Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

[JAWS]

I finally had a chance to see this on Saturday with my sons.

It was a fun film with some incredible visuals and some quality story elements, but overall it doesn't work for me and is probably my least favorite MonsterVerse film.

My biggest overall issue with this movie is that for the most part, it feels like 3 separate stories not really connected very well with one another.

You have Kong on his personal journey in Hollow Earth, Jia on her journey discovering the lost Iwi tribe, and Godzilla running around taking steroids for a fight that doesn't come until the last 20 minutes.

The movie truly feels like a Kong movie with Godzilla added in for the sake of appearances. Godzilla's screen time doesn't feel at all connected to Kong's story until the two actually come together. In Kong vs Godzilla '62 and GvK, even though they both had separate stories going on , the overall film felt like it connected their stories and they included multiple run ins with each other over the course of the film, which worked out. This time it doesn't, particularly because Godzilla's scenes were short and felt like they were done out of requirement and not with any real purpose.

Even Jia's story feels disconnected with her time around Kong being much less than it was in GvK.

I feel like I'd have felt better about this movie if it had simply been a Kong movie and not billed as Godzilla and Kong. It would have even worked if it was a Kong film and Godzilla showed up, not going through any evolution process, and helped with the final fight.

What stings particularly with Godzilla is the huge, missed opportunity to realize a classic Godzilla scene with the wow of modern visuals, which was the nuclear power plan scene. This could have been a much longer scene and had more impact for Godzilla fans, but it was kept to short and only as much as needed to be scene to move along. Had they shown Godzilla arriving, and destroying the plant and starting to absorb the radiation in addition to what was shown on screen, that would have been amazing.

Another missed opportunity would have been showing the historical battles referenced in exposition instead of just briefly talking about it.

I think this movie suffered a bit from build up from filmmakers in marketing before release in how they presented Skar King. While he was not a real physical threat to anyone, like they seemed to talk him up, he was an interesting new style of villain. I would equate him to being similar to Emperor Palpatine, power hungry, but uses influence over others to get them to do his dirty work for him.

Shimo is a great design but an odd character. The exposition makes Shimo seem like a really bad kaiju, saying how she caused the ice age, yet, once she is freed from Skar King, she becomes a pal of Kong, just didn't feel like a natural character arc.

Godzilla's evolved design looked great on screen, though rumor mill is that the design will return to his 2019/2021 design, that the evolved effects will wear off and were only temporary.

Kong was fantastic in this movie, lots of showcasing of his intelligence and emotions, and he was truly the highlight of the movie, but again, it felt like it was his movie, so that should be the case.

As of right now, this would be my ranking of the MonsterVerse films based on my enjoyment for rewatching them, not getting into quality of filmmaking or anything of that sort.

1. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
2. Godzilla vs Kong
3. Kong: Skull Island
4. Godzilla
5. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

With all of this said, I am glad the movie is succeeding and giving reason for this series to continue.

I have two hopes for the future of the MonsterVerse.

1. Godzilla is the featured kaiju of the next film.
2. If Wingard completes his "trilogy", I hope is the last Godzilla/Kong combo movie for awhile. Godzilla and Kong are not the Avengers, there are limits to what you can do with them both in a movie. They should return to some solo films for awhile and build towards some big event to bring them together again.

Well, Jye, Mulfan, and I all agree on this Godzilla film.

You can now mark it as a fact that its not a very good movie

 

[JAWS]

This will be the first Monsterverse film I don't see at least twice in the theaters

 

[ironwez20]

Imma bad Godzilla fan cause I didn’t even see this yet just clips online. Am I still in the club?

 

[jye4ever]

Imma bad Godzilla fan cause I didn’t even see this yet just clips online. Am I still in the club?

The Kong stuff was good with Scar but ultimately Scar was not a strong enough threat to go up against Kong and Godzilla so they created this super lame Shimo that was controlled by Scar and then made it super easy to break Scar’s control over him.

Baby Kong was cool.

I teared up when the little girl stayed with her scientist mom at the end lol

It’s worth watching once for the early on stuff before Shimo’s introduction.

 

[How2TrainKaiju]

Took my sister's kids to see this last night. I'm far more upset with how much going to the moves costs now than how this turned out.

But, yeah...it was about as "turn your brain off and watch them fight" as I anticipated. Godzilla-Vs-Kong hit way more notes than this did. I've watched that one 3 times. I don't know when I'll be watching this one again.

 

[jye4ever]

Just got my Godzilla humidifier

 

[JAWS]

Adam Wingard won’t be returning.

He wanted to come back and do a third

That tells me that someone knew that the success of GxK was a fluke and it’s actually trash.

Guarantee this film does not age well for its fans

 

[MaulFan]

I've watched it at home now, and I enjoy it more than the first viewing, but it helped a lot not having hopes/expectations.

It has to be viewed as a Kong movie and let go of the idea of Godzilla being a main part of the story like in GxK.

I don't think Wingard moving on is a firing, he's making them successful and lucrative.

Regardless of the why he's moving on, I do hope some qualities of his films carry over into the future. Specifically, his editing and depiction of the monster fights. As much as I love King of the Monsters, it's a middle ground between Godzilla 2014 and GvK in terms of the way the monster fights are cut.

My ideal movie would have the passion for the source material that KOTM had and the fight quality of GvK and GxK.

I'd also like to see the next film part ways from the G & K mix, move back to solo films, there's only so many reasons to bring them together repeatedly and it's going to get old fast.

 

[jye4ever]

Adam Wingard won’t be returning.

He wanted to come back and do a third

That tells me that someone knew that the success of GxK was a fluke and it’s actually trash.

Guarantee this film does not age well for its fans

Scar abd Shimo were horrible villains.

 

[ironwez20]

Why did Godzilla need to evolve to fight those two again? Lol

 

[jye4ever]

Why did Godzilla need to evolve to fight those two again? Lol

Exactly!

 

[greygoose]

Why did Godzilla need to evolve to fight those two again? Lol

 

[MaulFan]

Why did Godzilla need to evolve to fight those two again? Lol

That's why Godzilla feels inconsequential in this movie. Half of his screen time is spent working towards powering himself up for a coming battle, then when that battle arrives, nothing happens to demonstrate why he needed to go through all of that prior effort, which makes most of his screen time feel more like an obligation to include him than having a meaningful part in the story.

 

[greygoose]

That's why Godzilla feels inconsequential in this movie. Half of his screen time is spent working towards powering himself up for a coming battle, then when that battle arrives, nothing happens to demonstrate why he needed to go through all of that prior effort, which makes most of his screen time feel more like an obligation to include him than having a meaningful part in the story.

Would you have taken him out altogether?

 

[jye4ever]

Happy Wingard is out.

 

[MaulFan]

Would you have taken him out altogether?

I think with some small adjustments, you could, and just have a solid Kong solo film.

 

[greygoose]

I think with some small adjustments, you could, and just have a solid Kong solo film.

Agreed. But still always a pleasure to see him show up. Hopefully the next film is focused on him.

 

[ironwez20]

I know I would have atleast added a toho monster to fight. Not that Shimo thing. Seriously that silly how to train your dragon monster created the ice age? Lol

 

[JAWS]

I've watched it at home now, and I enjoy it more than the first viewing, but it helped a lot not having hopes/expectations.

It has to be viewed as a Kong movie and let go of the idea of Godzilla being a main part of the story like in GxK.

I don't think Wingard moving on is a firing, he's making them successful and lucrative.

Regardless of the why he's moving on, I do hope some qualities of his films carry over into the future. Specifically, his editing and depiction of the monster fights. As much as I love King of the Monsters, it's a middle ground between Godzilla 2014 and GvK in terms of the way the monster fights are cut.

My ideal movie would have the passion for the source material that KOTM had and the fight quality of GvK and GxK.

I'd also like to see the next film part ways from the G & K mix, move back to solo films, there's only so many reasons to bring them together repeatedly and it's going to get old fast.

I don’t think he was “fired”

Just the studio moved on.

 

[jye4ever]

As soon as How to Train your Kaiju is introduced the move nose dives into the ground.