GODZILLA VS. KONG REVIEW
Like so many life-long monster movie fans, I have been waiting to see a rematch between King Kong and Godzilla since I was a kid. It’s the epitome of giant monster movie clashes. The King of the Monsters versus the Eighth Wonder of the World. The most iconic Japanese kaiju versus the most iconic American kaiju. The East versus the West. Lizard versus monkey. And now, finally, it’s here, but did it deliver?
I can say, without a doubt, it was worth the wait.
I can also pretty safely say Godzilla vs. Kong is my new favourite out of the three MonsterVerse
Godzilla films, even though this is
really a more Kong-focused film. Don’t misconstrue what I’m about to say as a
complaint—if anything it’s a cursory desire at most—but I’m really surprised
that for a third time in a row, Godzilla was playing second fiddle to yet
another monster. In Godzilla 2014,
everyone complained he wasn’t in it enough and it focused too much on the MUTOs
despite being titled Godzilla. A fair
complaint. Then, Godzilla: King of the
Monsters had all kinds of other monsters, but Godzilla was still often in
the background comparatively. In both movies he had a key role despite lack of
screen time, but now in Godzilla vs. Kong,
even though his name comes first in the title (unlike the original from 1962, called
King Kong vs. Godzilla), this is
Kong’s movie, and Godzilla, while obviously very important to the plot once
again, barely gets any scenes just to himself. Again, I’m not complaining, and
I’ll explain why.
For a movie called Godzilla vs. Kong, it isn’t as overindulgent in some of the ways you might expect. I would have loved to see Godzilla get a more extensive scene of him arriving to Pensacola and attacking and destroying the place, but enough was shown to be satisfying, and then we’re on to the next scene. At first when I saw the runtime was under two hours, I thought I might be disappointed, given this is the shortest MonsterVerse entry so far, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the pacing was terrific, there was no messing around, we get right down to business with the monsters right out of the gate, and it kept up a steady escalation of events and action that just drew me in and took me along for the ride. And what a wild ride it is!
Godzilla vs. Kong delivers on its title, and might be one of the most satisfying “versus” movies to date. We get the fight without any cutaways, without pulling any punches, and without holding back. And, we get a winner (I won’t say who). Even though there’s still more to this movie than just the fight, the main reason to tune in is for the title bout, and it didn’t disappoint. The opening title sequence is consistent with all previous MonsterVerse films, and even ends with a wrestling-style bracket, the perfect way to lead into the adventure.
One of the reasons the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been so successful is because the filmmakers are responsive to the fans while still sticking to their intended stories. The MonsterVerse has seemingly followed suit, because Godzilla vs. Kong was built up with three previous films, but complaints from the fans about those films have been heard, and corrected. In Godzilla 2014, the monster battles were cut short until the last one, and they always took place at night. In King of the Monsters, there were more battles, though they were still relatively brief, and always happened at night or in stormy weather. While I didn’t love Kong: Skull Island, I did enjoy the daytime monster fights, which all looked great. Godzilla vs. Kong takes place mainly in daylight, the fights are all shown in full, the camera work is spectacular, and even though the final big confrontation between the title monsters is at night, it’s in a well-lit city with more neon than even Pacific Rim.
The human characters get a pass from me. Are they great? Absolutely not. The mad scientist human villains are cliché and uninteresting, the hero scientists are alright but don’t stand out at all, and Millie Bobbie Brown/Julian Dennison are pretty fun, but don’t do that much. There are two separate groups of human characters doing different things and they never interact until the very end and it doesn’t even matter, but I kind of liked the switching back and forth, it kept things moving along. Of course, I have to talk about the characters that make this movie worth watching in the first place, Godzilla and Kong. I didn’t think the visual effects could get much better, but they did. Both monsters look incredible, both convey so much emotion and have such personality, and it was a joy to see them on screen so much.
I’m just going to wrap up the review right here. Godzilla vs. Kong is awesome. It has pretty much everything monster movie fans could have hoped for. I for one was extremely satisfied; I had hoped it would be good, but I didn’t expect it to be as wild and thrilling as it turned out to be. Sure, there were still a few things that bugged me, but in the end, it’s everything I had hoped for as a kid, plus a little more. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an epic monster movie.
I have to do a spoilers section, because there’s just too much more I have to comment on, so if you have already seen it, or aren’t worried about knowing what happens, read ahead, but if you haven’t seen Godzilla vs. Kong and don't want to know more details, stop right here. Alright, spoiler time:
As surprising as it was to see the mechanical titan of terror, what was also surprising was the lack of other monsters from the previous movie. Rodan, Behemoth, and all the rest of those titans who bowed down to Godzilla at the end of King of the Monsters are nowhere to be seen. While it seemed a little odd story-wise to completely disregard them, I didn’t really end up missing them that much, because just having Godzilla and Kong (and Mechagodzilla) was more than enough. It didn’t feel like the others were completely forgotten, it just didn’t work to have them in this story, and actually, I’m okay with that. I do hope we get to see them all back for a Destroy All Monsters style team-up one day, though.
And as for the plot, I’m glad I skipped the trailers, because I had no idea we were going to see so much of the hollow earth, but was it ever cool! King Kong has always been rooted in a world of fantasy with Skull Island being a refuge for prehistoric monsters, but Kong has never been on this outlandish of a journey ever before. Seeing him fighting weird new creatures amid floating rocks like he was on Pandora from Avatar and sitting on a gigantic throne and picking up an ancient axe made from one of Godzilla’s spikes that powers up the whole temple were things I never knew I wanted to see but am so glad I did. Speaking of the throne, we can officially call him KING Kong now instead of just Kong, right? One last thing: Godzilla using his atomic breath to burn a hole into the center of the earth was one of the biggest power moves the scaly guy has ever pulled.
