“Godzilla vs. Kong” Movie Review

After nearly six decades of waiting for the biggest cinema icons to have their rematch, Godzilla vs. Kong was released in the spring of 2021 to a limited theatrical run in the states and streaming for thirty days on HBO Max.

I couldn’t have been more excited myself. I had been waiting for this rematch since I became a Godzilla fan at the age of eight and wanted a more contemporary take on their matchup. For months, my son and I bought the merchandise and apparel. We were counting down the days until its premiere and were beyond ecstatic when the day finally arrived. After my son was done with his online schooling for the day, we immediately turned on HBO Max and proceeded to watch Godzilla vs. Kong.

My initial reactions to the movie were that of slight disappointment. Gone was a bit of the more serious tone that had accompanied Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island. Instead, the movie’s tone carried a more of the they’re-silly-giant-monsters-so-let’s-not-take-this-too-seriously vibe of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. While there are dramatic moments in both movies, I was disappointed that Legendary abandoned the slightly more mature tone of the first two Monsterverse movies to placate to the fanbase who already had numerous of the more not-so-serious entries of the Godzilla and Kong oeuvre.

Needless to say, this wasn’t exactly the Godzilla vs. Kong movie I was hoping for. I was hoping for a movie that was darker in tone, the stakes raised to astronomical levels (they are, but the movie has a way undermining those stakes), and more dramatic/violent battles between Godzilla and Kong. I had walked away, initially, thinking the movie was pedestrian and playing it safe more than anything else; hoping to satisfy the fanbases of both characters despite the fact Godzilla gets a fair amount less screen time than Kong. Even the Mechagodzilla (!) battle a the film’s conclusion was a means of giving Kong a clear victory while neutering Godzilla–making him the punching bag for Mechagodzilla while Kong ran in to save the day.

Since then, and as of this review, I’ve seen the film over two dozen times and have warmed myself quite a bit to a movie that I was initially underwhelmed with. While I still would’ve liked the movie I had mentioned in the above, I have realized that the kaiju genre, more or less, will be relegated to a more less-than-serious approach with the occasional exception. While I’m not against this approach, I have simply seen it in about nine out of ten kaiju flicks and would like to have something different–especially with the Godzilla franchise.

Anyways, Godzilla vs. Kong takes a more sci-fi approach to the story than the previous three films. The arrival of Hollow Earth, the HEAV vehicles, Apex Cybernetics, Kong’s biodome, even Mechagodzilla bring the movie more into the sci-fi realm. The previous entries focused a little more on legends and the usage of nuclear material (in fact, those messages were more pro-nuclear than anything you’d see in the Toho films). I enjoy this aspect of the movie. Nineteen-sixty-two’s King Kong vs. Godzilla was designed around the monsters being sumo wrestlers within a Salary Man’s comedy of the time. While I still like that movie, it made the monsters more of a joke than something that could, either, be taken a bit more seriously, or to play around with in a more outlandish world considering they are gigantic creatures. Director Adam Wingard decided to go with the latter and, unlike King Kong vs. Godzilla, decided to keep the comedy to a minimum (thankfully!).

We get the Skullcrawlers again, albeit, in a more limited role, Mechagodzilla, and a new kaiju: the Warbats. The Warbats are incredibly fun to watch as they glide through the air and attack their prey like most snakes would. There’s even a sinister personality that seems to come through in their short moment… It’s as if these things are nothing more than the types of kaiju that would sometimes go around killing things for the sport of it.

Mechagodzilla, though, beats out the Warbats for coolest new kaiju in the Monsterverse. Sadly, this character was spoiled to me in social media groups a number of months before the movie premiered. Nevertheless, this Mechagodzilla is just one badass mofo! The design is sleek. It’s immensely agile. It has fewer projectiles, but it’s the only Mechagodzilla that relies more on hand-to-hand combat than any previous incarnation, and that’s a welcomed change! It’s always been easy, I thought, to make a machine, pack it with all sorts of weaponry, then to have stationary and blast away at the opponent. It’s fine to have once in a while, but to make nearly every Mechagodzilla incarnation this way got old fairly quick. The hand-to-hand capabilities of this new Mechagodzilla help to make it more dangerous. It runs straight at the opponent and works on finding an advantage where it can punch, grab, or trip up the opponent. It will even take your head and smash it, repeatedly, into multiple buildings as it does with Godzilla. It’s minor rocket propulsion system gives it enough of a boost to launch itself off the ground enough to gain an advantage in almost any given situation. It has become my favorite version of Mechagodzilla.

Seeing Hollow Earth realized was a real treat as well. It’s a beautiful environment that’s a cross between a lush jungle and a tempered desert biome with active lightning strikes. It’s most striking feature is that it’s a near-mirror image of itself on the ceiling of this underworld. As Kong demonstrates in one scene, if anything should get high enough to the center of Hollow Earth, it can invert itself to the other side. It’s a feature that I can’t recall seeing in any previous science-fiction movie.

The Kong thrown room is beautiful itself. In a spacious, cavernous hall, decked with stalactites, stalagmites, and a slow-moving lava pool, it makes for majestic environment. Within this space lies the bones of large creatures from a by-gone battle and a series of axes that, when all are put in place, activate the energy within Hollow Earth that outlines the axes into a Godzilla-like feature and charges the axes to be used for combat.

The human characters are what I would consider standard-fare for a kaiju movie. They aren’t three-dimensional, but we get enough of their backstories to get a general idea of who they are and what roles they’ll play throughout. Besides, where here for the kaiju, right?

Madison has developed into a character taking more of an initiative in what’s going on with Godzilla’s strange behavior as of late. Who could blame her, though? Her mother died in the previous movie and her dad is now more active in Monarch and is barely home anymore. Her experiences with Godzilla in the last film give her more of an authoritative take on the kaiju for this movie.

Madison’s more aggressive style in seeking out why Godzilla is behaving strangely is partly due to her listening to the Titan Truth Podcast produced by Bernie Hayes, an engineer at Apex Cybernetics who has developed a number of theories on Apex believing they are up to some nefarious doings. While Bernie is a very lovable and sympathetic character, the fact that his being a conspiracy theorist, and being proven absolutely right about Apex, sort of bothers me in the type of world that we currently live in where some conspiracy theorists have developed very dangerous ideas that have harmed the lives of innocent people. One could easily argue, though, that Bernie is one of those conspiracy theorists who is more in line with not trusting large corporate entities and is working towards providing the evidence that his theories are correct rather than spouting things off without ever proving his points.

Josh Valentine, Madison’s friend, is a very minor character that provides small moments of comic relief and is somewhat instrumental in helping Godzilla and Kong defeat Mechagodzilla.

Dr. Ilene Andrews is better described as what one of the magazine covers in the movie calls her: The Kong Whisperer. She’s a linguist and anthropologist who had been studying Kong for a decade on Skull Island and is the movie’s Kong expert.

Jia is an orphaned girl from Skull Island who is deaf and can sign to Kong. Kong saved her when Skull Island was overtaken by a violet storm as a result of King Ghidorah’s arrival in the previous movie. As a result, her and Kong have a close bond. Sadly, while Kaylee Hottle is a good actress, her character doesn’t provide much other than a couple of moments where she communicates to Kong whereas no one else could and to tell Kong, at the film’s climax, that Godzilla isn’t the villain, but Mechagodzilla is.

Dr. Nathan Lind is a professor who wrote a failed book on Hollow Earth and has some knowledge as to its workings due to his brother having a failed mission several years earlier into making an entry into Hollow Earth. By and large, he may be the most important character in the movie given that his actions, partially by manipulation from evil Apex CEO, Walter Simmons, that gets the wheels of the plot moving.

Walter Simmons, Apex CEO, is a run-of-the-mill villain who manipulates a person or two for personal gain. Here, he manipulates Nathan into going into Hollow Earth to retrieve a powerful energy that is similar to the energy Godzilla emits with his atomic breath. This energy he wants to use to power his Mechagodzilla to, ultimately, destroy all of the Titans. He disappears in the middle of the movie and is evil enough that we want to seem him get his comeuppance. Otherwise, he’s fairly forgettable.

The battles between the monsters in the movie are fun, but short. This is one of the bigger complaints I have for the movie. The battleship sequence probably the more entertaining battle given that it’s such a different battle than we’ve seen in any previous kaiju movie. Not only that, it ushers in a brand new epic take between the mighty cinema icons and builds it up to perfection. The Hong Kong battle is extremely pretty and unique, but is over almost as quickly as it begins. The Mechagodzilla battle really makes Godzilla look like a chump, which is really odd given that this Godzilla has always shown to be able to hold his own in nearly every battle. Here, he just gets his ass beat until Kong comes along and prevents his demise. The Mechagodzilla battle is nothing more than something to give Kong a victory given that he is outmatched against Godzilla in every conceivable way. Sure, Godzilla helps with the defeat of Mechagodzilla by charging Kong’s axe that ultimately de-limbs Mechagodzilla, but it’s such a miniscule moment that it really doesn’t register.

While this wouldn’t be the Godzilla vs. Kong movie I would’ve made, it is a really fun movie that clips along at a nice pace. The movie, proper, runs at one hour forty-five minutes and gets us right into the thick of things just beyond the half-hour mark. The movie isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely fun and provides a few fresh takes for both Kong and Godzilla. For anyone who’s a fan of either, it’s definitely worth your time.

9.5/10