Godzilla vs. Kong Quicky Review.

 

Now this is a film I've looked forward to for a good while. The fourth entry in Legendary's Monsterverse franchise finally brigs to the two iconic monsters together for a clash not seen in nearly 60 years.

Given my feelings towards King of the Monsters, I did have some reservations and worries on how this would be handled. I'm happy to report that they nailed it. That's not the say the film is perfect or that I don't have some issues, but where it counts it succeeds and a large part of that is the monster battles. The choreography and detail put into each fight is miles better than anything else in the entries before and most of the fights are well lit compared to KotM's constant rainstorms at night where you couldn't even see Ghidorah half the time. The visuals have a lot more in common with those of Kong: Skull Island, which I'm thankful for. They also do things that you simply could never accomplish with suits, like having Kong rapidly jump from building to building, an underwater wrestling match, or emoting both Kong and Godzilla's facial expressions with a fine tuning that only CGI could provide.

The story that serves as the framework for these fights on the other hand is...okay. I'll go ahead and say it's better than KotM, which I felt misconstrued 'confused and complicated' with nuanced.

Here the parties are split mainly between two groups with a third in the background.
The first groups is primary Monarch based, consisting of Dr. Ilene Andrews; an anthropological linguist studying Kong on Skull island. Jia; a deaf native girl who has a special connection to Kong, and Dr. Nathan Lind; a disgraced geologist who wrote a book about hollow Earth theory.

The second group consists of Madison Russell returning from KotM, her friend Josh, and a conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes who is a technician for Apex Cybernetics which he greatly distrusts. 

And that brings us to our third group, which is Apex Cybernetics, a robotics corporation consisting of CEO Walter Simmons, and Ren Serizawa the son of Ishirō Serizawa. They're primarily funding Monarch's mission for this movie.


Essentially it's been five years since any major monster sighting, but Godzilla has suddenly been attacking various civilian populations for unknown reasons, mostly Apex Cybernetic facilities. Kong meanwhile has been confined on Skull Island by Monarch out of concern for an inevitable clash between him and Godzilla. 

But that soon changes when Dr. Nathan Lind is approached by Walter Simmons to lead an expedition into the earth, as Simmons requires a source of power for his latest project which could stop Godzilla, and the theorized birthplace of the various Kaiju possibly contains such a source. This leads to Nathan further theorizing that Kong could be used as a sort of guide through the hollow earth, able to find the power in the same way salmon will return to the same area to spawn. And that's pretty much the main plot, with Dr. Andrews and Jia overseeing Kong on the journey.

I'll give special mention toward Jia. Of all the characters she's perhaps the only one that stands out. The film does great job showing a strong bond between the two with some fantastic emoting from Kong that holds a nice emotional weight to them.

The center of the earth is also one of the more fantastical aspects of the film and I love seeing how outlandish the entire thing is. The visuals are brilliantly abstract and I feel the concept fits perfectly with both Godzilla and Kong. Godzilla in a manner like the Mysterians, and Kong like Journey to the Center of the Earth. Side note: Monarch has some anti-gravity craft provided by Apex to navigate the center, it sadly does not look like Moguera. I really gotta wonder if that was an intention at one point because the film is chalk full of references and visual parallels to both properties and I can see that being the case at some point.

Now, the flip side to this praise is the B plot, which I feel is the weakest part of the film. Madison Russell is convinced that there must be a reason behind Godzilla's outbursts, especially given her experiences in the prior film. She sets off on a journey to find Bernie Hayes, who hosts a conspiracy podcast she listens to and who theorizes Apex is the cause of Godzilla's rage. This is primarily where things also get awkward. We have a girl rejecting her stubborn scientist dad (who simply believes Godzilla is bad now) to listen to a crackpot that happens to be right about the most cartoonishly evil corporation being cartoonishly evil. It... just reads really bad, ya know? There's even a joke about him and bleach, which Madison's friend Josh misinterprets as him drinking, but it's actually to wash away biotracking or some such. 

It just isn't as comedic as I think they thought it was. The entire transgression with these three doesn't add anything to the film and they could have easily been cut or heavily rewritten without any major changes to the key events. Even their one major action near the end of the film wouldn't have been necessary, and really it's just a waste of good talent.

In fact that time probably should have been given towards doing something more with Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa. Simmons is clearly meant to be Bob evil CEO of corporate greed, but as much as Apex is supposed to come off as like an Omni Consumer Products or Weyland-Yutani Corporation, there isn't isn't enough done to make Simmons into a complete slime ball that you hate. The closest the guy comes is a speech about making humans the alpha species once again, which gives him some strong Lex Luthor vibes, but it's barely anything.  Ren Serizawa on the other hand is simply token Asian dude, he is shafted hard. I did not even know the character was suppose to be the son of Ishirō until I looked up a cast listing. There has got to be a version of script or deleted scenes where this character has at least some line indicating motivation because it is nothing. He has like 6 lines and that is it. There is confirmation that several characters in KotM where supposed to return, but the final cut of the film doesn't contain them so maybe that's among all those deleted scenes and we'll see it as special features on the home release.

But despite those issues, I will say the final cut is preferable to the film being overly long. I was surprised at how much happens within the film's 1 hour and 53 minute run time and it was refreshing to see. As much as the b plot is questionable in quality, those scenes are rather short and rarely overstay their welcome. Overall the film is a breeze compared to KotM, which often felt like a drag. I can't say I ever felt bored or fatigued with GvK. A lot of that is that comes from the monarch team always being alongside Kong in a way that's more personal than KotM was with Monarch simply following Godzilla around the globe, so we have a lot more interaction and constant Kaiju presence that meshes with a large part of the cast.

I gotta say Godzilla vs Kong is a wonderfully enjoyable film that despite some missteps and still having mediocre human characters, it manages to be a fun time and a perfect cap off to the series. If you have HBOMax or are fully vaccinated and can go to a theater, I'd highly suggest giving it a watch.

Also yes, I know the next review was supposed to be Kamen Rider Black, it's written and will be going up soonish. This is was just a fast and loose review I wanted to put up in a timely manner.