For those of you that read my reviews (Thank you to the 10's that do!), you already know that I have loved the Monsterverse up to this point. Although Godzilla 2014 wasn't the greatest movie, it still sits well with me within the saga of films. The shining star up to Godzilla vs Kong was Godzilla King of The Monsters. That movie had everything a good monster movie should have: story, legends, human characters and most importantly of course, the monsters. And unfortunately, it's still the best in the series.
I had been looking forward to this movie since Godzilla 2014 was announced because a leak even back then said that Godzilla vs Kong would eventually be a thing. The movie opens well and operates fairly well as an action movie. Kong fights Godzilla, Godzilla fights Kong just as the title suggests. The issue is, that's where the movie goes hollow for me. There's just no other substance behind the movie. The other movies in the franchise had all sorts of Monarch tie-ins, forgotten lore pieces, call backs to other movies or comic books. The human stories in the other movies were still involved on their own accords and still pushed the movies along when needed. No, the acting wasn't Oscar worthy; these are, after all, movies about giant monsters.
G vs K just had very little other substance within the movie. The setup for the two giant monsters to fight is vague at best and difficult to understand for me, let alone someone that doesn't follow the movies. Because I follow everything about the movies, I know why Kong is "suddenly" as large as Godzilla, but they really don't explain it well in the movie. They don't really say how long it has been since King of the Monsters. Again, the other movies tell you exactly what year it is or how long it has been between events. Godzilla in this movie acted very differently than the others; he seemed a lot more lizard-like than in the other two movies in the series. This movie seemed more like King Kong 2 featuring Godzilla than Godzilla vs Kong. A gigantic portion of the film is spent working through "who" King Kong is rather than building the story around why he and Godzilla always seem to fight.
The human counterparts in the movie are there, but really don't have any interesting storylines. They were placed there merely to connect the films it appeared. Kyle Chandler as an example, was very instrumental in King of the Monsters. Here, he quite literally does nothing but run around in fear. His character nor any of the returning cast have any of their character arcs added to at all. They were literally just fillers. For me, it felt very much like the old 1970's Godzilla movies where he was there to fight some other monster and the rest of the world didn't matter.
Please don't misunderstand me, the action is fantastic. The actual fighting between the two titans is incredibly well done and far from comical like the original G vs K movie back in the 1960's. Watching the two fight in the neon colours of Hong Kong was an amazing sight. G vs K left me with way more questions than answers though;
(If you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want spoilers, stop reading now)
Questions like, what happened to all the other 15ish Titans that are mentioned of or seen in King of the Monsters? How does the little girl have the same ability to detect another Titan like Kong? How does Kong have that ability? Being stranded on Skull island for his entire life, how would he have developed this skill? The movie keeps saying "Godzilla suddenly started attacking people and we don't know why" but how could that be true? Mechagodzilla would have taken years and years to build. We're expected to believe that all of a sudden Godzilla woke up one morning and said to himself "Hey what's that thing they're building?" I doubt it. If Godzilla knew about Kong as it's alluded to throughout the film, why wouldn't he go attack Kong, or why not send Rodan to do so? If the worm holes through the center of the planet inhabit life, and these same holes are alluded to how Godzilla movies so fast around the world in King of the Monsters, theoretically, Godzilla knew about that space and therefore could have attacked Kong on Skull Island without Kong ever knowing it was coming. This movie also showed Godzilla burn a hole to the center of the earth, or almost to. So why when he fired it into the Moto's mouth in the first film did it take so long to kill the Moto? Why didn't it go through King Ghidorah in King of the Monsters?
So many unanswered questions. To add to the confusion, there wasn't an after credit scene either, so we have no idea if there will ever be answers to any of the questions. I had really high hopes for this film, and as good as I can consider it, I was definitely left wanting.
Overall score: 6 out of 10 stars
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