Godzilla vs. Kong Movie Review

Here's what you need to know; when a sudden and seemingly random attack throws Godzilla's heroic status into doubt, Monarch is baffled as to why humanity's saviour has turned against them, and Apex Cybernetics jumps at the chance to save the world. But for Apex's plan to be effective against Godzilla, they enlist the help of ex-Monarch scientist Nathan Lind and Kong, who Lind believes can guide them into the Hollow Earth, where the key to stopping Godzilla lies. But when this insane plan causes Kong and Godzilla to cross paths, the ensuing duel will settle a millennia-old rivalry and decide, once and for all, who is the true King of the Monsters. 

Godzilla vs Kong is a film that exists, I know, I can hardly believe it myself. When Godzilla: King of the Monsters released in 2019, I went on a full-on Godzilla bender to hype up for the release, and reviewed a bunch of Godzilla films, both old and new, on this here blog. In 2021, when GVK released, I planned to do something similar, reviewing King Kong movies instead, with some Godzilla and a bit of Gamera thrown in for good measure, the first of these reviews for 1953's The Beast From 20'000 Fathoms was published, but the rest were never finished, and of course, I never finished my review of GVK either despite my inevitably extreme excitement for it. Well, it's been two years, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Godzilla Minus One are all on the horizon, and I've always meant to review GVK because I've always had things to say about it, so while I'm on annual leave, what the hell, let's talk Big G one more time. 

Godzilla vs Kong opens surprisingly strong, giving us perfect setups for our titular hero monsters within the first ten minutes. We see Skull Island has been left uninhabitable by a freak storm, and that Kong is being housed in a biodome that's quickly becoming unsuitable for him. We also meet Gia, a deaf girl and Kong's BFF who lives on the island under the care of Monarch scientist Dr. Andrews, whose concern is that taking Kong off Skull Island will expose him to getting stepped on by the King. Following some opening titles, we are introduced to the other half of the film's story as Bernie, a paranoid podcaster working undercover in Apex Cybernetics, a totally not evil robotics company, bears witness to one of their facilities getting flattened by Godzilla, which, I'm not going to lie, is an insanely awesome moment, one of about nine that this film has. In the chaos, he also gets a glimpse of an expectedly suspicious project deep in the bowels of the facility which becomes a lot more relevant in the film's finale. One thing GVK deserves praise for is how to the point it is; more so than previous Monsterverse films, GVK has a clear understanding of what people expect of it; it's called Godzilla vs Kong, you're watching it to see Godzilla and Kong fight. In the first fifteen minutes, we've already seen Godzilla and Kong, by the half-hour mark, they have their first fight, and in that time, we already have a solid understanding of stakes and characters. 

On Team Kong we have disgraced ex Monarch scientist and Hollow Earth expert; Dr. Lind, top Monarch scientist and monkey whisperer; Dr. Andrews, and Kong's best friend; Gia. On Team Godzilla, we have returning heroine Maddison Russel, her fat kiwi friend; Josh, and our boy Bernie. Team Kong's mission is to aid Apex Cybernetics in their plan to defeat Godzilla and find Kong a new home, while Team Godzilla goes down the rabbit hole and finds out what Apex is up to and why Godzilla is so mad at them. The meat of the film's story is naturally with Team Kong and their journey to the centre of the earth, encountering epic threats and equally epic revelations along the way. and this area of the story is also where the film's heart is, and that's all thanks to Gia and Kong. Their bond is not only played completely straight, but is remarkably sweet and wholesome, as Kong struggles to trust the humans accompanying him, only to open up, even smile when he sees her. It's through her that Kong's conflict is presented, he's lonely; stuck on Skull Island, the last of his kind, longing to find his true home. In the Hollow Earth, Team Kong don't just find what Apex is looking for, they find what Kong is looking for; a sense of belonging in the world, Something previous interpretations of Kong have always had stolen from them, and this is an emotionally gratifying moment for a giant monster, not bad for a monster movie. 

Team Godzilla's side of the story is a lot less exciting or intriguing, as they Spy Kids their way through underground Cyberpunk factories and get a front row seat to the ultimate in Human Power, Apex's anti-Godzilla weapon which, if you somehow don't know, is freaking Mechagodzilla, we'll talk about that later though. It's only fair that Team Kong gets the lion's share of the film's runtime as their adventure into the Hollow Earth is a lot more fun to watch, and unlike Team Godzilla, Team Kong is with their monster every step of the way, giving us plenty of time with Kong. Godzilla remains very mysterious in this film; while his intentions are clear and understandable, his character and history remain mostly unexplored, he's still a grumpy old God that gets out of bed every now and then to restore balance to the Force. What GVK does do right is justify the conflict; it would have been easy for Godzilla and Kong to fight for some contrived and flimsy reason, instead, both sides of this battle are coming from completely understandable positions. Kong wants to find his true home, Godzilla wants to assert his dominance as the King of the Monsters, Mechagodzilla and Kong are threats to his title, foes to eliminate to restore balance, while Kong is driven into the conflict both by Team Kong's quest and by Godzilla's actions. Kong enters the Hollow Earth and finds what he was looking for; a place in the world where he can belong, only for Godzilla to take that away from him, launching both Kong into a vengeful rage, and us into this film's explosive finale. 

GVK is an uncommon monster movie where the monsters are the main characters, and while I'll always be biased towards King of the Monsters, GVK has two key advantages, the first is Kong, the more well known and more relatable giant monster, the second is the film's leanness. King of the Monsters has a lot of exposition, a lot of human characters talking, a lot of deeper ideas and implications. GVK, meanwhile is a lot more stripped back, sometimes to its detriment. with a runtime of under two hours, the film flies by, never stopping to breathe, good for turning your brain off, not so good for character development, and while there are significant moral and philosophical considerations in this film, mainly to do with the creation of Mechagodzilla. The film never even tries, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good that the film is so relentlessly paced as it never gets a chance to be boring; by the time you're starting to get hungry for the next battle, we're already there, and these battles never outstay their welcome, nor do they lose the sense of scale and weight that the Monsterverse does so well. In fact, outside of Pacific Rim, I don't think I've seen a western kaiju movie do monster battles this well, it's only fitting then that the highlight of GVK is a battle in Hong Kong. Godzilla and Kong fight on three occasions in this film; first at sea while Team Kong is traveling from Skull Island to Monarch's Hollow Earth launch station in Antarctica, second when Kong climbs back up from the Hollow Earth to kick the shit out of Godzilla for trashing his new home. 

Both fights are very different, both fights give whichever monster has the home field advantage their moment to shine and the put the other in his place, be it Godzilla bullying Kong from below in the middle of the open ocean, or Kong using his agility to outmanoeuvre Godzilla in a major city with lots of buildings, not to mention putting his sick new axe to good use, the head of which being made from a Godzilla dorsal plate. Then there's fight number three, the no more fucking about fight, where Godzilla becomes an absolute animal and leaves Kong on the brink of death and with a dislocated arm. Kong starts this round with the advantage, but once Godzilla gets a hold of him, it's already over, and the following beatdown would be comical were it not so brutal. By the end, you feel genuinely bad for Kong, and are left in shock by just how vicious Godzilla is, and this is the Godzilla that incinerated, crushed, ate, and then re-incinerated Ghidorah in the last film. Needless to say, as a life-long Godzilla fanatic, seeing Godzilla walk away from this fight the clear winner is very satisfying, even if him not killing Kong doesn't make sense. This is the same Godzilla that burned the head off the female Muto by breathing fire down her throat. But you see for the film's epic final battle to happen, Kong needs to live, so the King of the Monsters who never leaves a job unfinished just walks away, presumably to save Martha. 

Because now is the time for the man-made abomination to come on the scene and fuck everyone up, it's Mechagodzilla's turn to play. And getting right to it, I adore GVK's interpretation of Mechagodzilla. Apex Cybernetics' CEO Walter Simmons "had a dream" of a machine that would put humanity firmly at the top of the food chain, built from the remains of a fallen rival Alpha, powered by the radioactive beating heart of the Hollow Earth, a monster that could defeat any Titan, and was built in the image of and for the purpose of killing the Alpha Titan, Godzilla. A metal mockery that can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop until Godzilla is dead. The scene in which Godzilla takes Mechagodzilla on alone mirrors his previous fight with Kong, only this time it's Godzilla that's getting absolutely destroyed; Mechagodzilla is faster, stronger, and incapable of feeling pain. I love the details of Mechagodzilla; the bright red that glows out of his eyes and body, the thick, black smoke that comes from his weapons and booster rockets, and the unnatural proportions, from the skeletal body to the wonky limbs and the mechanical claw-like hands. A Godzilla/Kong team-up was inevitable, after all, Batman v Superman went exactly the same way, having their clashing heroes set aside their differences for the common good. And while it's entirely predicable, it's still severely cool, while allowing the two monsters to part ways in a mutually respectful way in the end. And after getting thoroughly defeated by Godzilla earlier, Kong gets his win by being the one to kill Mechagodzilla, so the film's ending is predictably clean. 

This very clean win-win ending has me conflicted; on the one hand, it does make everyone happy; Godzilla fans have their guy win, Kong fans have their guy win, and the stage is set for both of them to meet again in the future and not be enemies, which is, of course, where Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is going, so the future is bright in the wake of GVK. On the other hand, something about the ending feels anticlimactic to me, and I think the reason why is a bit deeper inside the film. Going back to an older point on how lean this film is, it is so lean, in fact, that once the honeymoon phase is gone and you've calmed down from the awesomeness of Godzilla and Kong fighting, the film doesn't really have anything else to offer, nothing that sticks. Godzilla 2014 and King of the Monsters stayed in my head with provocative ideas and imagery, Kong: Skull Island did the same, but most of my ruminating on that film was on how I would fix it. Godzilla vs Kong meanwhile just doesn't have that, I'm never going to do an in-depth review of GVK like I did for the 2014 film because there isn't enough there. And I know this sounds silly, like I'm criticising a Godzilla film for not being smart enough, it being the easiest watch of the Monsterverse has its strengths, but I'm actually wishing it wasn't as trimmed down as it is. The best of the Monsterverse, indeed, the best of Godzilla, is when a film sticks in your head, not just when it entertains or scares you, but when you engage with its ideas. 

Instead, I'm here wanting to engage with GVK, wanting to wonder about the ethics of building Mechagodzilla, or the reasons why Ishiro Serizawa's son is helping to build it, or the implications of the great Titan War, or the roles Monarch and Apex play in this saga of monsters. All that being said, there's no limit to what you can fill those blanks with in your own head, and there's nothing stopping you from just enjoying the film for what it is, so take that one how you will. We've made it this far and I've barely discussed the human characters, well, that's another shortfall GVK suffers from, even within the standards of the Godzilla franchise. Our humans are split into two teams, two stories effectively, that eventually intersect in the climax, nothing you haven't seen before. On Team Kong though, we have two Monarch scientists, a little girl and the daughter of the Apex CEO, who definitely, clearly, obviously isn't evil and not just waiting for her chance to stab our heroes in the back. GVK is not subtle, what a shock, and the film doesn't even try to hide that the AI and robot building megacorporation that openly wants to kill Godzilla are the villains, as if the film just knows that you know already. Now why exactly would a pair of Monarch scientists agree to help such an operation? King of the Monsters had Mark Russell personally hate Godzilla because his son was killed in San Francisco, GVK never gives its characters such motivations, instead they go along with it because without them, Kong never leaves Skull Island and the film ends. How can the motivations and decisions of the kaiju make more sense than those of the humans, that's actually kind of impressive. 

Lind and Andrews are just kind of there, they escort Gia and have some cute moments with her, but she far outshines them in her interactions with Kong. The moment where she convinces Kong to help Godzilla is amazing, as she breaks through Kong's reluctance to see Godzilla as not the enemy, before telling him to be careful, leaving Kong with the choice to either walk away and let Godzilla die, or do what is right, where was this for the rest of the film? Team Godzilla doesn't fair better; Josh, the fat kiwi friend does literally nothing throughout the film, and Maddison has nothing to work with as a character without her ideologically conflicting parents. At least there is entertainment to the found in Simmons, the rich and powerful genius who wants to save humanity, you know the type, and Bernie, the crazy conspiracy theorist who is proven right at every turn, funny that. On the plus side, at the least the film having nothing deeper to say means it has nothing to say about the evils of capitalism, unlike King of the Monsters' heavy handed environmental message which has aged like milk. The same can be said of Bernie and his conspiracies, for obvious reasons, and a film where the crazy, anti-government conspiracy guy gets proven right on everything might not be the kind of message certain people would want out there, let's just leave it at that. 

Oh yeah, then there's Ren Serizawa, the son of former Monarch head and Godzilla worshipper; Ishiro Serizawa, who is working on Apex's anti-Godzilla weapon. You'd probably imagine he is given some compelling reason for trying to ruin his dad's life's work, maybe Ishiro was obsessed with Godzilla and his work, leaving Ren feeling abandoned and full of resentment, maybe Ren blames Godzilla for Ishiro's death, maybe he worked alongside Ishiro in Monarch before San Francisco and decided then that Godzilla and the Titans were too dangerous to be allowed to live. Instead, the film has nothing, literally nothing, no explanation, the son of the former Monarch lead scientist who dedicated his life to studying and understanding Godzilla, is working for the evil Megacorporation and is personally working on weaponry to kill Godzilla, and this is no big deal. There is a huge hole in this story, one of several, and while that's not new for Godzilla or the Monsterverse, previous films were held together by their dramatic and thematic tissue, which this film lacks. GVK fits right in with the Godzilla franchise with its human characters, but this is coming off of 2014 and King of the Monsters, which both told strong human and monster stories, whereas GVK has a strong monster story and a human story that's either on the cutting room floor or just non-existent, which is a shame.

I have Faith in our Creation, and Humanity will once again be the Apex Species

Godzilla vs Kong is, for the most part, another homerun for Legendary's Monsterverse, delivering jaw dropping kaiju action at a breakneck speed, and doing justice to its elegantly basic premise and central conflict. You come to see big lizard and big monkey fight and the film delivers on exactly that very well, with the best action in the series to date. It also continues the trend of giving the titular monsters more to do than just smash stuff, especially Kong whose story in this film is surprisingly heartfelt. But while the film is a triumph on the kaiju side, there isn't much else to it; its a big, dumb, epic movie that's a tremendous amount of fun to watch, but is ultimately less memorable than its predecessors. But at the end of the day, I have to admit that the things I love about this film overshadow its shortcomings, and if all you want is big monsters fighting, few films, even few Godzilla films, can match Godzilla vs Kong's sheer spectacle, and it's definitely worth watching.