For decades, Godzilla and King Kong have been remade and reinterpreted over the decades with mixed results. They even collided in a 1962 version which was completely cheesy, but then again, these movies don’t have a shred of pretentiousness.
No, Godzilla vs. Kong is exactly what it sounds like and it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a massive spectacle of the most monster titans ever put on film duking it out.
This latest installment in the MonsterVerse is on the heels set up by 2014’s Godzilla, 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and 2017’s Kong: Skull Island.
We pick up the action right away as a team of scientists monitoring Kong on Skull Island realize that Godzilla is still terrorizing the Earth and they might need the big ape’s help to retrieve a device that might stop the mighty lizard from causing any more destruction.
This device is located in an atmosphere known as the Hollow Earth which suggests there’s another Earth within Earth. Just think of Inception except substitute levels of dreams with whole planets.
Alexander Skarsgard and Rebecca Hall star as the leaders of the expedition and Hall’s character has an adopted daughter (Kaylie Hottle) who is deaf but communicates with Kong via sign language. These scenes provide unexpected heart and soul.
Bryan Tyree Henry stars as a conspiracy theorist with his own podcast and he teams up with two teens (Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison) to try and investigate Godzilla’s attacks and where he might strike next. As for character development, these three function for the purpose of constantly getting in and out of one predicament after another and providing the obligatory, comic relief dialogue.
Now that the plot and characters are out of the way, let’s get down to the real reason we’re here: Seeing these two monsters ready to lay the smackdown. Godzilla vs. Kong has no shortage of seeing these two go one-on-one in some epic battles and they don’t disappoint. The second half in particular is nearly wall-to-wall explosions and special effects with an extra surprise thrown in to keep the action afloat. This may have been the fight some moviegoers were hoping for with either Freddy vs. Jason or Batman vs. Superman.
Godzilla vs. Kong is a B movie with an A budget and it’s easily the best in the series yet. It’s not overblown like King of the Monsters which was easily disposable.
This film gives us just enough plot to keep it fast-paced and the rest is just
a countdown to the next match-up of these cinematic behemoths.
Godzilla vs. Kong can be considered a lot of things: It’s big. It’s loud. It’s fun. I’ll agree with all of the above.
Grade: B+
(Rated PG-13 for destruction, brief language, and intense creature violence.)
