Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

By: Mike Ward on Sunday, March 31

PG-13 Running Time: 115 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • We are living in a Godzillaissance, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire continues on the trend of resurrecting Godzilla and Kong as characters and monsters for a new generation of moviegoers.

  • Really impressive visual effects and sound design will work hard to immerse you into the world inhabited by these two gigantic beasts.

  • A few nice moments exist here - a young ape named Suko, a few discoveries within Hollow Earth.

NO

  • The script is nothing more than exposition to buy time before the next CGI Titan fight. Maybe that’s all you are here for anyway… I dunno.

  • Much of this just feels like you’re watching someone play a really loud and impressive video game of Big Beast Go Fight and Smash. After awhile, with the stilted dialogue and uninteresting developments, the popcorn and snacks only get you so far.

  • December’s Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One did more for the Godzilla franchise in 15 minutes than this movie does to sustain any legacy, other than someone saying: “Godzilla x Kong? Do they fight together? Are they in the same movie again? Didn’t Ghostbusters just make a movie with ‘Empire’ in the title?”


OUR REVIEW

A soulless, empty endeavor, full of CGI monsters beating the hell out of each other, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire spins its wheels in an effort to create a massive spectacle of mayhem and excitement. Well, certainly we have mayhem, not so much on the excitement part.

Perhaps Adam Wingard’s new film suffers from the euphoria that surrounded Godzilla Minus One, the Oscar-winning stunner which made Godzilla a villainous behemoth and immersed audiences into a parallel universe where the tension felt earned, the visual effects beyond impressive on a limited $15 million budget and a cinematic experience that Nicole Kidman waxes poetic about in her AMC Theater ads.

In all seriousness, though there are some nice moments in Godzilla x Kong, this is a movie that simply uses exposition and surface-level storytelling as a means to get to Godzilla battling massive beasts around the world and Kong returning to Hollow Earth. This is where our core group of four main characters make a number of new discoveries and continue their quest in attempting to understand Kong’s history, the lineage of a young girl, and how one character will amass enough audio and video footage for his blog and podcast. (This is a plot point.)

Do we even call things “blogs” in 2024? I digress.

For those who may have missed 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, which arrived during the pandemic and was released on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time, Wingard catches us all up on what we may have missed the last go ‘round. That’s helpful. This allows us to dive right into the meat of the matter if you will. Kong is in Hollow Earth, co-existing in a world that is both impressive and menacing, while Godzilla fights the mutant “Titans” who seemingly try to destroy humankind. After one such victory, he curls up for a nap to sleep off the battle. Of course, as one does, he naps inside the Colosseum. 

However, Godzilla is also seemingly drawn to nuclear power plants and radiation sites. He’s powering up for something, and scientists are at a loss. Meanwhile, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is made aware of strange behavior at school by her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle). Jia is drawing patterns and appearing to black out, or go into a trance of sorts, while doing so. Concerned, Dr. Andrews remembers she’s seen these patterns before and they relate to the Iwi Tribe, Jia’s lineal descendants who were defeated years before.

At this point, it feels like maybe we have something - like screenwriters Terry Rossio, Jeremy Slater and Simon Barrett are going to mix and match a compendium of subplots and create something that immerses us into this otherworld of adventure and mystery. And I will say, when impressive visual effects are the best thing this movie has going for it, you best believe that Hollow Earth looks incredible, the creatures and beasts and CGI is flawless and the film is impressively staged. 

But again, this is soulless. There’s no there there.

While we end up with Kong finding an eventual companion in a young ape named Suko to eventually stay by his side and Jia unlocking a major mystery in her tribal history, the rest of the movie languishes. The battles are predictable, the melodrama never really connects in an emotional way and we end up watching computer-generated monsters participate in a makeshift MonsterMania. 

Look, I love a good hoss fight as much as anyone. Even CGI ones. But this cannot be all the movie offers. And after awhile, Godzilla x Kong becomes frustratingly simple and inert in terms of generating any excitement or providing the escapism the movie teases.

Interestingly, and certainly coincidental, this is the second movie in subsequent movies to use “Empire” in the title, arriving on the heels of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Both films feature monsters who can freeze anything in its path. It’s too bad the Ghostbusters couldn’t have hitched a ride to help with the mission that Andrews, radical veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens) and bumbling podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) take up on behalf of Earth and all its people. 

At times, I wondered what would happen if Godzilla and Kong and whatever they were up against just destroyed everything in its path. I kind of want that movie. A MonsterMania style destruction the likes of which we have never seen. What would happen if these monsters, many of which are dispatched way too easily, actually had prolonged brawls to the death. What would be left of Earth? What would be left of the human race? Then what? Who survives? How does a world essentially run by the monsters who destroyed society as we know it adapt, evolve, and cultivate a future?

Maybe someday we will have someone brave enough to make that movie. Until then, we get things like this: an increasingly boring Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire which squanders some of the good it generates for a series of exhausting CGI Big Battles. 

Which begs the question…isn’t this what video games were made for?

CAST & CREW

Starring: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen, Rachel House

Director: Adam Wingard
Written by: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater (screenplay); Terry Rossio, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett (story)
Release Date: March 29, 2024
Warner Bros.