There are few things more satisfying to the average viewer than seeing giant monsters and/or robots beat each other up onscreen. This very specific part of the human psyche has been able to live out this fantasy with previous films like the Pacific Rim series or even Power Rangers but rest assured, none have come close to the absolute disaster porn unleashed by Legendary's MonsterVerse. Yet another reboot of Toho's Godzilla franchise, 2014's Godzilla kickstarted this new shared universe and in recent years, its mythos has rapidly expanded, with everyone's favourite giant monkey King Kong making his return in 2017's Kong: Skull Island and with a truckload of other kaiju (or "Titans" in the films) appearing in 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Now, with the recent release of Godzilla vs. Kong, we're seeing the world's two remaining alpha Titans engage in furious combat to determine who is the true king of the monsters. Let's dive in.
REVIEW (SPOILER ALERT)
Introduction: As mentioned up top the MonsterVerse is Legendary's attempt at creating a shared universe, with the central character of course being the resident nuclear lizard Godzilla. Alongside him is Kong (the mononym he's referred to as) and a bunch of other famous kaiju from the original Japanese series such as King Ghidorah, Mothra and Rodan. With the exception of Kong: Skull Island, the MonsterVerse films are known for the insane levels of destruction that happen and really no one should be able to survive the Titans' clashes unless they're protected by plot armour, and Godzilla vs. Kong is no different. Taking place 5 years after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, this film is arguably what the entire MonsterVerse has been working towards, a clash between the two strongest Titans to walk the face of the Earth. After setting up Godzilla as the "king of the monsters" in his second film and teasing their eventual fight in post-credits scenes, they've finally collided in a battle of epic proportions.
Giving an extremely abridged version of events, both Godzilla and Kong's species have an ancient rivalry and now as the last of their own kind, these two Titans duke it out to determine, as the film goes, "who bows to who". Apart from their rivalry, Godzilla has also rampaged and attacked humanity for no apparent reason, after being presented as a benevolent behemoth, and while not 100% the reason, Kong is brought in to fight him. Their battles cause a ton of destruction and undoubtedly death, ultimately ending with Kong defeated and on the verge of death. However, it seems that Godzilla's rampages were provoked by the scientists at Apex Cybernetics, who've created their own artificial Titan in order to defend themselves from other Titans. This giant robot, nicknamed Mechagodzilla, takes on a life of its own due to interference from an ancient power source from the Hollow Earth (the Titans' homeworld) and launches an assault on the humans.
Mechagodzilla first fights Godzilla, with the latter getting beaten up until Kong is revived and in an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of deal or what is now commonly referred to as a "Martha moment", Kong and Godzilla team up, successfully taking down Mechagodzilla. Rather than resume their fight for dominance, the two Titans acknowledge each other and go their separate ways, Godzilla returning to the depths of the ocean while Kong reclaims his title as the king of Hollow Earth, thereby earning his new name "King Kong".
I've skimmed over a ton of plot details but these are the most important parts of the film. As you would expect, a good majority of the film revolves around the monsters beating the crap out of each other and little else matters.
Pros: When you're working with such huge beings and lots of different landscapes, it'll almost all be CGI and if that's bad, you're taken right out of the film. Thankfully, Godzilla vs. Kong continues the trend from previous MonsterVerse films of having absolutely stunning visual effects. Not only do the Titans look awesome, the set designs are beautiful, whether it's our return to Skull Island, Godzilla and Kong fighting in Hong Kong or the entirety of the Hollow Earth. I have to give special mention for the design of Hollow Earth, especially because it's such a huge expanse of unexplored territory, complete with inverting gravity at different locations, the visual effects team did a really good job of projecting the majestic nature of that environment onto the big screen.
In the same vein, the action sequences are equally amazing. Like I've mentioned many times before, the MonsterVerse films make giant monster battles their bread and butter, so they have to look good. They've done excellent jobs in previous films and this was no different. Comparing Godzilla's bulkier dinosaur figure to Kong's more agile monkey-like athleticism, it was really cool to see them battle each other in such awesomely designed action sequences, especially because the two Titans move so differently from each other. There were also some callbacks to 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla, with my favourite being Kong shoving his axe handle into Godzilla's mouth, much like how he shoved a giant tree into the lizard's maw in the original film. It was great to see such a cheesy moment adapted in a more modern and brutal context, and it really made me smile. It's always best to watch these films in theaters because that's when the sheer magnitude of the monster battles are properly translated for viewers to enjoy and it's absolutely sick to watch.
Cons: A lot of times when you talk about good films, people will probably bring up the characters and how well they're portrayed as well as how much they add to the story. Unfortunately, this film has none of that because the human characters are so completely pointless and I feel nothing for them. Their sole purpose is to progress the story and even then they add so little to it. The only human that arguably invokes any kind of emotion is probably Jia, the deaf girl with a special connection to Kong, and even then, she only exists as a plot device to communicate with Kong. Don't even get me started on the other characters because even the returning ones like Madison Russell (who was played by Millie Bobby Brown in Godzilla: King of the Monsters) don't matter. What makes it worse is that the humans are very clearly segregated into team Kong and team Godzilla (for lack of better terms), and they never interact with one another throughout the entire film.
Because of the terrible and uninspiring human characters, the script suffers heavily. Everything is just an excuse to get our giant monster mash, whether it's between Godzilla and Kong or when Mechagodzilla appears, nothing in the script really matters until we get our monster fights. A good film makes you feel something for the characters, even supporting ones and gets you talking about the script but we got none of that with Godzilla vs. Kong because at the end of the day, the film was just that, getting Godzilla to fight Kong and we got that at the expense of everything else.
The future of the MonsterVerse: This film wrapped up very nicely and presented a possible "end" to this franchise. Both alpha Titans now coexist peacefully in different parts of the Earth and rule in their own ways but other than that we don't get any indication of the MonsterVerse's future plans. Mechagodzilla has been destroyed, the other Titans featured in Godzilla: King of the Monsters are probably in hibernation so what other stories could be told? Director Alan Wingard has gone on record stating that to some extent the entirety of the MonsterVerse would culminate and lead to this, with Legendary planning on moving forward only if Godzilla vs. Kong turned out to be successful. Of course, the amount of money they've made from this film is exorbitant, with it being the third highest grossing film in 2021 so far, so it's entirely possible for them to create more films. They could definitely bring back Mothra since it was revealed in the previous film's post-credits scene that an egg was found but other than that, I don't really know what else they could do. I think it also depends on whether Toho wants to continue leasing the rights to their monsters to Legendary so we'll see where it goes from here.
Final thoughts: Don't go into this film expecting a deep story or compelling characters because there's nothing like that present here. This film is purely there for you to enjoy seeing monsters fight and the absolute destruction they cause in the process. It's fun, it's goofy and it's a joy to watch on the big screen. I didn't expect any of that going in and I thoroughly enjoyed it, enough for me to give Godzilla vs. Kong a 7.5/10. Thanks for reading.
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