It took me two attempts to get into Godzilla x Kong. The first 25 minutes of this movie are utterly boring. I’ve got no problem with human drama in movies like this when it’s done right, or at least engaging. Monarch was engaging. For the main human characters here, this only ever gets engaging at the very end.

I’m beginning to think the problem here is that movies like this are no longer “movies”, they’re “installments”. They don’t feel like self-contained polished products anymore, they feel like filler episodes filled with smaller barely connected filler episodes. Godzilla x Kong is like the opening to Age of Ultron, except it’s the majority of the movie. You just don’t really feel grounded at all.

There’s too much music. They try to recapture the “magic” of the intro and ending of Godzilla vs Kong but it fails spectacularly. It was cute there because the focus was on Kong and they didn’t overdo it. Here the focus is on Trapper AKA NOT Kong AKA no one cares about Trapper because not giving the man a name is doing a stupid.

The monster action is fine. Kong meeting the other Great Apes got me pumped and the finale is lackluster but satisfying enough.

So, Season 2 of Monarch when?

A whole load of nothing!

‘Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire’ is not a good movie, in my opinion anyway. It is similar to its predecessor in that sense at least, this is a minute improvement on that 2021 entry mind. It’s basically a Kong film though, Godzilla goes missing for large periods. There is less human to be found onscreen which is good to see, but what’s added in its place with Kong is just so dull to me.

The needless humanising of Kong continues, though this time it’s actually done in and around the other monsters because… well, actually I’m not sure why monsters are acting human-like to each other but, eh, the movie, I guess. That Suko young ape character is particularly annoying too, it sounded like a clown horn and looks more belonging to that one Coldplay music video.

The whole film feels like if ‘Avatar‘ and the ‘Planet of the Apes‘ reboots had a baby and that’s not a positive. It felt watching that it was also taking bits and pieces from other films too, mind perhaps that’s just me reaching? The best scene of it all features the two titular characters in Giza, their bits together in Hollow Earth are decent too but their opponents are incredibly lame.

Cast-wise, it’s OK. Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle are as fine as previously, Brian Tyree Henry is marginally improved and Dan Stevens is serviceable. None of the others are all that noteworthy to me, but that actually is a true plus for this production; last time out I wanted less humans and less humans is what we get here.

My review kinda reads as if I hate this 2024 release. I do not, there are far worse pictures out there of course. It’s just a heap of disappointment. I guess I just want pure, turn-off-your-brain titan carnage from these flicks, which evidently is not what the Monsterverse is necessarily trying to do… that’s probably on me.

Catching up on this franchise has made me want to even more check out the ‘proper’ Godzilla releases out of Japan, so there is that. As for these American ones, I like ‘Kong: Skull Island’ at least…

Godzilla sells out to be more commercially viable
This movie has a real problem – It tries to cater to a wider audience by adding more ‘Marvel type’ action and storytelling rather than focus on doing what it could do really well and appeal to a more niche audience.

The “doing what it could do well” part I am referring to is the BIGNESS of the Kaiju’s / monsters. Not just their actions but their presence and size.. a bit of slowness in how they walk and move, to feel that “thud” when they take a step and the sheer overwhelming presence that they represent – Like in Pacific Rim or in Godzilla King of the Monsters. You FEEL the bigness and the size.

A splash in the ocean can causes huge tide-waves due to the size.

A resounding BOOM that is felt when two Kaiju’s collide.

Where is that?

There is no respect paid to the bigness.

It’s just they took some superhero action sequences and applied them to giants and made them move like they were the same size as humans.

There is no FEEL or BIGNESS – It’s simply a 6 out of 10 movie because it caters “enough” to enough people because it goes for what’s popular and throws a lot of it while giving away the depth and the “feel” of a big monster movie that is what godzilla is meant to be.

Godzilla sells out to be more commercially viable
This movie has a real problem – It tries to cater to a wider audience by adding more ‘Marvel type’ action and storytelling rather than focus on doing what it could do really well and appeal to a more niche audience.

The “doing what it could do well” part I am referring to is the BIGNESS of the Kaiju’s / monsters. Not just their actions but their presence and size.. a bit of slowness in how they walk and move, to feel that “thud” when they take a step and the sheer overwhelming presence that they represent – Like in Pacific Rim or in Godzilla King of the Monsters. You FEEL the bigness and the size.

A splash in the ocean can causes huge tide-waves due to the size.

A resounding BOOM that is felt when two Kaiju’s collide.

Where is that?

There is no respect paid to the bigness.

It’s just they took some superhero action sequences and applied them to giants and made them move like they were the same size as humans.

There is no FEEL or BIGNESS – It’s simply a 6 out of 10 movie because it caters “enough” to enough people because it goes for what’s popular and throws a lot of it while giving away the depth and the “feel” of a big monster movie that is what godzilla is meant to be.

Not great but ultimately satisfying, if not mindless, sci-fi actioner and addition to the Monsterverse. There was never a moment I was bored so that has a one-up over the previous film, Godzilla vs. Kong, and they kept the human actors to a minimum with only four characters taking focus. The visual effects were passable enough and I did like the continued characterization given to Kong and to some extent, Godzilla. In the end, it’s an entertaining time-waster and doesn’t overstay its welcome showing you these movies can be under two hours. **3.25/5**

It has to get at least three stars because it’s got Dan Stevens (and his piercing eyes) in it. Otherwise, this is an entirely derivative and predictable effort that leaves nothing at all to our imagination. A truce has broken out since the last time (2021), with “Kong” ruling the roost deep in “Hollow Earth”; “Godzilla” curled up asleep in the Coliseum and “Ilene” (Rebecca Hall) and the troubled “Jia” (Kaylee Hottle) keeping an eye on things for “Monarch” and mankind. “Kong” has a bad tooth so he comes to the humans for help. Fortunately, “Trapper” (the aforementioned DS) is a dab hand at grand-scale dentistry but it’s while the ape is topside that alarm bells go off. “Godzilla” starts marauding again and an undiscovered vortex in the nether world requires investigation by “Kong” and his human pals. With “Bernie” (Brian Tyree Henry) back in the gang, off they all go to discover that a new menace has arrived, destroyed their monitoring outpost and it is now setting up a battle royal with just about every Titan left on Earth – above or below. Adam Winyard does just about everything on this film, and that shows in a complete lack of objectivity when evaluating this third rate adventure, the banal writing and equally lacklustre acting. It’s as plain as the nose on your face why “Godzilla’ – who doesn’t feature so much in this – is collecting energy, and when we do eventually get to them, the combat scenes are repetitive and too tightly choreographed. The scale is all over the place too. At times “Kong” appears the size of an house, at others he’s more like a mouse. The visual effects are put to good use, but Hall just underwhelms, Henry talks way too much and Stevens’ busky humour just doesn’t hit home at all. I know it’s difficult to keep coming up with new ideas for this genre and it must be difficult for the actors to constantly engage with nothing but some greenscreen, but the story is thin and the film reminds you of just about everything from “Jurassic Park” to episodes of “Stargate”. It does need a big screen, though. On television it will be even more forgettable – but I did like the moth.

Godzilla sells out to be more commercially viable
This movie has a real problem – It tries to cater to a wider audience by adding more ‘Marvel type’ action and storytelling rather than focus on doing what it could do really well and appeal to a more niche audience.

The “doing what it could do well” part I am referring to is the BIGNESS of the Kaiju’s / monsters. Not just their actions but their presence and size.. a bit of slowness in how they walk and move, to feel that “thud” when they take a step and the sheer overwhelming presence that they represent – Like in Pacific Rim or in Godzilla King of the Monsters. You FEEL the bigness and the size.

A splash in the ocean can causes huge tide-waves due to the size.

A resounding BOOM that is felt when two Kaiju’s collide.

Where is that?

There is no respect paid to the bigness.

It’s just they took some superhero action sequences and applied them to giants and made them move like they were the same size as humans.

There is no FEEL or BIGNESS – It’s simply a 6 out of 10 movie because it caters “enough” to enough people because it goes for what’s popular and throws a lot of it while giving away the depth and the “feel” of a big monster movie that is what godzilla is meant to be.

A downgrade from previous Godzilla vs. Kong: No sense of scale
Perhaps the issue comes partly because I saw the new Planet of the Apes movie not long before this. Because, to be honest, that’s what this felt like – except with no talking.

The biggest issue is that most of the scenes with Kong and the other apes took place in the hollow earth, often in huge, huge caves. Why is this a problem? Zero sense of scale. It wasn’t until the end of the movie that one got a fight scene where one could see the scale of these gigantic creatures. Until then, it just felt like watching normal-sized apes.

And then that fight scene was in a random city. No characters we knew were in it. In fact, we got to see very little in the way of the humans of the city at all. Their city is being destroyed, and there’s no reason to care. But at least we get a sense of scale – too little, too late.

And here’s the other crime: this was Kong’s film. I get that Godzilla is harder to write for. Even so, Godzilla was mainly seen in a series of cameos and then at the end. His arc was almost nonexistent. And, again, there’s no sense of the menace or scale.

As for the human characters, they were… alright, I guess? Definitely a less annoying cast than some past films in this series, but they were also sort of on their own little side quest. I didn’t like how they weren’t in the locations of the big titan action sequences. There was little menace. More like a fun adventure for amateurs. Fun for them. Less fun for the audience.

I love Godzilla. I like Kong. This was, overall, a bad direction for this series. They need to get back to basics and remember that a lot of the fun of Godzilla films is the locations in cities and other populated areas. This isn’t just because it looks cool to see a giant lizard smash apart a skyscraper. It’s because it’s crucial to provide a sense of menace and scale.

The humans never matter much in these movies (with some key exceptions in the history of Godzilla). The monsters do. But the humans do matter in at least one way: they show how big and terrible and terrifying the monsters are.

Next time, please focus on one city. And then make us feel something – awe, sadness, terror – when Godzilla and the other monsters (preferably not Kong) inevitably destroy it.