Godzilla vs Kong – It’s a Monster Movie

2.2

Yep, Godzilla vs Kong made its debut on HBO Max this past Wednesday. Yep, I watched it.

…

Is it just me? Am I asking too much from my scifi movies? That they not be laughably insane? In case you were wondering, I didn’t much care for Godzilla vs Kong. The longer it went on, the more bored I got. But lets get down to it….

Kong, you remember Kong, right? From that Skull Island movie that wasn’t entirely awful, but was still just meh OK I guess…. I don’t remember the details (I honestly don’t have much effort invested in this particular franchise) but I guess they captured his apey ass and are keeping him in his very own Truman show spinoff, a giant dome that acts as his “cage.” He’s made friends with a little kid named Jia (Kaylee Hottle) who was I guess a native of some island that the government or Monarch or whoever did some testing on *coughbikiniatollcough*…. She was rescued by Kong’s keeper, Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall).

Meanwhile, at Apex Cybernetics (side note: my first DVD player back in like 2001 was an Apex model and I’d swear the logos are the same here….) Employee and conspiracy theory podcaster Bernie (Bryan Tyree Henry) has his facility in Pensacola Florida “randomly” attacked by Godzilla.

And oh hey remember me its Madison (Millie Bobbie Brown) from the last movie, Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Mutant Russell Josh (Julian Dennison)!!! They team up with Bernie to uncover the conspiracy of what Apex and CEO Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) are up to,

MEANWHILE. Dammit there’s a lot of that going on. MEANWHILE….

Simmons and scientist Nathan Lind (Alex Skaarsgard) hatch a plan to get Kong to his native “hollow earth” … wait what? Just shut up and stay with me if you can. But they have to take him by ship to the door in Antarctica…. sigh.

And sure enough, there’s a “hollow earth” where’d you’d half expect the cast of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” to just randomly appear. Turns out that Kong is the last of his kind, a race of giant apes and he takes up the mantle of King, and Stormbringer his magic glowing axe made of a godzilla scale…

BUT (there’s always a but) Simmon’s OTHER plant on the mission, daughter Maya (Eiza González) steal some of the magic blue shit to power the MechaG… and all hell breaks loose. They escape to Hong Kong via a different tunnel, which is convenient because that’s also where Madison, Josh, and Bernie wind up after stowing away on Apex’s ship headed there. and guess what!! Simmons is trying to create a new mechanical Godzilla, conveniently named MechaGodzilla, with the icky brains and skull of one of Ghidorah’s heads. Ewwww..

The MechaG is activated, and Godzilla runs to it like a moth to fire. See that’s why he attacked Pensacola, because there was another test involving the skull there…. Plus he zaps a laser tunnel straight down to Kong’s throne room. So Kong hightails it through another tunnel up to Hong Kong, with what’s left of the gang in tow, and its kaiju party time.

You can probably guess the rest, because I really don’t feel like typing it. But it goes something like this: After a rousing round of Godzilla vs Kong, Kong teams up with Godzilla to kill MechaGodzilla the end. Dammit, I spoiled it, too.

Much like King of the Monsters, this is a never-ending tale of pulling plot devices out of our asses, and pure CGI destruction spectacle. HEAV’s? HEAV’s? Really? “Oh hey we can’t actually go to the hollow earth because gravity and heat and shit.” “Yeah no problem, just jump in a HEAV, bro, I got you.” WTF.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, the effects are nothing short of spectacular. I can’t really say I was at any moment scoffing at them at least. The production design, however…. I also don’t like the “look and feel” of this series very much. It has a very “Fake” sheen to it. I can’t find any other words to describe it, really. I know its fake, but it should look more real. If that’s on purpose then I don’t get it.

Then there’s Hong Kong. Is it just me or am I sitting there aghast at the literal millions of lives that this fight is costing. And the destruction. I mean, its all fake, none of it is real, but I still think its a little disturbing that its just like “eh, whatever, but did you see that explosion!!! woooooo!!!”

I wonder, though, why they didn’t surface at Tokyo. That would have been more befitting the Godzilla name, unless maybe Toho is saving that one for itself, I don’t know, I have no idea. Maybe comment below if you know. Maybe they were going for a bottom-shelf pun, Kong, Hong Kong, yeah I don’t know.

Honestly, I didn’t like Godzilla vs Kong, much the same as I didn’t like King of the Monsters. It’s just a completely mindless, vacant, CGI “watch the monsters destroy everything” type of affair. Are there deeper themes at work here? I guess, maybe, sure, if you want to dig. Plenty of high-level archetypes to go around, for sure, the likable nut Bernie, the greedy evil CEO Simmons, the well-hearted noble scientists Lind and Andrews. Oh, and the “native” kid Jia using sign language to communicate with Kong… Just, EyeRoll.jpg. This isn’t Bright Eyes, here, guys.

So after all that, I am going to give Godzilla vs Kong a no-doubt unpopular 2.2 / 5. Yes, I found it below average. If you think it should be rated higher, please let me know, but it was just a boring festival of plot devices and smashed buildings to me.

HBO Max: https://www.hbomax.com/godzilla-kong

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/

Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godzilla_vs_kong

^^^ Let’s talk about this 79% critic rating and a full 95% audience rating. Are you kidding me? This is why we can’t have nice things.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_vs._Kong

Godzilla vs Kong – It’s a Monster Movie

2.2