Warner Bros. landed a deal with Legendary Films and with that came the MonsterVerse. WB wanted to create this shared universe between Godzilla and King Kong to compete with Disney and Marvel to some extent. To a lesser extent. they do. Marvel/Disney has a lot more characters and can do many more films. The MonsterVerse is bigger in other countries like the pacific rim and continents like Asia and Australia. WB hopes to get their revenue from that part of the globe where these characters are more popular.
This film picks up a few years after the last film, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Godzilla is attacking an Apex Facility in Pensacola, Florida. A local podcaster (Brian Tyree Henry) is investigating these occurrences with the help of Millie Bobby Brown’s character from the last film. The leader of Apex (Demián Bichir) has a sinister plan to get rid of the titans. The plan gets a little confusing but also involves Alexander Skarsgard, Rebecca Hall, and a little girl who can talk to Kong.
The inevitable part about these Godzilla and King Kong films is the human characters that drive the plot forward. Some have evil plots using the titans for their own nefarious means, such as Bichir, Samuel L. Jackson, and Charles Dance, and some are friendly towards the titans like Ken Watanabe, Millie Bobby Brown the little girl who can communicate with Kong. Most of the time the human characters just get in the way of what everybody wants to see: the titans battling and destroying stuff.
Godzilla vs. Kong has what everybody wants: epic battles between Godzilla and King Kong. The locations are interesting, though because who has the advantage in each place they fight. That sometimes weighs in on who wins each battle. Eventually, these two titans have to put away their egos of who is the best of the best and team up to fight a common foe. This is an epic battle, to say the least. These battles were great, but I give the edge to the King of the Monsters on that front.
The plot in these films is usually just there to drive the film forward. That being said, the plot this time around was a little convoluted and hard to understand. A lot of the film is wasted on this upside-down world. I still don’t understand how a hole in the ground leads to the middle of the Earth. That was a contrived reason for Kong’s size change as well. It’s simpler when a nefarious bad guy has the plot to destroy the Titans.
All in all, Godzilla vs. Kong is a good popcorn flick. You just take your brain out and enjoy the action and destruction and ignore the human characters altogether, except the little girl who can communicate with Kong. That’s an interesting relationship I wished we would have seen more of. The destruction of Hong Kong is an epic battle between the titans and a familiar foe. Sadly, we had to wait until the end to get something worth caring about.
3 Stars
Dan Skip Allen
From the Fourth Row! 