In a spectacular moment from Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Godzilla absorbs radiation from a nuclear reactor in what felt like a not-so-subtle callback to 1984’s visceral Cold War tale, The Return of Godzilla. Even before the attack, radiation left from Godzilla’s footprints posed a danger to military reconnaissance. The aftermath followed the hyper-irradiated and generally pissed-off wrecking ball of a reptile with appropriate caution: If he doesn’t kill you, the radioactivity will.
It was a scene evocative of a late Tomoyuki Tanaka/Shogo Tomiyama-produced movie. Even if a film wasn’t about Godzilla’s “roots,” the reminder was there. Akin to Ishiro Honda implementing a “Super Geiger Counter” to remind audiences that the Monster King was still a nuclear abomination in Terror of MechaGodzilla (1975), The New Empire’s reactor attack was the most Godzilla-like sequence in the Monsterverse’s ten-year run. Beyond that, Godzilla and Kong’s latest is a carnage-fest inching ever more closely to that oh-so coveted monsters-only production some fans froth over. Ironically, director Adam Wingard’s doubling down on all things that made his Godzilla vs. Kong so miserable made for a more entertaining flick.
The monster-focused tale tightened the cast enough to make the characters digestible. With fewer “pesky” humans to focus on, Jia’s (Kaylee Hottle) relationship with her adoptive mother, Illene (Rebecca Hall), has something that could at least be considered the framework of conjoining story arcs. And while Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry could’ve been cut from the flick entirely, Stevens at least looks like he’s having fun.
There is an admirable push for visual storytelling to characterize the apes in this movie, but I’m amused at how it distanced itself from doing the same with Godzilla. I wonder if the filmmakers felt as though it would only work with anthropomorphic giants. Regardless, the visual storytelling exercise is undercut with note-by-note exposition read off conveniently framed cave sculptures. Instead of allowing Kong’s journey to breathe with a wisp of mystery, Illene makes sure we know what the bad monkey’s name is so parents don’t grab the wrong toy at Walmart.
Of Kong’s rivalry with Shin King Louie, once you see the myriad of digital upon digital upon mind-numbing digital battles pummeling CG crystalline undergrounds and pyramids into mush, there’s just nothing to go back to. The two-hour toy commercial ends on a measured note of characters finding a sense of belonging. Jia decides to stay with her mother - Kong joins his species - Godzilla, hilariously, returns to the bowels of Rome’s Coliseum - as if his wants and desires go no deeper than the need for a cat box. I, for one, desire that the young audiences this movie is intended for grow to appreciate more films in the franchise, atypical of cynical, Hollywood blockbuster norms this flick treats like a blueprint.
The New Empire is often compared to the Showa Era of the Godzilla series - a fifteen-movie stretch with varying tones and imaginative experimentation that some fans reduce to a three-second gif from a single movie where Godzilla tail slides into an opponent. Fittingly, being reductive of a dozen-plus films spanning two decades requires the same amount of cognitive function as The New Empire is willing to expend on its audience. The comparison could be studied as some kind of meta-examination between the latter Monsterverse outings and their more defensive proponents. After all, if this iteration of Kong and Godzilla have taught audiences anything it’s that no problem can’t be solved by ganging on and slapping the teeth out of it.
Let them fight.