Review-Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Legendary's latest Monsterverse entry lands a bit hollow (Earth)
Some of the biggest films of early this year are starting to come to streaming platforms like MAX and Netflix, so it’s my chance to catch up on the ones I missed earlier on. First up is Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The Frozen Empire movie will be coming next week.
So let’s face it, people come to these movies for one reason and one reason only…seeing big monsters wreak havoc on unsuspecting cities around the world. Some of the Monsterverse films have been decent (look at you Skull Island), but for the most part, they follow a tried and true formula that goes back a hundred years or more, and that is no different with the latest entry, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
The film picks up after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong from 2021 with Kong having established a new home in Hollow Earth while Godzilla roams the surface of Earth, maintaining order between humans and Titans. (Quick aside. Does anyone else want to constantly call is Middle Earth or is that just me? Just me. OK) Monarch, the agency tasked with observing and tracking the Titans picks up new signals from Hollow Earth and Kong discovers an uncharted area of Hollow Earth including an entire colony of ape Titans ruled by a tyrannical Skar.
From there, you can pretty much guess the rest if you’ve ever seen any of these movies. Actually, you can probably guess even if you haven’t.
The human cast is blessedly smaller than previous films, but our main team includes Dr. Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) and the new addition of Monarch veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens). The dialog is, well, not great and while I have tremendous respect for Hall and Henry as actors, these were not their best roles. Perhaps the lone bright spot is Hottle, several years older now than when she appeared in Godzilla vs. Kong, and that much more able to command the screen despite both she and her character being deaf. Sometimes less is more.
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