Directed by:
Adam WingardCinematography:
Ben SeresinComposer:
Tom HolkenborgCast:
Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Jessica Henwick, Julian Dennison, Kyle Chandler (more)VOD (5)
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Legends collide in Godzilla vs. Kong as these mythic adversaries meet in a spectacular battle for the ages, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Kong and his protectors undertake a perilous journey to find his true home, and with them is Jia, a young orphaned girl with whom he has formed a unique and powerful bond. But they unexpectedly find themselves in the path of an enraged Godzilla, cutting a swath of destruction across the globe. The epic clash between the two titans - instigated by unseen forces - is only the beginning of the mystery that lies deep within the core of the Earth. (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (12)
I'm almost monstrously satisfied. After the previous film, let alone after the trailer for this one, I didn't expect the atmosphere of Edwards' Godzilla to return (although it's too bad), and I was mainly looking forward to the fun with special effects, which I also got to see. Perhaps the only bad thing is the full-speed-ahead rush from the very beginning, because I could easily wait for a while for the first duel between Godzilla and Kong on ships, or even give it up, and I would like to stay longer in hollow earth. I appreciate that the title monsters have become regular characters, and for example, when Kong triumphantly raises an ancient ax or sits on the throne, you get exactly the feeling you should get. A giant plus is the well-arranged action (the finale in Hong Kong, and that's why I'm glad I waited to see it in the movie theater) supported by Holkenborg's music.
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Let's face it, Godzilla films across more than half a century have never been the pinnacle of intellectualism, but whether they were the work of Ishiro Honda, Jun Fukuda, or Takao Okawara, they were entertaining fairy tales, just overwrought and teetering on the edge of an awkwardness below which they never fell. But here the stupidity of the mythology is literally bursting through the door, everything revolving around those teenagers and that black guy who played it absolutely horrible (oops, didn't I just write something politically unacceptable?) was a torture to watch, so all that's left are the fights, which are surprisingly scarce, and all the highlights are revealed in the trailers. But to be fair, the fights between the ape, the lizard and the Mechagodzilla are excellent, lush, clearly delivered and hats off to Wingard for the way he directed them. Just a shame about the script, which was probably written by fanboys with wet teenage dreams.
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Kong II, king of the monsters. I could practically copy my comments from the other Godzilla reviews, with perhaps one positive amendment, that this time there was at least something to see during the fight scenes. However, you still have to spend an incredibly long time watching the inconsequential, clichéd, and absolutely intolerable characters, some of whom are on screen just to stare up at the sky and mindlessly repeating the catchy monster names. Also, I have to say that even though I was in such distress, I was still somehow waiting for the screenwriters to add another act to the storyline we have seen a million times before, which would provide at least one element of surprise. However, it was not to be, so the movie ends, and you go, "Oh, was that it?" I had to shake my head at the obvious references to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first Star Wars movie, and I am guessing Tron, unless I did not imagine that due to the excess of neon lights. Also, throwing knowing references at the audience does not necessarily make a good movie. The only thing that lifted my spirits is that it all seems like the swan song of the series, and I sincerely hope it is.
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The most useless CGI fest of the year, where the characters suck and the script sucks. Technically, Godzilla vs Kong draws heavily on its predecessors and offers absolutely nothing extra. Kong Skull Island, for example, was technically imaginative and delightfully mysterious. This sequel didn't necessarily have a brain, but it could have at least honored the previous installments, or the Godzilla film from 2014.
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Whereas Disney had to put Winnie the Pooh in the vault in order not to irritate the great Xi Jinping, Warner Brothers found a way to not only milk one of its main bits of IP, but also to please China mightily. Kong and Godzilla thus head to Hong Kong to measure their strengths against each other. On the one hand, that means a lot of visually rewarding neon, but, mainly, this time it involves more than just the monsters slightly dishevelling some iconic landmark, as was previously the case. Rather, they literally raze the whole problematic and rebellious Hong Kong to the ground. With, of course, the exception of the Bank of China Tower, which is the dominant feature of their night-time battle, but the monsters don’t dare even to touch it – although this iconic building absolutely asked for some sort of interaction, the filmmakers used their potential on the Central Government Complex and Hopewell Centre. The studio tries to flatter the domestic audience of post-Trump America by nodding to the supposed populist subversives of the Illuminati conspiracies and canonising alternative facts around the Hollow Earth theory in order to ingratiate both groups of their contradictory interpreters (according to some, there is a habitable cavity inside the Earth, while others, based on the example of Kong’s habitat, claim that we live in the cavity and the view of the sky is an illusion). But perhaps it’s actually a well-thought-out and coherent dramaturgical concept that at the moment when the monsters aren’t beating the shit out of each other, the rest of the film is completely out of hand. As with the previous instalments of the new international kaiju franchise, I see parallels with the old films, but that doesn’t make the new one any smarter or more satisfying for viewers. Godzilla movies always somehow reflected the phenomena and social issues of the time in order to be relevant to their viewers, but at the same time, it was all much more entertaining and guileless back then. Today, clearly in parallel with our own time, everything is frantically elaborate, overloaded with absolutely useless information and über-complicated lore. Why don’t they just simply make a monster flick instead of all of those idiotic scenes with human characters who watch the kaiju even when they’re not fighting. I'd rather watch Godzilla just swimming, sleeping or knitting a pair of socks than any of those moronic scenes with human characters. But perhaps we have to be worthy of those scenes with the titans and, when it comes down to it, the fact is that it’s really worth it.
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