters and their reaction to the appearance of giant monsters .
Godzilla and Kong: The New Empirefifth installment of Monsterverse from Legendary Pictures, couldn't be more different from Edwards's. For better or worse? Maybe both at the same time, depending on who you ask…
After two Godzilla movies, one Kong movie, and a crossover (and a series, Monarch on Apple TV+), the Monsterverse opts for a direct sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong, the first time that a director repeats a film, the result of the trust of Legendary and Warner with Adam Wingardwhich gave them their first true post-pandemic success in 2021.
Godzilla and Kong: the humans
A Godzilla x Kong Many things can be attributed to him, but one thing cannot be denied: gives absolutely everything. Nothing is left undone, doing exactly what people asked for: fewer human characters, fewer boring plots with people running around destruction, and more prominence to the monstersboth in action and plot.
Godzilla Vs. 2021's Kong already set the path for the future of the Monsterverse, with stories unmistakably monster-driven. But compared to Godzilla and Kong: The New Empire, it seemed like a rehearsal.
It is noted that many decisions have been made based on the reviews of the previous films, starting with the characters. This fifth installment of the Monsterverse reduces the cast of human actors to the bare minimum, and above all, it does not commit the error of dividing them into two groups and two parallel subplotswhich unnecessarily lengthens the film and takes even more weight away from the monsters.
Almost everyone here is returning from Godzilla vs. Kong, but another good decision: they have only recovered the most interesting ones. Nothing of Millie Bobby Brownhis other geek friend, and his father Kyle Chandlerwho were already dead weight in the previous film, shoehorned in to give some continuity to Godzilla: King of the Monsters: everyone out.
Yes, the Oscar nominee is back Brian Tyree Henryagain as comic relief, but this time, not being relegated to an unbearable “B plot”, it is much more enjoyable and likeable.
Alexander Skarsgård drops out of the previous film, and replaces him Dan Stevens In the same role, the heroic and vacillating white male protagonist. But, another decision: here he is left on the bench as secondary, and curiously, projecting an archetype of positive masculinity by sharing some very tender moments with Brian Tyree Henry that caught me by surprise. He is almost anecdotal, but he is there.
For the first time in the Monsterverse, the headliner is a woman: Rebecca Hallwho returns as Kong's director of operations in the Hollow Earth (or something like that) but above all as the mother of a little girl (Kaylee Hottlewho also returns at only twelve years old) last survivor of the Skull Island tribe, and the only one capable of communicating with Kong.
Again, as happened in King of the Monsters (2019), a mother-daughter relationship is at the center of the human drama, but This time the conflict is simpler and at the same time more powerful: The mother knows that modern civilization is no place for a girl like her, but is she willing to give up her own daughter for her well-being?
This is basically all the “chicha” you'll find in human plots, no more, no less: it's nothing special, but it works, and actresses manage to sell you their relationship even in the few scenes they have to develop it.
All decisions in the film related to humans have been cut as much as possible characters that were of no use and simplify the entire conflict so that it can be developed with the greatest possible economy of dialogues and scenes so as not to steal time from the monster scenes.
And works. Ok, maybe Kong: Skull Island (2017) showed that it is possible to have interesting and funny human characters at the same time as monstrous bait (especially if they are with the cachet of Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly or Tom Hiddleston, the only Monsterverse movie with “superstars”).
GxK could have tried, they could have tried a little harder with the human characters to make them more interesting instead of practically giving them up (which doesn't mean that the mother-daughter relationship is not interesting) but if every time they tried they were received with criticism that “humans are a bummer”… well this decision is understandable. It's what the public wanted!
Godzilla and Kong: The “monsters”
Legendary Pictures
With the human characters covered, what about the monsters? Well, now we feel that they are the true driving forces of the story, and not just guests who come out from time to time to have a fight and chase and then continue with the weak human beings.
To be honest, the last two films of the Monsterverse of 2019 and 2021 they were already given much more prominence, but this is where, for the first time, they are released from the leash and can have entire sequences without any human characters involved (and therefore, silent scenes). It's almost reminiscent of the modern Planet of the Apes prequel movies… because GxK has a clear protagonist.
And it's not Godzilla. As already happened in GvsK, the King of the Monsters goes to his ball, and In this one it comes out even less than in the previous one. It's not that it doesn't have enough action scenes, but it seems more like a guest in a Kong movie than a “buddy movie” between the two as they sold it.
In this installment, after being the clear winner of the epitome fight of 2021, Godzilla enjoys tranquility as king of the monsters on the surface of the Earth, acting as protective guardian when another monster decides to go overboard and destroy random cities.
But a new threat motivates him to “evolve” in a redesign already revealed by the trailers, more pink and rough, which I personally am not passionate about, especially because having lost his “belly”.
His appearances are frequent and he has his own 1v1 fights against monsters, but these are too short (also because the rest of the bugs do not last half a round against the King) and they feel like a parallel subplot sometimes agonizingly dosed as Kong's story unfolds.
Warner Bros.
Without intending to continue blurring this review with my partisanship of being #TeamGodzilla, I will now move on to talk about kongbecause I only have good things to say about his role in this film, where he appears considerably more than even his 2017 film, and has character arc more elaborate than many human characters.
If Peter Jackson's great (but very different) King Kong demonstrated anything, it is that, with good CGI, the Primates can be much more than destructive monsters: characters capable of conveying many complex emotions with their facial expressions and gestures.
Far from the ultra-realistic CGI of the modern prequels to the Planet of the Apes, Kong in this installment delivers another boost of quality. As we said before, entire sequences between Kong (and other monsters) without humans in sight are frequent: in practice, silent scenes but capable of transmitting emotionsdevelop relationships between characters (monsters) and advance the plot, and keep you glued to your seat.
Godzilla x Kong: The action
So, with so many monsters, does the action deliver? Without a doubt… although this is where we enter what is perhaps the most irregular part of the film. First, you can rest assured: the movie is frenetic.
Has more action scenes than any film in the saga, despite the fact that its duration has been adjusted by under two hours. In fact, I lost count of the number of fights or chases there are, among many more monsters than those announced, because instead of being long sequences, many are short scenes, but spread throughout the footage.
And is that a bad thing? Well… here I find myself with an unexpected dilemma: the saga has gone from being boring because it doesn't have much action (Gareth Edwards' Godzilla)… to become boring to have too much action.
Warner Bros.
Boredom watching a fight? pressing catch with hundred meter monsters destroying cities? Well, this depends on what each one tolerates. I consider myself a difficult person to satisfy (the latest Ghostbusters disappointed me precisely because of how “little” it is) and even so with GxK I ended up somewhat fed up.
Perhaps there are several factors that influence it, like something I already thought about Godzilla vs. Kong: it has gained in amount of action, but has been lost in virtuosity: The first two Godzilla films from 2014 and 2019 They played “hide” the monster behind colored smoke, rain or fog effects, or seeing them only partially from the point of view of humans at ground level.
And I liked that. Although sometimes it was frustrating because “you couldn't see anything”, playing hint at monsters or reveal them little by little and just seeing them well in the final fight was a crescendo that worked.
Here, with so much action and noise, when You reach the apotheotic end and you feel like you've seen it all.. Another thing that influences this is that, both due to its theme and its structure and even locations, it feels like and already seen of GvsK. It is much larger, but it is no longer surprising, and the story is unoriginal and seems like remnants of the previous one.
Will that happen to everyone? Surely not. Some fans will love this approach, because at the end of the day This is what has been asked of this saga from the beginning.: less hesitation and more bait. Other spectators, however, may not last 20 minutes without fleeing the room in terror.
What we can say is that if someone comes again and says that “only Japanese Godzilla movies are good,” I hope they get hit by an atomic ray. Yes, it's a much “worse” movie than Godzilla Minus One (because that one was also magnificent), but GxK is much more like your average Japanese kaiju movie from the '70s and '90s, only with a seemingly unlimited budget.
Godzilla and Kong: The New Empire is the Monsterverse mutated into the Showa era of Godzilla
Despite all those doubts or mixed feelings that the film generates in me, as I said at the beginning: it cannot be denied that the film does everything to entertain: removing the human characters that were in the way and putting the focus on the monsters, with so many fights that it is impossible for any fan to feel disappointed.
It is, yes, a total mutation of the Monsterversewhich began in a serious and realistic way, towards the films of the Showa era of Godzilla in the 60s and 70s: fun and frenetic, full of action, with humanized monsters, Godzilla in a saving plan, trampling any hint of verisimilitude and without complexes, but neither nuances.
Ah! Do you remember when the Spider-Man No Way Home trailer edited a shot digitally erasing a character? Godzilla and Kong: The New Empire does the same. I didn't see him coming, and he made my afternoon.