MOVIE:
Godzilla vs Kong
WHERE TO WATCH:
Now showing in cinemas
OUR RATING
2/5 Stars
WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
When Godzilla suddenly attacks a coastal city after proving himself to be an ally to humanity against more malevolent Titans, King Kong is brought in from his home on Skull Island to battle Godzilla while a group of humans try and work out just why Godzilla attacked in the first place and what it has to do with the corporation that has led humanity's defence against Earth's new apex predators.
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
First things first, a quick disclaimer. Whether it is the fault of the cinema or the print itself, the screening of Godzilla vs Kong I attended was plagued by video that was lacking in brightness and colour. To confirm, it wasn't just the film, I re-watched the trailer when I got home and, sure enough, it looked much brighter, more vivid and more colourful on my laptop screen than at the cinema. Even removing my 3D glasses during the film did nothing to improve the colours or the brightness, which is unheard of in anything but IMAX 3D. This, no doubt, affected my experience with the film but, to be honest, it only really hurt the bits of the film that genuinely work – most of its many problems have nothing to do with the picture quality.
OK, bringing us back to speed, Godzilla vs Kong is the latest in the so-called "Monsterverse" that started with the Godzilla reboot in 2014. The 2014 Godzilla was better than the last time Hollywood tried their hand at making a big-budget blockbuster starring cinema's most famous monster, but it was a forgettable, inauspicious start to this increasingly misguided attempt to create an MCU-like franchise out of a new crop of monster movies. King Kong: Skull Island was an improvement and is probably still the best instalment in the series, but any enthusiasm for the Monsterverse that Kong may have drummed up quickly evaporated with the arrival of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which was one of 2019's very worst movies.
The Monsterverse has clearly been a failed experiment that has persisted by sheer force of will by the studio against diminishing box office returns, scathing responses from critics and a shocking inability to make any real impression on the wider popular imagination. Apparently failing to learn from its own failures in trying to make the DC Extended Universe a direct competitor with Marvel's mega-successful cinematic universe, Warner Brothers have again failed to understand why Marvel has succeeded where so many others have failed.
Unlike the rushed nature of Justice League, though, Godzilla vs Kong makes a much more fundamental mistake trying to copy Marvel (and, actually, Warners' own Harry Potter franchise): assuming that audiences are devoted enough to the characters and various storylines in the Monsterverse to be dropped into the latest episode without bothering to explain what came before. It also assumes that audiences will be invested enough in the Monsterverse and in seeing King Kong going up against Godzilla in a big Hollywood production that they won't be looking for a coherent or compelling story or even just two-dimensional characters.
Godzilla vs Kong is, in no uncertain terms, monumentally stupid. But what's significantly worse is that it's damn near incomprehensible. The former is to be expected of a movie with that title and, to be sure, some of its very best moments are gloriously and unapologetically brainless. What's much less acceptable is the amount of completely forgettable human characters thrown at the film (often played by A-list actors). The amount of time it spends on a plot that is such a garbled mess that I can only assume that the film started off as a six-hour epic that was ruthlessly cut down to fit the 2-hour runtime with much of its most important bits left on the cutting room floor. That this comes out the same week as the Snyder Cut of Justice League makes for some really interesting comparisons and uncanny similarities with the whole débâcle around that film.
This is made all the more egregious because it gets in the way of what actually works about Godzilla vs Kong and what most people presumably turned up for in the first place. Once you get past the nonsensical plot and the A-list cast wasted on instantly forgettable human characters, there is some real spectacle to enjoy here. It's spectacle that makes almost as little sense as the plot, and that revolves around the mass destructions of cities with no care for the presumably massive loss of human life, but in this case, the less it cares about its human inhabitants and more gloriously stupid it becomes, the more satisfying it is.
The effects work here is generally top-notch, and the big brawls between monsters are impressively massive and often beautifully staged, even if the actual editing and choreography make it all about as clear as mud - though, again, this could absolutely be down to the terrible picture quality of this particular screening so take this particular criticism with a dollop of salt. What impresses most, though, are not the epic battles but a sequence in the middle of the film where Kong and a group of humans, both good and not so good, take a trip to the centre of the Earth.
Even with the introduction of more monsters and some gigantic set pieces, it feels like a different and far better film that sets its sights squarely on creating a world as awe-inspiring and majestic as its portrayal of King Kong, which remains the highlight of this whole franchise. He may get second billing in the title, but this is clearly Kong's movie all the way through. Throw in some beautifully designed futuristic aircraft that, again, seem to have flown in from a different film entirely (I really don't understand the world that the Monsterverse takes place in: I thought it was set pretty much in our present, so where did all this Star-Trek-like tech come from?) and we're left with some serious eye candy that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
And that's really the big advantage of being able to see Godzilla vs Kong in cinemas in this country when it has gone straight to streaming in the States and elsewhere. Despite everything that's wrong with it, it is still at least a somewhat worthwhile cinematic experience. Watching it at home, though, especially on a computer monitor, tablet or (yikes) smartphone? There's really no point whatsoever.
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE: