Main cast: Alexander Skarsgård (Dr Nathan Lind), Millie Bobby Brown (Madison Russell), Rebecca Hall (Dr Ilene Andrews), Brian Tyree Henry (Bernie Hayes), Kaylee Hottle (Jia), Shun Oguri (Ren Serizawa), Eiza González (Maia Simmons), Julian Dennison (Josh Valentine), and Demián Bichir (Walter Simmons)
Director: Adam Wingard
Godzilla vs. Kong pits the two Titans, oh yes, but to get there, I have to sit through the antics of some poorly developed, stereotypical human beings that I care so little for. I don’t know why the US adaptations of the Godzilla films have to be like this. Just look at the cast line alone—there are way too many humans in there, and a bunch of them can be easily excised from the film with no issue to the main plot. When I watch a movie that has “Godzilla” and “Kong” in the title, I want to see big things smash one another. I want…
Oh wait, is this movie catering to a specific kind of audience now? The opening scene sees a naked Kong (of course) showing off its shapely rear end, pectoral, and all, as it stretches and wades into the water for a morning bath. I hate to say it, but it’s a very nice rear end for an ape. Anyway, when this movie opens, Kong is still in Skull Island, but that place is now a closed ecosystem monitored by Monarch—probably explains why it didn’t show up in the last movie.
Unfortunately, it turns out that Godzilla and Kong are natural enemies due to some feud that stems back from the days of their great-great-great-grandparents, so everyone’s favorite rubber lizard shows up to get at Kong. Eight Monarch employees are killed in the ensuing mayhem, causing CNN to do its usual tricks of making sweeping statements in order to generate clickbait materials: Godzilla is now enemy number one! Madison Russell, the brat from the previous movie, decides that screw the dead humans, Godzilla is a good guy and surely must be framed, so she and some morons decide to sneak around to find the truth. She and her friends are utterly useless in this movie aside from being exposition plot device for the bad guys to explain their plot to, so ugh, who cares about them,
The main plot is the Monarch boss Walter Simmons asking the clichéd “Mmy brother died, so I now grow a beard and act like a drunk, and you know I’m better when I show up clean-shaven eventually!” Dr Nathan Lind and the Kong expert Dr Ilene Andrews, who for some reason sports scientist shirts that are unbuttoned just enough to show cleavage like this movie were directed by Michael Bay or something, to lead an gang to escort a sedated Kong back to the Hollow Earth, a place that mimics the ecology of Skull Island some place under the earth. Hmm, are they setting up a crossover between this franchise and the Pacific Rim one? Anyway, Godzilla of course gives chase, but the scariest thing of all has to be the token creepy girl every show of this kind needs to have: Jia, the deaf girl that has a special bond with Kong and exists only to show one of two facial expressions in this movie: constipated-ugh and snowflake-special-dreamy-realness.
Well, the monster fights are nice, if somewhat neutered by the fact that, despite this being a R-rated movie, there is no gore at all. There is not even a hint of blood flying around as the monsters tear and rip at one another, maybe because the people behind this movie don’t want to scar the kiddies that will inevitably sneak a peek at this one behind their parents’ backs. The end result is that I can never forget that we have two action figures fighting in this one. If that is not enough, the movie introduces one more monster later in the movie, because why not. Hong Kong is entirely decimated in this movie, but that’s okay, because China doesn’t like Hong Kong, so who cares about the dead Hong Kong people in this movie.
I personally will rank this one as somewhere in between the utterly dull first Godzilla movie in this franchise and the previous one. It’s kind of weird, really, how the Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Kong: Skull Island did it right by going all out with the monster mayhem, only for this one to backtrack and throw at me way too many dull, unnecessary, who-cares human characters at me. If they wanted to focus on the humans, at least make them interesting characters. Here. it’s just a slough to sit past them to get to the good stuff.
