Godzilla vs. Kong

The massive trailer campaign hinted from the start that there would be something more besides Godzilla and King Kong's bickering, which is why I ignored most of the trailers and relied on the element of surprise. Each of the previous three films was formally distinct, and while I strongly prefer the dark and brooding Edwards's Godzilla, I've found the development of MonsterVerse so far at least interesting and entertaining. Godzilla vs. Kong confirms this trend and delivers yet another different experience, the qualities of which, however, fall short of the enormous expectations as far as I’m concerned. Wingard doesn't give a damn about atmosphere and serves up a popcorn romp where events and geographical locations alternate with disproportionate speed and where none of the dozen characters are given enough room to stand out. The film obviously develops the concept of the King of the Monsters, and humanity, previously helpless and fearfully cowering at the presence of the titans, finally develops into a fundamental agent of events that directly controls the movement and actions of the monsters. It's almost disheartening to see the dominant Kong being dragged around in chains for half the film, with random songs from the last century occasionally playing. Mostly, though, it jumps furiously between several lines, one reminiscent of an infiltration tale from Stranger Things and another of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, with music blaring in to drown out much of the dialogue. The visual effects are certainly great and Wingard surprises with playful camera angles during the fight sequences, so the action itself is easily entertaining and the second half in particular creates some rhythm. Personally, however, I was expecting a darker and more coherent result and I can't help being bitterly disappointed. 60% (03/04/2021)

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. (17/04/2021)

By this axe I rule! A perfect movie for kids, quoting from old Verne books. The story combines Japanese cartoons from the sixties with the screenplay for Batman v Superman (spoiler: instead of Martha there is a flashy: "I don’t give a shit…"). Both fights are a feast for the eyes. Inventive, dynamic and beautifully filmed. This calls for a movie theater. Whether it is the lights of Hong Kong or paddling in the water, the action looks like a wet dream of all (once child) monster movies fans. Damn the physics and the listless characters. You don’t go to the theater to see a movie like this because of the logic. To the movie theater. Sniff. Whiskey is a savior. I’ll have another... (02/04/2021)

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. (03/04/2021)

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. (04/04/2021)