Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) | REVIEW

Directed by Adam Wingard — Screenplay by Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater.

Whether you call them kaiju, titans, or just plain old movie monsters, everyone knows King Kong and Godzilla. They’ve been projected onto the big screen for decades upon decades and yet it was only at the most recent Oscars ceremony that a Godzilla film was awarded with its first prestigious little golden statue. Now that franchise is only three Oscar statues behind Kong, who gained AMPAS recognition long before they finally gave Godzilla its own golden statuette. It was, however, a Japanese Toho production and not an American one, which this film is, that earned an Oscar. Nevertheless, the Oscar indicates that audiences, critics, and industry representatives alike all have an appetite for engrossing monster movies with something to say. At least, that’s what I’m told Godzilla: Minus One, which I have yet to see, is. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire — Minus One’s American cousin — is, however, pretty much just a silly monster movie (though I’m not sure it aspired to be anything else, so I don’t fully mean it is a pejorative). It has plenty of things going for it, but it also made me question what exactly we, or I, want from these kinds of films. 

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is set some years after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong. The two titular titans now have their own distinct territories, with Godzilla being the above-ground protector of Earth who regularly battles other kaiju and sleeps in his comfy amphitheater-turned-dog-bed, i.e. the Colosseum. Meanwhile, Kong is looking after his territory in the vast and relatively unexplored Hollow Earth world that he is trying to make his own, as he meets new creatures to battle. When Kong eventually discovers a new, uncharted section of the Hollow Earth, he realizes that there are others like him. When Kong meets the big ape tribe, he finds that they are being controlled by a particularly cruel and powerful big ape known as the Skar King, who even holds a magical object with which he can control another secret Hollow Earth kaiju with ice powers. To defeat the Skar King and the kaiju under its control, Kong must travel to Godzilla’s territory and convince him to join him in battle. That right there is the film (and if it sounds like the narrative is mostly built around Kong, then, yes, that is absolutely the case, and I would understand if Godzilla fans had a problem with that), but, at the same time, the film also spends time on a human b-plot involving a select group of returning characters — i.e. Rebecca Hall’s Dr. Ilene Andrews, Andrews’ adopted daughter (the Iwi tribe survivor, who can communicate with Kong) Jia played by Kaylee Hottle, and Brian Tyree Henry’s conspiracy theory podcaster named Bernie Hayes — that travel into the Hollow Earth, alongside Dan Steven’s Trapper, to investigate a mysterious signal that has been impacting Jia.

In Adam Wingard’s latest MonsterVerse film, it is a world that is all about the monsters and we’re all just living in it. When compared with the first kaiju team-up film from Wingard, the human roles have been significantly diminished. This feels like an attempt to put the monsters front and center, which, admittedly, is something a lot of fans have been asking for. But since these monsters can’t really speak, you need humans to vocalize their actions — and it can’t just be as WWE-style commentators explaining things. In this film’s greatly diminished human section, Rebecca Hall is saddled with a b-plot that is very unengaging and dull. The characters are thinly written, their scenes are filled with expositional dialogue, and it’s only there to make the film feel even a little bit grounded. Admittedly, I’ve always been mixed on Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla adaptation, but it feels like this film took all of the complaints that people had from that film (incl. that we don’t see enough of the titular titan) and made a massive overcorrection. If Edwards’ film was an admirable attempt at an adult and serious American kaiju film with something on its mind, then Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (apparently, the ‘x’ is meant to be silent, for some unknown reason) is a deeply silly Saturday morning cartoon. Now that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Still, it certainly feels like the franchise is regressing in style and writing compared to the entries designed by Gareth Edwards and Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island). Their individual entries only look better the more Legendary’s MonsterVerse is going in the direction of that Saturday morning cartoon style. As a side note, for those interested in a vastly different, underseen, and more human take on these types of kaiju films, I would recommend Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal, which, coincidentally, also features Dan Stevens.

There are both upsides and downsides to this silly and cartoonish kaiju approach. Let’s start with the good. Adam Wingard’s latest titan-focused film features some epic battles with over-the-top energy which is exactly why many people seek out these films in movie theaters in the first place. Additionally, the film features so many funny details within the movements and behaviors of the titular titans that it becomes quite endearing, such as the aforementioned dog bed, how Kong uses someone in a fight at one point, and how Kong, in general, behaves. I also think it must be said that Adam Wingard seems unafraid of the more absurd and over-the-top elements of these franchises, as he opts to steer directly into those elements. Whether you like the approach or not, you need a filmmaker who is confident enough in his abilities to successfully land the cartoonish tone without it being laughable in the wrong way — so, kudos to Wingard. Furthermore, even though the human aspect of this film is severely lacking in its ability to make us emotionally invested, the film finds room for a genuinely entertaining human character in Dan Stevens’ Trapper — a character assigned to replace Kong’s infected tooth — with Stevens seeming like he had a hoot making the film.

For as much as is genuinely entertaining about Godzilla x Kong and its cartoonish titan-frontloaded approach, there is just as much that is, at best, questionable and, at worst, concerning. I’ve already emphasized its problems with the inert human b-plot, so let’s now talk about the downsides of the cartoonish kaiju elements. While it is true that the film’s most memorable action scenes are above ground (wherein they give us recognizable landmarks and buildings with which to understand the relative size of things), the many scenes in Hollow Earth lack both texture and understandable scale, and one of the reasons why films about these great big monsters work is because we marvel at their size (e.g. King Kong on the Empire State Building). Furthermore, despite its use of fun and well-known locations on Earth to have the monsters fight in, the way it is executed makes it so that the ridiculous destruction has no weight or meaning to it. The film doesn’t do a whole lot to take into account or interrogate the millions of human lives that would die when four kaiju lay waste to Rio de Janeiro, for example. This film smashes buildings, bridges, and wonders of the world like it was designed to cause the most amount of damage possible, which, from a certain point of view, may be part of the fun of this franchise, but it is so far removed from the human bond and focus of the early stages of this American cinematic kaiju universe — or even the recent Apple TV+ series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Whether or not you have fun with Adam Wingard’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire depends on what you want out of these films. If you just want turn-your-brain-off monster action with silly and cartoonish details, then this film will be exactly what you’re hoping for. But if you, on the other hand, want the destruction appearing on screen to actually mean something, as well as an engaging human narrative that doesn’t feel like an afterthought, then this film probably won’t be all that memorable or exciting to you. Ultimately, Adam Wingard’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a fun but hollow monster mash-up.

5.9 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.