A One Mann’s Movies review of “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” (2024).
There are films that make me love cinema. And then again, there are films that make me despair for cinema. Guess which category “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” falls into? Even the title is nonsensical…. what is it supposed to even mean? Godzilla vs Kong? Godzilla multiplied by Kong? Godzilla meets a really cross Kong? Godzilla loves Kong? Sigh….
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
The Kong Hollow Earth team, led by Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) detect strange signals: signals which her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle) has been drawing in her school books. Ilene, Jia, Trapper (Dan Stevens), blogger Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) and Mikael (Alex Ferns) descend into the inner world to identify the source and find why their Kong-observation outpost is no longer responding to calls.
Certification:
UK: 12A; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Moderate fantasy violence, threat, injury detail”.)
Talent:
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, Alex Ferns, Kaylee Hottle.
Directed by: Adam Wingard.
Written by: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett & Jeremy Slater. (From a story by Terry Rossio, Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett)
Twitter Handle: #KongxGodzilla.
Running Time: 1h 55m.
Now let’s mindlessly destroy some pyramids. (Source: Warner Bros.)
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” Review:
Positives:
- I mean, there’s no denying that the special effects team do a spectacular job at putting all of this VFX stuff up on the screen. It’s a collossal amount of work and I wouldn’t know where you would start.
- Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry – FAR too good an actor for this film – delivers the best performance by far as the nerdy comic relief in the piece. This is closely followed by Dan Stevens, blue-eyes a glistenin’ and seemingly loving his “hippy dippy Ace Ventura”* role as the carefree veterinarian hipster. (*OK… to be fair, that’s the one line in the film that made me chuckle.)
Negatives:
- This story is so bone-numbingly awful. It makes “Godzilla Minus One” look like a masterpiece (which in many ways it was). Whereas “Godzilla Minus One” had real heart and soul, this has none at all. It’s just crashy bashy nonsense from beginning to end with the human actors being simply set-dressing for the special effects. We jump from monster-bashing fight to monster-bashing fight just to move the vacuous plot forwards a tad.
- The surface area of the earth is 510,000,000 square kilometers (or 196,900,000 square miles for our American cousins). I looked it up. And yet whenever these ‘Titans’ emerge from the earth it is inevitably next to a major national monument that needs destroying! Rome, tick. The Pyramids at Giza, tick. (In fact, let’s not just destroy one of the Great Pyramids… let’s blitz all three!). The Copacabana beach-front in Rio, tick. In fact, I’d be fairly sure that Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue on Corvovdo mountain would have probably been nuked if the producers didn’t think that might upset a lot of Catholic viewers!
- The dialogue is attrocious. At one point, Dan Stevens utters the line “While we’re throwing shit at the wall…” and you think “Yep! Just about sums up the scene in the writer’s room”.
- The acting is generally horribly wooden.
- Rebecca Hall – star of one of my favourite recent Horror films “The Night House” – what are you doing in this other than collecting a big pay check? Hall not only has to mind-numbingly dreadful dialogue, but she also has the unenviable job of doing a voiceover, ‘womansplaining’ exactly what is happening with the ludicrous plot.
- Young Kaylee Hottle (as for Hall reprising her role from the 2021 film), adopts a fixed expression of ‘worried concern’ for 95% of the running time. (I suppose if Leo DiCaprio can pout for 95% of “Killers of the Flower Moon” then so can she!)
In it for the paycheck. Dan Stevens as Ace Ventura, Rebecca Hall as Ilene and Kaylee Hottle (with THAT expression) as Jia. (Source: Warner Bros)
Summary Thoughts on “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire”
I was intending NOT to go and see this film, since I hadn’t seen the prequel “Godzilla vs. Kong”. But all of the showings of “Immaculate” and “Late Night With the Devil” were late-evening and not suitable for my schedule. So this became the only available option.
But this one I found to be really bad. Vacuous and without any cinematic soul. Will it please older children with undermanding cinematic palates? Maybe… for some Easter holiday crashy-bangy time-out. But for everyone else, my recommendation is to “AVOID”!
Trailer for “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV1OOlGwExM .
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