Review: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Director:  Adam Wingard

Stars:  Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, Rebecca Hall

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse project continues apace with Adam Wingard’s follow-up to his own Godzilla vs. Kong, replacing that adversarial conjunction with an apparently silent ‘x’, saucily inviting the idea that the two mega monsters might kiss this time.

Alas, things don’t get quite that heated, but if Wingard and his old writing partner Simon Barrett had decided to throw a flirtatious peck between beasties into the mix, it wouldn’t have been any less nutty than half of the goings on in The New Empire, which absolutely belts through near two hours of hyperactive, synthwave-addled mayhem. At one point Dan Steven’s sensationally hammy action-dentist (yes) Trapper snarkily suggests an idea of his own “while we’re throwing shit at the walls” and that’s absolutely in-keeping with the creative approach going on here, which takes the pain of a little lumpen exposition now and again to tear through extended sequences of dialogue-free carnage.

Actually, while on that subject, there’s something extraordinarily throwback about huge swathes of The New Empire, which beds down in its mad and monstrous new Hollow Earth realm so completely that the token human characters are often long-absent. This lends the film a purely visual dynamic redolent of the fantasies of silent cinema. It’s economical and actually quite charming. Wingard shows plenty of dynamism in how he presents his monsters and shows strong wordless communication with his audience. Improbably, this is a moderately creative flex five films into a deeply banal cinematic universe.

Explaining what’s going on here will sound frankly ridiculous, but here goes. Kong – rendered with as much charisma as your average Dwayne Johnson character (complimentary) – is spending his days roaming lonesome through Hollow Earth looking for playmates, observed from our surface world by Rebecca Hall’s returning scientist Dr. Ilene Andrews, now ward of the last survivor of Skull Island, orphaned and deaf Iwi child Jia (Kaylee Hottle). Godzilla has become nominal protector of mankind, beating off (ha) miscellaneous kaiju and taking naps in the Colosseum. Jia – coming from a race of telepaths – starts having visions that Dr. Andrews connects to wave patterns emanating from deep within Hollow Earth. She assembles a ragtag team that includes conspiracy theorist podcaster Bernie Hayes (Bryan Tyree Henry) and the aforementioned Trapper to go check it out.

Concurrent to all of this are Kong’s own discoveries deep in the bowels of the planet, where he befriends an aggressive Diddy Kong that he amusingly uses as a makeshift cudgel (anyone with an aversion to bratty toddlers will be heartily entertained by this impulse). The New Empire has been somewhat cagey about its eventual threat locked away in the recesses of the planet, as well as how the film turns its former enemies into a tag-team wrestling duo. The series of doolally plot turns and the blur of WTF exposition awaiting audiences is so much of the fun here that I’m not going anywhere near those answers. Suffice to say that what I’ve explained amounts to the sensible, restrained portions of the plot.

In terms of screen time it goes Kong > Humans > Godzilla, so fans of Japan’s greatest export may feel as though they get short shrift. Given the overachieving success of Godzilla Minus One, however, that might turn out to have been a really good call, as Wingard certainly can’t compete with Takashi Yamazaki’s world-conquering picture. Not that he’s tonally anywhere near it. As human interactions become less and less intrinsic to the kaiju chaos that’s unfurling, The New Empire kicks back and cruises on its bombastic visuals and Wingard’s soundtrack of deep cuts. The hugely entertaining third act feels almost like an MTV mixtape beamed in from some insane alternate dimension. Once it’s done, there’s no messing about. Smash to credits, get the hell outta there.

If this sounds like the human element is missing I’d counter that a) that’s rarely been the draw of these movies anyway but I’d also b) point toward Dan Stevens, who outright steals every scene he appears in, which is fortunately a good many. Swinging around the scenery like Chris Pratt-but-good, his Trapper is a more-than-welcome addition to this dippy universe; a comic relief character who’s actually, y’know, funny (his chipper “we can mourn later” killed me).

Improbably, then, this is about as fun as the MonsterVerse has been up until this point, and easily Wingard’s best outing since his underrated Blair Witch. Nothing about this screams classic, but the breezy fast-paced bonhomie is easy to ride along with and the effects look pretty good most of the time (something of a rarity at the moment in CG-heavy blockbuster cinema). Expectations are so very, very low at this point across Hollywood’s various IPs that the hurdle for this one was basically on the floor, but there’s enough brisk, ridiculous escapism here for a cagy recommendation.