Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

 

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the direct sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) and the fifth entry in Legendary's Monsterverse. In this film we journey with Kong as he explores his new home of Hollow Earth, a strange subterranean pocket dimension within Earth. As Kong grows closer to discovering a secret about his kind, we come to see Godzilla slowly preparing itself for a new great threat to our world. It will take the combined forces of Godzilla, Kong and the humans of MONARCH to take on the latest threat.

 

These movies have been begging for a bit more adventure to them for a little while now. In the last feature we were promised a pretty decent fight between Godzilla and Kong but the story just wasn't there around those action scenes. In this film, we start with Kong and get to stay with him on and off the whole film. It really solidifies the monsters as characters in their own right; especially because Kong's character arc here is struggling with a deep loneliness only to uncover he is not the last of his kind. Unfortunately, Kong's people are ruled by a tyrant and if he wishes to free them then he must face one of the biggest challenges we've seen him tackle onscreen. I really liked the treatment of the monsters here, we finally see them as more than just visual effects or action pieces. Likewise Godzilla is building a nice sense of foreboding by constantly powering himself up all movie long for an undisclosed threat. The film isn't shy to showcase a wide variety of interesting looking kaiju too; there are monster fights and designs consistently placed throughtout the movie which left the worldbuilding coming across as pretty rich. The human storyline is about learning the threat directly related to the monster plot, with them venturing to Hollow Earth to aid Kong and Godzilla. This was a really smart way to utilise the human characters, by blending their narrative arcs with the focal point of the feature.

 

This movie is shot exceptionally well and is my personal favourite of Adam Wingard's features to date. The camerawork takes in these monolithic special effects shots and leaves you wowed, the action and visuals all very immersive in how they are captured and the way actors are shot blends them into these CGI vistas and creatures seamlessly. The special effects might just be the very part of Godzilla x Kong, there are so many detailed and well scaled kaiju in this that all look amazing. Pair these creatures with the way environments, laser blasts and flying vehicles are designed and this thing is a sleek looking blockbuster. The score here is a bit retro at times in a very fun way but it also comes at things with the much sought action fanfare. However, the soundtrack is one of my favourites in the Monsterverse series, the inclusion of Kiss' 'I Was Made For Lovin' You' and Golden Earring's 'Twilight Zone' blew me away. 

 

Dan Stevens, who played Trapper, is having a real blast here and it kind of shows; watching Steven bring to life what can only be described as the Steve Irwin of the Monsterverse was a lot of fun. Kaylee Hottle, who played Jia, gets to bring a bit of personal conflict to this with her role's feelings of isolation/not fitting in; I also adored her and Hall's work on creating a fantastic onscreen bond. Alex Ferns, who played Mikael, is such a fun minor role in this; Ferns as this pent up and rageful soldier type who gets wound up so easily just had my full attention when he was in a scene.

However, the best performance came from Rebecca Hall, who played Ilene Andrews. Hall really had me impressed in Godzilla vs. Kong but this performance really just builds on that. In this we see Ilene as this really resourceful and dynamic science team leader. She sweeps through MONARCH with authority but you feel she is well bonded to those around her. I loved how she presented a growing sense of urgency as the kaiju threat started ramping up, even really barrelling into the mystery at the heart of the narrative. Overall, what Hall has done best in these films is play a mother to her onscreen daughter, Hottle. It's a really unique dynamic being a mother to a deaf daughter who also has been displaced from her culture/home. The amount of love and work Hall puts in to frame this incredible bond between mother and daughter is one of the best human elements of this film. Ilene is without a doubt one of my favourite blockbuster roles from Rebecca Hall to date.

The Monsterverse is rarely perfect, and though this is one of my favourite features from the series to date, it is not without flaws. The film really doesn't have a great blend on humour to dramatic elements. There is this real push to have a couple of 'funny' characters front and centre for levity in typical Hollywood blockbuster format. But the truth is these gag characters do very little to help the film and often take the punch out of otherwise decent scenes. A constant problem the Monsterverse has always juggled is the human element, how to make the humans in the film link to the monsters and also be interesting in their own right. This film does it better than most but it does start stumbling in the back half of the film. Suddenly old flaws like exposition dumps, hail Mary secret projects and a hidden human society all start popping up and things get more convoluted than they really need to be. The Iwi tribe in Hollow Earth is a storyline that doesn't feel well explored and added too much lore dumping in the final stages of the feature. There's also a brief subplot around Ilene misunderstanding Jia and thinking she wants to stay with the Iwi, which felt like unnecessary heightened drama for the sake of it.

Brian Tyree Henry, who played Bernie Hayes, really does make an effort to tone it down for this film but he's still too over the top for this feature I found; this is a role that is only here to keep rattling off comedic dialogue at a frequent pace and it really intrudes on a lot of scenes. Fala Chen, who played the Iwi Queen, was a real nothing role; this character does a lot of empty staring but rarely actually gets to play a part in the story of the film. Rachel House, who played Hampton, is such a hard sell as a scientist type; watching House stumble through a chief scientist role was probably the biggest miscast in the feature.

I haven't always loved Legendary's Monsterverse, but this film is one of their very best in the series. I would give Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire a 7.5/10.