REVIEW: ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ is Not the Team Up Moving You Were Hoping For
Your favorite Titans return for an all-new adventure in WB’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. In the movie, we find Kong living peacefully in Hollow Earth and Godzilla living on Earth. When Kong’s peaceful new life is threatened by a new enemy, Kong must team up with his nemesis, Godzilla to stop the enemy before he destroys both Hollow Earth and Earth.
The title of this movie is extremely misleading. On the surface, one would assume the movie would equally feature the two titans, but it does not. This movie is predominately a Kong movie disguising itself as a Godzilla x Kong movie. Godzilla takes a back seat, which really dampened my opinion of the movie. Based on the title, and what we’ve seen in the trailers, I was hoping to see the pair team up to take on the new big bad. Instead, the focus was on Kong, and shaping the Kong character. Which would have been fine if they had just called it a Kong movie, and given the character the respect he deserved. It was almost as if the writers or the studio did not believe that they could draw audience goers in without having Godzilla in the title. Which is a shame because they could have had something really special had they focused this movie entirely on Kong and him adapting to his “new empire”.
Because of this focus, the writers completely forgot there were actual humans in this movie. Brian Tyree Henry, Rebecca Hall, and Kaylee Hottle reprise their roles from Godzilla vs. Kong, Bernie Hayes, Ilene Andrews, and Jia Andrews, but only Hottle’s Jia gets any character development. The trio is joined in the movie by Dan Stevens’ Trapper, who felt more like a character out of a Guardians of the Galaxy movie rather than a Monsterverse movie. It may have been because each of his solo scenes featured 80s rock music, which would have been fine had the music played a key part in other aspects of the movie. However, these scenes completely took me out of the movie because they were so jarringly different than any other scene. I will say that the writers also missed out on something special between Henry’s Bernie and Stevens’ Trapper. These two had great comedic chemistry that should have been expanded on.
If you want to see a movie that features great CGI effects and beautifully crafted kaiju fighting scenes, this movie is for you. However, if you are looking for an engaging story that propels the Monsterverse forward, this is not it. There are better Monsterverse movies out there that will check all your Monsterverse boxes rather than spending the money to see this one.
Grade: C+