Godzil­la x Kong: The New Empire review – big, goofy fun

A small sense of spa­tial aware­ness and basic under­stand­ing of reme­di­al physics gets direc­tor Adam Wingard a long way in Godzil­la x Kong: The New Empire, a stratos­pher­i­cal­ly goofy action beat-em-up which ends up play­ing to its pri­mal, calorif­ic strengths rather than opt­ing for any­thing deep­er and tastier.

We’re in ​“Hol­low Earth”, a leafy, soft-focus sub­ter­ranean expanse which is, appar­ent­ly, even more hol­low than ​“actu­al Earth”. Axe-wield­ing emo titan, King Kong, is out and about tak­ing care of his dai­ly chores (fend­ing off green-blood­ed wilde­beests; tak­ing a show­er; look­ing sad because he’s so lone­ly, etc) when a sink­hole trans­ports him down to anoth­er leafy expanse pop­u­lat­ed by vio­lent enslaved mon­keys, all over­seen by the malev­o­lent Scar King.

Now, the Scar King wants noth­ing more than to break free of this pic­turesque if dis­mal­ly-dull cav­ern and wreak hav­oc up top and do what these titan-types love to do: smash up depop­u­lat­ed pre­fab con­do­mini­um blocks and let out ultra­son­ic yells. And he got a spe­cial bejew­elled spinal col­umn snake whip to fend off any foes.

Unlucky for him, Godzil­la is now act­ing as glob­al peace­keep­er top­side, tak­ing nap time in Rome’s col­i­se­um while also cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing the globe to ingest nuclear ener­gy in the same way a body builder would bang steroids. Godzil­la gen­uine­ly does not give a f*** in his ran­dom per­am­bu­la­tions, and there are loads of shots of per­spir­ing desk jock­eys yelling, ​“What the hell is he doing?!!” and vari­a­tions thereof.

All of which is to say, cir­cum­stances lead to a mighty destruc­to-porn show­down in an icon­ic and beloved resort city that the film’s mak­ers appar­ent­ly believe audi­ences want to see trans­formed into smok­ing rub­ble. And they’re half-right. In these films, the human char­ac­ters are always going to play sec­ond fid­dle to the com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed goliaths, and so it is here with Rebec­ca Hall’s crop-haired sci­en­tist doing lit­tle more than game­ly spout­ing expo­si­tion. Wingard reg­u­lar Dan Stevens is bussed in as a wacky rock ​‘n’ roll vet, the kind of guy you’d stren­u­ous­ly avoid at a cock­tail par­ty, while Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry plays an over­shar­ing and flam­boy­ant pod­cast con­spir­acist who’s bun­dled along for the ride.

There’s a lot that is naff and half-baked in Godzil­la x Kong: The New Empire; ele­ments that its mak­ers feel they need to duti­ful­ly tick off before they’re allowed to indulge in the good stuff. And the first 40-or-so min­utes of the film are so boil­er­plate that you’re left to won­der if Win­dard et al have opt­ed for some meta decon­struc­tion­ist mode, where every­thing looks and feels like its own Sat­ur­day Night Live parody.

Yet when it set­tles in and you can see that all nar­ra­tive due dili­gence is done, things are allowed to flex out a bit more and there are a few nice bat­tles and some nifty design aspects tossed in. Where this film excels is in the basics – it doesn’t take any risks and just choses to do the sim­ple things well. Which sounds like the faintest of faint praise, but the real­i­ty is, so many effects block­busters attempt to run before they can walk (men­tion­ing no names), and at least Wingard has the hum­ble intent of a film­mak­er who wants to make some­thing sim­ple, coher­ent and fun. And those are laud­able aims these days.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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