Adam Wingard is a director who is mainly known for indie horror films like The Guest, Your Next, and the remake of The Blair Witch Project. Of late he’s dipped his toes in major blockbuster territory directing a couple of films in Warner Brothers and Legendaries Godzilla/ Kong shared cinematic universe. First Godzilla vs Kong and now the follow-up Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire. The latter is better than the previous one. 

Returning from the last film in the franchise is Rebecca Hall’s character of Dr. Ilene Andrews and her adopted daughter from the Ewi tribe, Jia (Kaylee Hottle) are the protectors of Kong. When some anomalies show up in Monarch’s readings of Godzilla she starts to wonder what is going on. She enlists the help of Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry, a Titan podcaster also returning from the last film. Together with a Titan veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens) they decide to go down to the Hollow Earth to investigate. 

Warner Brothers and Legendaries Godzilla/ Kong franchise has been hit and miss. The first two in the franchise were great. They had their specific vibe that set them apart from others in the franchise. The third one was an all-out monster fest introducing many classic Titans fans hadn’t seen yet in the new franchise. The last one relied too much on the human characters to be as entertaining as the previous films in the franchise. Overuse of the human characters in this franchise is determined.  This one had just the right amount of usage of the human characters to make it fine in that department.  The humans had a genuine purpose instead of being mustache-twirling villains like the last one had.

One of the things that is inevitable in this franchise is the use of CGI and visual effects. With giant monsters like the ones in this film, the visual effects are going to be a major part of the story.  With the Hollow Earth and the villains which are also Titans, this movie has an overabundance of CGI and visual effects. This aspect of the franchise has been done better in the past. With this film being rushed out so quickly I can see the visual effects team not putting as much depth and layering into the character designs as the team did in the past. Some of the Titans looked a bit too cartoonish to me. That’s the price you have to pay sometimes though with these types of movies. 

I went to Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire with low expectations because I wasn’t a fan of the last one that much. The mustache-twirling villains and other human characters ruined the film for me. This time around there were three storylines one each with the two main villains and one with the group of humans. It took a little while for these three stories to come together, but when they did it was worthwhile. The third act of the movie was a CGI Monsterfest. I almost couldn’t keep up with all the crazy monster-on-monster action. That being said I felt that the Kong storyline was the best of the three separate storylines in the film.

Once the two main characters in this shared Universe were established and stories were set in motion with subplots involving Monarch and so forth I was curious where the writers would go with these characters. It’s pretty easy to realize this whole thing is a bit far-fetched to begin with, so giving this world a believability was going to be hard. With each subsequent film, it’s going to be harder and harder to keep the verisimilitude level. This one was just believable enough after everything that has already been established in the franchise. If this one makes bank like the others have, it’s going to be interesting to see where they go from here. This one was fine though.

One of the fun things about the Godzilla/Kong franchise is the locations the various films take place in. This installment takes the franchise to Rome, Italy and Cairo, Egypt. Of course the famous landmarks like the Colosium is used in a funny way and the Pyramids are destroyed in a huge fight sequence between Godzilla and Kong. San Francisco,  Boston and Tokyo, Japan have been use to great effect in the other movies and these two locations were very useful in helping tell the story and for a bit of laughs as well.

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is a fine film. Not great, but watchable. It relies too much on CGI and visual effects to be taken that seriously but in a cartoonish way it’s okay. The human characters aren’t nearly as bad as in the last film and they had a legitimate reason for being in the story. The side stories were fine as well with the Kong arc being the best. Adam Wingard went back to what he knows and that making relatable characters in believable stories. Even though this is a Titan film the storylines are believable in the context of this franchise.  This isn’t the best of the Warner Brothers Legendary Monsterverse, but it is not the worst either. It is fine for what it is.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen