‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Has Some Monsters, Some Monster Battles, and Even Some Humans. Does It Amount to Much of Anything?

March 28, 2024

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Godzilla, King Kong [Not Pictured: The New Empire] (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Rebecca Hall, Kaylee Hottle, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen, Rachel House

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Monster Fights and Giant Ape Dentistry

Release Date: March 29, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: A massive ape, a giant lizard, and various other monsters aren’t just myths anymore. They’re full-blown citizens of Earth. So what do human beings think about that? For the most part, they don’t seem to really care. Sure, there are a few stuffy government types who are concerned about the possibility of apocalyptic destruction, but generally in the world of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, people are just going about their days. And so are Godzilla and King Kong, in fact, as the most they’re worried about is an infected tooth. But there are other monsters out there who aren’t so satisfied with this relative peace.

What Made an Impression?: The Humans Are (Metaphorically) Dead: The MonsterVerse kicked off with 2014’s Godzilla, which I (and a lot of other viewers) dinged for featuring too little of its titular kaiju and mostly boring human characters. Then years later, this franchise actually does care enough about its homo sapiens to give them motivations and interior lives and even have a few of them return from 2019’s Godzilla Vs. Kong. But the necessity of their presence in The New Empire is rather tenuous. Their storylines are ostensibly connected to each other, but they register as if they’re taking place on completely different planes of reality.
Destroy All Cities: Subpar human storylines need not be a death knell for Godzilla x Kong, as the monster battle royale is the main attraction after all. And on that front, the climactic scrapes reminded me of the most laborious sections of the Transformers movies. Which is to say: they’re an exhausting medley of cacophony. Instead of being thrilled by this orgy, I was mostly left wondering who was going to clean up all the urban destruction. Godzilla, Kong, and their cohorts naturally don’t really care much about that, but it feels like there should be at least a joking acknowledgement of that disinterest, instead of just plodding along to knock over whatever buildings lie in their way. In general, the moments of visual wit are few and far between. There are a few clever needle drops and some psychedelic editing experiments here and there, but that’s all just window dressing on a spectacle that’s pretty impenetrable unless you’re an expert in MonsterVerse lore.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is Recommended If You: always wanted to see Brazilian beachgoers have their days ruined by giant monsters

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Portals

‘Maestro’ + ‘Godzilla Minus One’ = ???

December 11, 2023

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Jason McDonald/Netflix; Toho/Screenshot

Maestro

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Michael Urie, Brian Klugman, Gideon Glick, Sam Nivola, Miriam Shor, Alexa Swinton, Josh Hamilton, June Gable

Director: Bradley Cooper

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: November 22, 2023 (Theaters)/December 20, 2023 (Theaters)

Godzilla Minus One

Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Mio Tanaka, Sae Nagatani

Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: December 1, 2023 (Theaters)

More

Godzilla vs. Kong vs. My Internal Composure: A Movie Review

April 19, 2021

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Godzilla vs. Kong (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Godzilla, King Kong, Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Mechagodzilla

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 31, 2021

What if it were Godzilla vs. Kong vs. … jmunney? Does the latest no-holds cinematic brawl between these two iconic behemoths make me want to join the fight? Hey man, I’m a pacifist! But entering their domain in some capacity might be fun. They seem like good company.  Kong is certainly a clown. And sensitive, to boot! Godzilla’s harder to peg, but I’d be willing to put in the emotional groundwork to make the connection. What’s Mechagodzilla’s deal, though? He sure comes out of nowhere. Does he even have a soul?!

Grade: 5 Podcasts of 10 ASLs

Movie Review: ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ Delivers What it Promises, But It’s a Huge Mess

May 30, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

CREDIT: Warner Bros./YouTube

Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Ken Watanabe, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Straitharn, Ziyi Zhang

Director: Michael Dougherty

Running Time: 132 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Monster-on-Monster Smashing and Even Some Human-on-Human Violence

Release Date: May 31, 2019

As promised, there are plenty of massive beasts in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but there are also a lot of human beings, and they’ve got plenty on their to-do list. They debate which monsters are friends and which are foe, and they retrieve some objects that may or may not be MacGuffins, and honestly I could not make heads or tails of what they’re trying to do. This is a murderer’s row of heavy hitters wading through incomprehensibility. That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, though, because when you come to see a Godzilla movie, you’re there for the monsters.

But here’s the thing: the fight scenes are just as incoherent! They’re distressingly dark, and edited way too quickly to make sense of what is going on. Every once in a while, there’s a really satisfying chomp or smackdown, but for the most part the splendor of the kaiju is obscured by too much visual clutter. King of the Monsters put me most in mind of the third Transformers flick, Dark of the Moon, a good chunk of which was an interminable clash of metal on metal. King of the Monsters is marred by sound design that is just as off-putting. In theory, I can understand why people would enjoy Godzilla getting into a battle royale with Mothra, Rodan, and the like a lot more than I can understand the appeal of robots clanging against each other. But this numbing onslaught is far from the best that this genre can offer.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is Recommended If You Like: Non-stop giant monster battles

Grade: 2 out of 5 Roars

Movie Review: Shin Godzilla

October 10, 2016

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , Leave a comment

shin-godzilla

This review was originally published on News Cult in October 2016.

Starring: Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara

Directors: Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Release Date: October 11, 2016

If you are in the mood for some giant reptile action but are a little wary of subtitles, it may be time to conquer your fears. Because if you waiting for the good ol’ U.S. of A. to get Godzilla right, it might be a while. The latest attempt barely even featured the title lizard and killed off its only interesting human character in the first ten minutes. Meanwhile, the franchise keeps stomping along in its native Japan, and the 31st entry, Shin Godzilla, is set for a limited Stateside release October 11-18.

Shin Godzilla wastes no time in setting the danger loose on Tokyo. A frenetically edited opening sequence of roadside carnage, government officials deliberating, and blood pouring into a tunnel paves the way for the big guy’s first appearance about 15 minutes in, and … it’s kind of disappointing. However, it eventually becomes clear that that is kind of the point, as Godzilla’s monstrousness starts out (relatively) silly but gradually grows more imposing. There is no such luck keeping up that go-for-broke pace indefinitely, but there is fun to be had beyond the destruction.

There are three main draws to Shin Godzilla: the aforementioned fast pace of Godzilla’s initial attack, the dark humor, and the (perhaps meta?) examination of political relations between Japan and the United States. The second and third points are tied up with each other: there is a defeatist tinge to much of the jokes in which the officials and scientists despair that so much is beyond their control. That also applies to their ally across the Pacific, which is a frequent source of frustration for forcing policy decisions upon them. These moments are too unmoored from any real situation to work as specific satire, but that lack of a clear analogue allows for a mythic quality that keeps these monster stories afloat as they are told over and over again.

Shin Godzilla is Recommended If You Like: Godzilla movies that actually feature Godzilla, a random joke about soggy noodles, and Japan-U.S. relations

Grade: 3 out of 5 Nuclear Fission Reactions