Tuesday 12 October 2021

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

Godzilla Vs Kong has a bunch of cool fights, visuals and concepts, and some smart tying together of various lore strands. (The decision to make the hollow earth a huge, gravity-churning version of Skull Island where Kong is more like King Conan works especially well, allowing for some classic Kong action while adding some twists.)

The problem is, this movie functions purely as a delivery system for those cool elements. The small amounts of narrative and human elements that do exist are contrived and illogical. Meanwhile, the titans have changed from inscrutable living natural megadisasters to superheroes. This would be fine - they are essentially gods, after all, so why not hew a little closer to Greek myth? - except they can't talk, so there's no dressing up just how rote the use of the standard team-up/face-off beats is here. (Frustratingly, they  actually introduce a smart way to allow Kong to communicate, but then barely use it!)

When your title characters can't talk and your supporting cast are almost completely disposable, then you're not going to end up with a very satisfying movie, no matter how good your choreography and design are.

Rating: Okay.

EDIT: on a second watch I'd knock this down to Bad if not Terrible. The hollow earth King Conan stuff is utterly wasted and the fights are all cartoonish, stripped off all weight and awe. The whole thing feels like an episode of WWE with some Marvel gooped all over it.

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