Yeah I know I know.
This is like four to five weeks late.
Especially since the peak time to talk about this movie has come and
gone. But I wanted to give this movie
the treatment it deserves because I think its success is an understatement at
this point and time.
But first a little bit of backstory. This has been in the works for nearly ten years when Warner Brothers first decided to revive the Godzilla franchise; which has been dormant for close to fifteen years prior thanks to the god awful 90’s Godzilla film that brought us classic lines like this:
For those of you who don’t know of it, the less you know the
better. Its seriously one of the
cheesiest movies I’ve ever seen in my life and not in a good way. Either way, this film killed the interest in
the classic movie monster stateside for quite some time, but you know where
Godzilla still reigned supreme? The
worldwide box office as the Godzilla movies still have major worldwide appeal
at the box office, especially in the Asian markets. That’s why most of the films take place there
due to its film legacy status. So no
matter what the domestic haul is for these films, the worldwide box office is
where these movies make major bank. And
studio executives knew this. So if they
were to make more massive appeal Godzilla films, they had to plan a major way
to reignite the Godzilla franchise for a new era.
Enter Marvel Studios and the new way to make franchise
films. Everyone caught on with how the
cinematic universe trend soon after The Avengers made massive amounts of money
in 2012. Especially Warner Brothers, who
decided to turn all their franchises into cinematic universes of sorts from DC
Films to The Conjuring to Harry Potter.
And I absolutely understand why Godzilla got one with all of its years
and years of lore to pull from with all the titans Godzilla has gone up against
in the 50s onward. There were tons of
opponents for Godzilla to go up against, but studio execs knew that they needed
a major trademarked character for Godzilla to go up against in order to get
their Avengers style storytelling payoff.
But who?
Enter King Kong himself.
Another major character from years past in the Warner Brothers IP
library. Kong’s history hasn’t been
nearly as shaky as the king of the monsters, but Kong’s history is more diverse
as nearly every decade had a King Kong movie of some sort. Hell this isn’t even the first time he has
fought Godzilla either as he fought him once before in 1963. The Kong movies have always been fascinating
to me of sorts. They are never boring as
Kong seems to be more about trying to connect with the humans that are
terrified of him. Even the admittedly
most boring Kong movie, the 2005 Peter Jackson three hour longed snoozer was
more or less about Kong’s longing for some sort of connection despite his
monstrous size and rampaging anyone who threatens him. In other words, he’s the perfect sort of
rival to fight a radioactive lizard that wants to protect us from other titans
that want to destroy us.
And this is the part where I talk about the films that led
up to the gigantic showdown, but I’ll be honest. Except for Kong: Skull Island, which was a
gloriously cartoony B-movie with a legitimately good cast of actors and
actresses, I’ve not been all that impressed with the two Godzilla movies. The first one was hideously boring and had a
lack of Godzilla. King of the Monsters
had some great fights, but I couldn’t give two shits about any of the story
because it was so plot hole filled and had so many irredeemable characters that
pissed me off. That’s been the problem
with this “cinematic universe”, even Kong: Skull Island which I liked. None of these movies have successfully
managed to juggle between showing the titans clashing with their enemies and
giving us an interesting story or likeable characters. The only reason Skull Island worked was
because it knew not to take itself too seriously. When you have Samuel L. Jackson staring off
against King Kong with a ridiculous score blasting over it, how serious am I
supposed to take this?
Needless to say, Godzilla vs Kong finally got the middle
ground right. They gave us exactly what
we wanted from a popcorn blockbuster movie in an era where we don’t have any of
these at the moment. I mean it’s not
god’s gift to cinema because there is still plenty to nitpick, but it more than
made up with it by giving us the right amounts of fighting between two
cinematic behemoths. That’s exactly what
the title and it lived up to the fucking hype, my god.
I’m just going to get my needless nitpicking out of the way
first. The characters are still plenty
flat. But unlike the other films up til
this point, we don’t need them to be THAT interesting. And unlike the other movies, the ones that we
are supposed to like are likeable.
Alexander Skarsgard and Rebecca Hall are good actors, but I honestly
couldn’t tell you anything about any of their characters, no offense. The unlikeable characters rightfully die
without overstaying their welcomes.
Literally, that’s all we are asking for with these monster movies. The only character I don’t like was the
podcast guy, whose name is not that important but he’s played by Brian Tyree
Henry, but thankfully he doesn’t get too much screen time and at least his
subplot with Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison leads to something. Something incredibly stupid, which is the
other major nitpick I have with this.
This subplot, without giving away any major spoilers, has an incredibly stupid
leap of logic that it wants you to take no questions asked. And I honestly have a lot of questions as to
how we are supposed to believe that could even possibly happen. Let’s just say that a character died in King
of the Monsters and its spirit somehow was still alive to be brought back to
life in a new form. Yeah I guess that’s
a slight spoiler in a way, but that’s the best I can describe it.
But look, we all know we didn’t pay for a ticket or a
subscription to HBO Max for this movie expecting a coherent story or deep
character studies. No. We paid to see Godzilla and Kong wrecking
shit and beating the hell out of each other.
AND MY GOD DID THAT DELIVER. All
three fight sequences fucking delivered the goods. The way these sequences were filmed were
great as we got exactly the right amounts of both characters having the upper
hands and the right amounts of focus on each.
We understood why Godzilla was rightfully pissed off and played the
antagonist, that wasn’t really the antagonist.
The movie rightfully made Kong the protagonist as its in his lore and
the human aspect to his character was played perfectly with his friendship with
this little deaf girl, played by Kaylee Hottle, who by far was the best actress
in this movie.
You know what the best part of these fight sequences
were? THEY WERE FILMED WITH LIGHT! HELL YES!
That has been a major complaint I’ve had with so many blockbusters as of
late. Including the previous films in
this cinematic universe. We are getting
way too many dark and gritty stylized fight sequences were you have to squint
at times to see the action. I get that’s
the way things are now, but I wish it wasn’t.
Because it may add a cool style to it, but it makes the movie hard to
follow at times and is kind of a detriment.
Not here and thank you Adam Wingard for not following the trend.
Bottom line. You're getting what you get when you watch this. It's not something prolifically deep or life-changing. It's just Godzilla and King Kong duking it out with some human interaction to further along the story leading to more Godzilla and Kong fighting. And you know what? That's all I really wanted from this movie and it absolutely delivered on that front. My only regret is not seeing this movie in theaters. Which is not this movie's fault that it came out during a pandemic, so nothing against it. I bet it would be even more amazing in IMAX. But yeah, this is a really fun action movie that is great popcorn fun.
Final Grade: A-
Not sure if or when we'll get a sequel to this because this was the big event that this cinematic universe was building up to. Don't really see this being a long-term cinematic story, but if they can find more ways to continue this, then yeah; consider me intrigued. It was at least one of the more cohesive attempts at studios outside of Marvel being able to build a larger story more successfully. Hope we see more.
Thank you all for reading as always. Sorry this is late. Expect more reviews on the way and more projects in the works. Until next time, take care.
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