Too much CGI, not enough fun.
While Kong is dealing with reptilian creatures, Godzilla is busting disgracing Rome to save its people from giant monsters. Both these creatures get covered in CGI slime, so while Kong is showering and dealing with an infected tooth, Godzilla takes his naps in the Colosseum. And while the kaiju is battling underwater ice dragons in the Arctic, Godzilla is looking for more apes of his kind, and he finds some. one of them is a little red ape who becomes his new friend, and one of them is their leader who plans to destroy the fabric of all realities, and he’s known as Skar King.
While a majority of us were praising “Godzilla Minus One,” which became the first movie of the franchise to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, a majority of us have to be roped into seeing “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire” and having our reactions split down the middle. I happen to be on the opposite side of the equation. The kind in which its wall-to-wall CGI effects overshadow my interests, and has me looking at my Apple Watch.
Rebecca Hall reprises her role as the scientist Ilene Andrews, who competing with the U.S. Government on who gets to run the Hollow Earth facility, which monitors Kong. And she’s also dealing with her deaf adoptive daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who is considered to be last of her Iwi tribe. The kid senses a distress signal in Hollow Earth, while failing to adjust to her school life, saying that she doesn’t belong there or anywhere.
Ilene’s facility is, too, receiving the signal, and she must get to the bottom of this.
Brian Tyree Henry also returns as the conspiracy theorist, Titan blogger, and podcaster Bernie Hayes, who cracks the code of the distress signal and joins Ilene and Jia on their mission to Hollow Earth. He brings his video camera with him to film the environment to boost his blogging views.
Another tagalong on the mission is Trapper (Dan Stevens), a British Ace Ventura-type vet, who specializes in Titan physiology and Kong’s dental work, while using 80s music as assistance. The MonsterVerse’s Peter Quill, if you will. He has good taste in music with hits from KISS and Badfinger, among others.
There are colorful visuals from time to time, like how Godzilla can now light up magenta, which seems very unusual to the humans examining him. But through my eyes, it’s better than the guts he got covered in. And I liked the performances from Stevens and Hottle, but “Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire” didn’t work for me. I got bored by the special effects, fighting, and fast talking. It’s basically the same problems we’ve seen in the franchise and many other franchises. This MonsterVerse wants to be in the same league as the MCU, but even that franchise has been losing its magic lately.
Last week, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” got mixed reviews, but while I couldn’t compare it to the 40-year-old comedy hit, I still enjoyed it for allowing its iconic characters to adjust to the 2020s without degrading themselves. And it wasn’t so indulged in CGI effects. It was actually funny and goodhearted. My point is some franchises can still spark enjoyment, while some can’t. It all depends on the targets and our reactions to them.
“Godzilla Minus One” is the better recent Godzilla movie for obvious reasons, one of them being it was more thrilling and emotional than this one is. “Godzilla x Kong” may work as campy entertainment for you, but I’ll save my likes for better movies.