Intensity 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Adam Wingard.
Is it a thriller? A sci-fi abomination? A psychedelic mishmash? A video game? An affront to Toho’s original vision? A horror film? Seriously, what the hell is this?
Truth be told, it’s really of all these things crammed together in a gargantuan hodgepodge of CGI lunacy. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is a wildly chaotic film with an equally wild plot that makes little to no sense. Scratch that…no sense.
If you thought Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, from 1971, with its hyper-psychedelic animated sequences, prescient climate change/environmental messaging, and peculiar upbeat vibes was weird, then think again.
Or if you thought Godzilla vs Gigan — where Anguiras and Godzilla have a conversation in the middle of the film, or Gigan’s off-putting buzzsaw chest, or the abundance of Japanese hippies was odd — then you may not think Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is all that strange. But it is.
The film picks up after 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, where each titan has gone to their neutral corners. Kong descends to Middle Earth to look for his lost tribe of other Kongs. Meanwhile, Godzilla parks up in Italy by using the Roman Coliseum as a cat bed. Both are content being apart but secretly long for a nice bout of punching and kicking the holy hell out of each other.
All is well until a mysterious series of sonic patterns begin to disrupt the natural harmony of surface earth and middle earth. The great Rebecca Hall (Resurrection and The Night House) and her stalwarts at the super-secret government cabal, Monarch, decide to figure out the source of these screeching sounds.
Kong returns to the surface with a tooth infection — really he’s in need of a good periodontist — but Godzilla becomes a little perturbed that their tenuous truce has been violated. In turn, Godzilla begins to seek out radiation sources, as he’s known to do. He ends up slaying half of France.
That’s when the film turns from toothaches and truces to the truly weird. The new oddities include:
- Baby Kong, Bald Kong, even Balder Kong, Skar Kong, and enslaved Kongs.
- Kong island refugees who commune with Mothra, control gravity, and worship crystals.
- Tiamat, the ancient Mesopotamian myth goddess who was the personification of the salt sea and the mother of the gods.
- Mothra is the insect leader of all that’s good in the world. She sets out to protect Kong, but it turns out she is also protecting humanity.
- In the final third, Kong is turned into a Transformer with a new punching device.
- Giant pig-like hyenas (wart dogs) in Middle Earth make Kong’s life a hassle.
- The frosty godlike titan, Shimu, is controlled by Skar Kong through the use of gravity-defying crystals.
- A barbie-colored Godzilla who now shoots pink flames after eating Tiamat.
- And, there’s also Suco, Scylla, the Titanus Kong tribe, Leafwings, Warbats, Hellhawks, Hollow Earth lizard, Wart Dogs, and Parrot Frogs.
If this sounds like a lot to take in, then you’re probably on to something. Between destroying Cairo and the pyramids, half of the article circle, Gibraltar, France, and Rio de Janeiro, and the aforementioned gang of titans and monsters, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is, as the kids say, “a little extra.”
On the acting side of things, there’s very little to write home about. All the characters are paper-thin-cookie-cutter-stamps of archetypes you’ve seen before clumsily delivering lines that you’ve definitely heard before. Even the little girl from the Kong tribe, who doesn’t deliver a single line in the film, is stiff, wooden, and seems to be able to only manufacture a look of complete confusion.Â
Should you watch Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire?
Many people will pass off the latest installment of this kick-punch fete as a fun family night out at the movies, but they couldn’t be more wrong.
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is a visually confusing mess with a story that lacks any real coherence, or for that matter, story. By the time that kicking and punching arrived at the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, I was half-hoping that the Christ the Redeemer statue would come to life and kick ol’ Skar Kong in the butt. Alas, that didn’t happen, but I’m willing to bet it was probably part of one of the pitch meetings.
Save yourself a couple of bucks and go rent Godzilla Minus One.
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is PG-13 and in theaters everywhere.