Series Report Card: Godzilla (2024)

38. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Honestly, it wasn't a sure bet. Legendary's "Godzilla" and "Kong: Skull Island" were successful, while falling short of the culture-defining, Marvel-like domination the studio probably hoped for from their monster-filled cinematic universe. "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" was, in fact, a box office disappointment. "Godzilla Vs. Kong" underwent numerous reshoots and delays, enough that I began to wonder if the MonsterVerse was going to collapse during what was meant to be its finest moment. Timing, however, is everything. "Godzilla Vs. Kong" was one of the first major Hollywood releases after the COVID-19 lockdown eased up. It turns out watching a giant gorilla and a big-ass lizard beat the shit out of each other was exactly the kind of escapist entertainment the world needed after a year of real world horrors. The titanic title bout was announced as "saving cinemas." Naturally, Legendary, Warner Brothers, and Toho put their heads together to figure out a sequel. Godzilla and Kong would rumble again. Legendary was so determined to have a repeat of their previous success that they made sure Adam Wingard stayed on as director, making him the first person to direct more than one entry in the MonsterVerse. Three years later, the rematch between Godzilla and King Kong has roared into theaters, with the ungainly title "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire." 

Since the events of their last struggle, Kong has remained down in the Hollow Earth while Godzilla has stayed on the surface, brutally smashing any kaiju that challenges him. An infected tooth forces Kong to the surface, making Monarch worry another confrontation might ensue. Yet something worst is brewing. A strange signal from within the Hollow Earth is effecting the dreams of Jia, the last of the Skull Island natives and the adoptive daughter of Dr. Ilene Andrews. She follows Kong into the Hollow Earth with kaiju conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes, Titan veterinarian Tracker, and Jia. Inside, two civilizations are uncovered. One, a lost tribe of Iwi natives that have mastered the powers of the Hollow Earth. The other is a race of enormous apes, like Kong. They are ruled over by a sadistic tyrant known as the Skar King, who enforces his rule with an ice-spewing Titan known as Shimo. Kong, with Monarch's assistance, seeks to free his kind and prevent the Skar King from invading the surface. And he's going to need Godzilla's help to achieve that, something the thunderous lizard may not be willing to give. 

"Godzilla x Kong's" awkward title points towards its overstuffed, incident-heavy story. Plotting wise, "The New Empire" is a convoluted mess. For much of its runtime, the film is following three or four story threads at once. Kong explores the Hollow Earth, discover his people, and comes into conflict with the Skar King. Monarch is tracking Godzilla across the globe, as the monster charges up his power and battles other beasts. Ilene tags along behind the ape, hoping to figure out what is effecting her daughter so much. Multiple characters are introduced and reintroduced, some of them swiftly being killed off. The plot leaps all over the world, the monsters rumbling in several different cities across multiple continents. There's so many giant beasts in the film that it's a bit tricky to keep track of all of them. By the chaotic last act, so much is happening that I nearly got lost. "Godzilla x Kong" is jam-packed full of stuff happening, to the point that it risks becoming incoherent at times. 

While the mainstream critical press have largely dismissed the film for these reasons, it's hard for me to complain too much about "Godzilla x Kong's" action-heavy plotting. I'm not sure it all makes much sense but who cares when the whole thing is paced like a rocket sled? While most modern, effects filled blockbusters have bloated runtimes that exceed two hours, "The New Empire" runs a comparatively tidy 115 minutes. The movie has so much going on, that it never has time to get boring. Insane ideas right out of a comic book – like anti-gravity generating crystals, Kong having an enormous Power Glove grafted to his hand, or Godzilla morphing into a super strong, super pink new form – are introduced with whiplash inducing frequency. The film simply never stops barreling forward, introducing another dopamine stimulating bit of madness every second. Who can notice any plot holes when you're always cackling with glee? 

And cackle I did. "The New Empire" is even more of a kaiju Royal Rumble than Wingard's previous monster mash. That pro-wrestling comparison isn't just me being colorful. At one point, Godzilla suplexes Kong off the Great Pyramids of Gaza. This is, mind you, after he slayed the crab-beast Scylla with a giant sized Shoryuken earlier in the movie. "Godzilla x Kong" absolutely delights in displaying the fighting prowess and superpowers of his enormous entities. It says a lot about the movie that Kong bludgeoning a fleet of other huge apes with a juvenile giant simian doesn't even rank among the script's most outrageous moments. Finishing moves abound, as Kong literally rips apart numerous giant threats. Skar King whips skyscrapers at our heroes, Shimo freezes half of Rio de Janeiro, and a special kaiju guest star literally flies through the middle of the movie. This is following a zero-G rumble of massive proportions within the Earth's core. It is abundantly clear, every minute of its runtime, that Wingard and his team were having an absolute ball cooking up more and more insane scenarios for these supersized beasts to perform in. "The New Empire" radiates with the joy of a kid slamming his action figures together. 

"Godzilla x Kong's" focus on its monster ensemble beating each other up finally resolves the biggest problem that has repeatedly faced the MonsterVerse projects. The giant beasts are, truly, the stars now. Much of "The New Empire" is a non-verbal, wholly visual epic that tells its story through the body language and facial expressions of its giant beasts. Kong's existential loneliness as the last of his kind is made clear as he travels through the Hollow Earth. His disgust at the Skar King's tyranny is visible on his grunting face. An influence from Hong Kong martial arts cinema is felt, as we learn more about the creatures through their fighting styles. The Skar King's lanky posture, somersaults, and choke holds speak to his duplicitous nature. Kong's mixture of booby traps and brute strength shows his intelligent but direct style of combat. Godzilla, meanwhile, always goes for the direct approach, usually running right into his enemies. "Godzilla x Kong's" commitment to visual storytelling is such that you could probably cut the humans entirely out of this film and still be able to largely follow it. Unlike the frantically edited, overwhelming chaos of the "Transformers" franchise or the increasingly same-y CGI hodgepodges of superhero movies, this film feels almost experimental in its focus on telling as much of its story strictly through its non-speaking giant beasties. "Godzilla" fans have long dreamed of a movie starring the King of the Monsters without any humans in it at all. "The New Empire" comes as about as close to that goal as might be possible. 

However, there are people in the film. Even if 85% of it is made up of CGI monsters throttling each other, this is still technically a live action movie starring flesh-and-blood humans. Being the lowly mortal hero in a "Godzilla" movie has always been a somewhat thankless job and that's never been more clear than it is here. With Kong essentially functioning as the protagonist throughout the film, the human cast go with two distinct approaches. The first is bare minimum effort. Rebecca Hall as Ilene does get an actual character arc, of worrying about Jia and what decision she'll make. However, Hall spends the whole movie in a state of vaguely worried anxiety, never giving the role much energy. When the script reduces her to delivering a heaping ream of exposition about the history of the monsters and their conflict, she sounds audibly bored. The other direction the actors go in is over-the-top hamminess. Dan Stevens plays Trapper as a pseudo philosophical surfer dude type, seeming continuously in awe of everything around him and never getting down about the end-of-the-world stakes. Stevens is definitely having a good time playing such a cartoon character. Brian Tyree Henry is basically the movie's comic relief as Bernie, a ridiculous character who exists to react to everything with oversized fear. It's borderline annoying but Bernie is never the focus of a scene too long, so it's alright. Most of the rest of the cast either get killed by the monsters or literally don't talk. 

So, yes, King Kong is the proper hero of this film. His search for companionship drives the story. He's a giant gorilla Moses, arriving to free his people – or apes rather – from cruel subjugation. Wingard's previous Kaiju brawl openly compared Kong to Mel Gibson in "Lethal Weapon." The action movie star energy continues to resonate here. Kong is as beefy as Arnold was at his peak. He runs and dives behind pyramids like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard." When a haughty henchman gets in his face, he lays the ape out in a way that recalls Seagal. More than any other, Kong resembles Stallone as Rocky or Cobra, an uncompromising murder machine one minute and a weirdly warm average joe the next. He can conquer any foe with brutal strength but also gets his lunch stolen by Doug, the goofball giant lizard. Unstoppable hero but also slovenly everyman/ape, constantly getting the shit kick out of him but always triumphing in the end, the film creates an undeniably lovable hero out of Merion C. Cooper's eighty year old beast. 

This aligns the giant gorilla with a generation of father-like figures to anybody who grew up on eighties pop culture. Kong radiates Dad vibes throughout, even taken a shower in a waterfall to wash off the guts of an enemy at one point. I practically expected him to pop open a giant sized beer after that. All of this is fitting, since "The New Empire" sees the gorilla become an adoptive dad of sorts. Clearly paying homage to "Son of Kong," the sequel introduces a smaller Kong for the king to bond with. Identified in the credits as Suko, the ape is given giant, yearning eyes. His body language suggests a battered kid who is nevertheless eager to show his bravery. That makes Suko a little scrapper, who is introduced trying to shank Kong but quickly becomes attached to the big guy. That fearlessness, an ability to keep going even when everything seems bleak, is a trait that he shares with his adoptive dad. Kong and Suko's growing relationship clearly mirrors Ilene's bond with Jia and completes the gorilla's arc of trying to find others like him. 

Something "The New Empire" is really setting out to do is expand Kong's narrative. For most of his existence, the great ape has been defined by the same story, of being taken from his homeland and dying in a strange city. The MonsterVerse has freed Kong of this narrative. Unlike Godzilla, who has had many adventures and an extensive rogues gallery, Kong hasn't had much to fight outside of some persistent theropods. "The New Empire" gives Kong a supervillain of his own, in the form of the vile Skar King. The character is set up as Kong's intrinsic opposite. He's long and lean, where Kong is stout and buff. Kong's fur is dark black. Skar King is bright red. Kong fights his own battles, whole Skar King calls own Shimo – which he controls through magical torture, it must be noted – whenever he starts to loose a fight. While Kong is content to remain in the Hollow Earth, Skar King wants to expand his empire. The film does a wonderful job of emphasizing just how evil this big monkey is. He chuckles with sadistic glee, points and laughs at his enemies. Everything about how he's animated and acted gives off a deceitful, villainous vibe. Shimo, meanwhile, is like an attack dog, an innocent animal forged into a weapon by cruelty. She joins the Indominus Rex in the league of eerily pale reptilian antagonists but is ultimately redeemable, where the Skar King is a slave-driving villain through and through. 

But what of the other half of the title match-up? This might be more of a Kong vehicle but Godzilla still gets top billing. While Kong clearly has a complicated inner life here, Godzilla is treated much more like a straight-forward force of nature. The giant, radioactive lizard is driven by his desire to remain the Alpha Titan and will literally swim half-way across the world to smack down anyone who dares challenges his authority. This, surprisingly, has the result of making Godzilla a lovable bastard, a pure hater who simply wants nothing more than to pummel his opponents. We see this when he seeks out another Titan – the aquatic Tiamat, who has a cool, ribbon like fin around her neck – simply to steal more of her power. This need to dominate anyone who doesn't submit to him is paired with a very cat-like attitude. After tearing Scylla apart, Godzilla curls up in the Colosseum and takes a nap. He swats at jets like they are mice. He sneers at helicopters in contempt. You can't help but love the guy, no matter how big of an asshole he is. Like a typically selfish cat, this is just Godzilla's nature and all we can do is love him for it, as judging him for it will do nothing. It's a fun take on the character.

We are five films deep into the MonsterVerse. Yet it really wasn't until the last installment that the films started to feel like part of a bigger universe. "The New Empire" digs even deeper into this, in a way that allows for another star kaiju to appear half-way through. The world is really stated to feel fully flesh out now, to the point that crazy sci-fi tech existing or another monster being alluded to are taken for granted. My favorite element of the world-building here is how fantastical the Iwi colony inside the Hollow Earth is. They communicate via telekinesis. They carry spears made of pure crystal. They've harvested the otherworldly environment around them to create miraculous tech, like forcefields or anti-gravity. It feels very alien but is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner. These wacky ideas are introduced, they exist in this world, and we as a viewer just have to go with it. This freewheeling style of sci-fi/fantasy storytelling has always been commonplace in the Japanese "Godzilla" films and I love that the American ones have picked up on it. All of these touches do a lot more to make this shared universe feel like a fully formed, comic book universe of its own than all ten hours of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" managed. 

As with the last film, "Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire" belongs more to a grander tradition of giant monster movies and Showa sci-fi than to any one director. This is a King Kong and Godzilla movie first, an Adam Wingard film second. However, the director's influence can still be felt. His love of neon, synthwave visuals continue here, this time via the otherworldly portals and lava-heated caverns of the Hollow Earth. Even Godzilla's power-up, his eyes and spines shimmering with hot pink energy, seems influenced by this aesthetic. Wingard is informed here by the monster movies, action flicks, cartoons, toys, comic books, and rock videos he grew up loving. This is especially true of the soundtrack, which is filled out with multiple Dad rock favorites. While you can say most of these choices are copied from James Gunn's playbook – not an altogether unfair accusation – I still can't deny that Kiss or Loverboy kicking up on the soundtrack made me smile. (The needle drops are certainly far more memorable than Tom Holkenborg's score. Which is totally serviceable but is seriously lacking in the powerful, recognizable themes that highlight any good "Godzilla" movie soundtrack.) 

The MonsterVerse has come a long way from the grim realism of Gareth Edward's "Godzilla." The series now embraces a highly entertaining mixture of Showa era absurdity, where just about anything can happen, with the more grounded, manga-like tone of the Heisei films. All with a Hollywood studio mega-budget that allows for spellbinding visuals and a massive sense of scale that grants these cinematic icons the sense of grandeur they deserve while respecting their legacy as camp icons. The comparison to the thoughtful, humane drama of Toho's most recent "Godzilla" film will do the sugar-high chaos of this one no favors. I'm not surprised most of the negative reviews have unfavorably brought up "Godzilla Minus One." Yet there's room in this world for many different approaches to Godzilla and his super-sized pals. "Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire" is an exceedingly loud, chaotic, and goofy motion picture that I found immensely entertaining. [Grade: B+]

RECENT WATCHES: “Skull Island” (2023)

In 2016, everyone's favorite giant gorilla would return to animation via everyone's begrudgingly most commonly used streaming service. “Kong: King of the Apes” would be a CGI cartoon produced by Allen Bohbot, the same executive who co-created “Kong: The Animated Series.” It took a more sci-fi approach, Kong fighting robot dinosaurs in a near-future where gorillas are almost entirely extinct. While adequately animated and mildly compelling, the simplistic writing made it clear that young kids were the primary target audience. (The occasional gross-out humor did that as well.) The show was even more disconnected from the “King Kong” movies than Bohbot's previous “Kong” cartoon, abandoning all links save for the big ape and the dinos. If it wasn't for a sexy, dryly sarcastic fembot villain, I doubt I would've finished watching all twenty-six episodes. 

Last year, King Kong would return to Netflix for a decidedly different animated program. “Skull Island” was directly linked with the movies, taking place in the MonsterVerse continuity created by Legendary Productions. It was also not really approprite for young kids. In line with Netflix's brand of adult-skewing cartoons – which they call “anime,” despite being produced outside Japan –  it featured some gory violence. Despite being part of a multi-million dollar cinematic universe, “Skull Island” would drop on Netflix with little hype last summer. Those that did see it where not all that impressed. Considering how underwhelmed I was by Legendary Television's bigger budget entry into their MonsterVerse – and that it's only eight half-hour episodes, running a little less than three hours in total – I decided to review the whole series as one chunk. 

Set twenty-some years after the events of “Kong: Skull Island,” the show follows a crew of cryptozoologists sailing through the South Pacific. The expedition is led by Cap, with his teenage son Charlie and best friend Mike also among the team. Charlie rescues a mysterious young woman named Annie and brings her onboard. Mercenaries attack, in pursuit of her, before the entire boat is pulled under by a tentacled monster. Everyone washes up on Skull Island, where Charlie and Mike discover Annie has been living with a loyal, monstrous companion she calls Dog. Cap, meanwhile, encounters a woman named Irene, the leader of the mercenaries. As the parties seek each other out, and attempt to survive the vicious wildlife, they realize nobody will be leaving Skull Island as long as the huge squid still stalks the waters around it. The only creature strong enough to defeat such a monster is the enormous gorilla living at the island's center...

As with any animated project, it's hard to give any one person primary credit for molding "Skull Island." Willis Bulliner is credited with directing each episode, with a variety of talent being listed as co-director. I'm sure individual animators and producers also shaped the show. However, one voice is present throughout all eight installations. The script is by Brian Duffield. While Duffield is most acclaimed for the dialogue-free "No One Will Save You," his other projects are hyper-verbal, replete with frequently sarcastic and references-filled conversations. This is very true of "Skull Island." Even when on an island surrounded by killer monsters, potentially minutes away from death, the characters never stop cracking light-hearted jokes. Charlie and Mike are always trading fast-paced dialogue, sometimes about events unrelated to their current peril, and even when near death from an infected wound. Annie, despite spending most of her life isolated from humans, is maybe the mouthiest, snippiest character in the show. 

It's definitely distracting at times. The dialogue hits its nadir when Charlie jabs a giant ant with a rusted sword, the unsuccessful move causing him to cry "No stabby!" The sarcasm is even present in the episode titles, which have names like "What's Up, Croc?" and "Doggone It." The constant Whedonisms made Duffield's "Spontaneous" and "The Babysitter" hard to stomach at times. It's even more annoying in a series concerned with life-and-death situations against giant monsters, from an older, more classical time. 

As much as Duffield's attempts at Buffyspeak can grate on the ears, he does manage to frequently get me invested in the interactions between his characters. (Such as in "Love and Monsters," the best project to sport his name and the film that probably got him this job.) In "Skull Island," this is most true of Annie's partnership with Dog, a beast the size of a pick-up truck that resembles both a lion and a bulldog. The sixth episode, "Terms of Endearment," explores her backstory and how she met, and bonded with, this particular creature. This unlikely friendship, between a free-spirited teenage girl and her pet monster, is probably the highlight of the show. "Skull Island" frequently teases an attraction between Charlie and Annie. By the end, I think I was actually invested in these two, especially in the desperate choices they make to protect one another. A relationship between parents and children, humans and monsters, characterizes the whole show. When the cast isn't cracking wise – which isn't often – you can actually feel a real sense of emotion between these mismatched pairs. This is most apparent in the moment Irene reveals her connection to Annie or the way our heroes work to keep each other safe. 

As a monster show, "Skull Island" also isn't bad... Depending on the perspective you take. Though the snarky dialogue does it's best to undermine the tension, Charlie and Mike escaping a beach full of giant crabs in episode two is decently executed. Even better is a sequence from the third episode, where the boys are chased by an agile, Pristichampsus-like crocodilian. If nothing else, the show has fun cooking up some bizarre creatures, such as a giant rollypolly-like crustacean hiding in a rock, shape-shifting monkey beasts, man-eating plants, a turtle with huge aloe leaves growing from its shell, and a literal hedge hog. If your favorite parts of the "King Kong" movies have been the puny humans fleeing the extremely deadly animals of the island, then this show might satisfy you. 

However, you might have noticed that a specific monster was not mentioned in that last paragraph. Many of the negative reviews of "Skull Island" seem especially peeved that King Kong isn't that present in the show. Yes, much like the other MonsterVerse streaming series, "Skull Island" is weirdly reluctant to feature its star kaiju much at all. Kong doesn't even appear on-screen until the third episode and doesn't start doing much of anything until even later than that. Unlike "Monarch," which seemingly waited as long as possible before having Godzilla do anything cool, "Skull Island" does devote its last two episodes almost entirely to Kong. The penultimate installment is largely a flashback, showing Kong's ultimately tragic friendship with a Spanish speaking native. It's a largely nonverbal half-hour, all about the emotional connection between this small human and the giant ape, and features a pretty cool action sequence with some enormous chameleons. (Which, amusingly, change color every time Kong whacks them.) The final episode finally has Kong throw down with the cephalopod Titan, a cool Cthulhu-like adversary that fits in well with the MonsterVerse's menagerie of kaiju. While watching Kong thrash an eldritch abomination to death, I found myself thinking that "Skull Island" had finally turned into a pretty decent cartoon. 

Then, of course, it ends. The series wraps up in an abrupt fashion that leaves plenty of unresolved plot points for a potential second season to occupy itself with. As is all too typical of modern serialized television, the show stops just as it was getting good. Netflix hasn't committed to a continuation yet and, considering the lack of hype "Skull Island" generated, I'm doubtful it'll be greelit. Ultimately, I did find "Skull Island" a less frustrating watch than "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" or "Godzilla Singular Point." It's similarly stingy with its A-list monster, in a way that leaves the viewer continuously wanting for more. 

Yet at least it's not occupied with a number of dull subplots or a preponderance of stifling lore. The characters slowly grew on me, despite Duffield's annoying dialogue. The narrative is fairly straightforward. Even if Kong is obnoxiously kept just off-screen for most of the program, there's at least plenty of other mysterious beasts to occupy the viewer. It doesn't live up to the awesome potential of an animated series set in the MonsterVerse and based around Skull Island. However, compared to the low standards of previous "Kong" cartoons, "Skull Island" admittedly clears a very low bar. [6/10]

RECENT WATCHES: Kong: Return to the Jungle (2007)

That “Kong: The Animated Series,” a largely forgotten and deeply mediocre cartoon, got a sequel movie four years after it ended is surprising. That it received two seems irrational. Yet it is true. In fall of 2006, a special extended edition of Peter Jackson's “King Kong” was released on DVD. BKN International took the opportunity to ride those coattails one more time and see if they could squeeze a little more blood out of this particular stone. While “Kong: King of Atlantis” was practically indistinguishable from the TV show that spawned it, the second follow-up is notable for an all together different reason. “Kong: Return to the Jungle” would ditch the serviceable, if bland, traditional animation of the show for what the DVD cover refers to as “state-of-the-art CGI.” I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that statement is misleading, to say the least.  

“Return to the Jungle” goes back to Kong Island and reintroduces us to “The Animated Series'” heroes: teenage adventurer Jason Jensen, his genius scientist grandmother, comic relief buddy Tann, island shaman girl Lua, and the giant gorilla Kong that connects all of them. Their peaceful existence is interrupted when arch-nemesis Ramon De La Porta returns. He leads a big-game hunter named Stag Hunter to the island. Hunter has built a high-tech zoo in Manhattan and intends to populate it with Kong, the dinosaurs, and other extinct megafauna that populate the island. It's all a scheme to unleash the animals on the city, so Stag can hunt them for sport and De La Porta can take the fall. Jason and his pals head to NYC to save their hairy friend from the unhinged hunter and a military eager to protect the city. 

By 2007, CGI was well established as the primary animation format for feature films. Maybe this is why the “Kong” producers decided to go this route. However, within minutes, it's clear that the budget was not available to realize this vision. At least one Letterboxd review compares the film's appearance to a PlayStation 2 game, which I think is really unfair to the PS2. “Return to the Jungle” is, simply, one of the ugliest movies I've ever seen. The models are shiny, their movements stiff and weightless. Characters seem to frequently float through the air. Any time someone interacts with another person or the environment, the two simply don't seem to occupy the same space. This results in action scenes where characters limply flop around against each other. The facial expressions are robotic and gap-mouthed. The colors are flat, the environments lacking details. At one point, the animators used pixelated photographs and literal GIFs in lieu of art design. On more than one occasion, backgrounds can clearly be seen glitching out. But that implies that the entire movie doesn't look like one long glitch...

Even if “Kong: Return to the Jungle” had fantastic writing, it would be impossible to overlook how hideous the animation is. Of course, the movie doesn't have a decent script. I can't believe I'm saying this but I don't think this cartoon respects the lore of “Kong: The Animated Series.” Despite ending the show in a vegetative state, Professor De La Porta returns without any explanation here. He showed nothing but contempt for Kong and the Jensens in the show but seems to have a begrudging respect for them now. Originally, Lua had an independent and often stubborn personality. Here, she's nothing but a fawning female lead, going along with everything the boys offer. Jason's grandmother becomes another totally subservient female figure, baking pies for the guys and dropping exposition. None of the show's other extensive mythology, like the Primal Stones or the island's history, are mentioned. I didn't think “Kong: The Animated Series” had an especially deep or well thought-out cast of characters or plotting. Somehow, “Return to the Jungle” dumbs down what was already a middling, shallow cartoon show.

Part of why “Kong: Return ot the Jungle” comes off as so didactic is because the dialogue is loaded down with exposition. In addition to simplifying already flat characters, “Return to the Jungle” goes out of its way to explain who everyone is and what their deal is. The first half-hour of this 78 minute movie is largely devoted to explaining Kong and Jason's background. That the giant gorilla is a clone of an original Kong, though seemingly not the original Kong from the 1933 movie. That Jason shares his DNA with him, that this allows the two to magically connect. The script is burdened with “As you know” dialogue, such as the repeated references to Lua being the island's shaman or Tann being the son of a billionaire. While “Kong: The Animated Series” occasionally featured an environmental message, “Return to the Jungle” really hammers home this moral about respecting wild life. Making the villain such a cartoonishly evil animal hater defangs a message that kids probably do need to hear. 

Making the previous “Kong: The Animated Series” movie a musical was incredibly distracting, not to mention embarrassing. “Return to the Jungle” kind of maintains this change, though it finds a compromise of sorts. There are three original songs in the movie but they simply play over action scenes. The heroes don't burst into song and dance, thankfully. The first song, which introduces Kong's status as king of the jungle, is even kind of catchy. The second number, played during a painfully animated flashback to Jason and the gorilla's childhood, isn't great but was tolerable. The third song, however, played when our heroes are running around New York City, made my teeth clench pretty hard. All things considered, I really don't understand the desire to make songs such a big part of an action movie about a giant gorilla. 

I'll give “Kong: Return to the Jungle” positive notices for one element: The movie returns to “King Kong” tradition by having the gorilla rampage through New York City and fight a T-Rex, something “The Animated Series” downplayed. In fact, the movie makes the Tyrannosaurus Rex Kong's biggest enemy. All things considered though, “Return to the Jungle” is extremely dire slop only suitable for the most undiscerning child audiences. In the department of computer generated hemorrhoids, it avoids being as eye-scorchingly hideous as “Rapsittie Street Kids” or those weird, low budget Christian cartoons... But just barely. It's hard to be too down on a movie clearly made with so little resources, by so few people. (IMDb only lists forty people in the entire credits.) I suspect the entire movie was rushed through production in a few months. Yet there's no way around how deeply uncomfortable it is to look at this thing. When paired with a totally half-assed script, it makes “Kong: Return to the Jungle” an intensely unpleasant viewing experience. [2/10]

RECENT WATCHES: Kong: King of Atlantis (2005)

King Kong might be one of the original giant monster movie stars. Yet, in the modern era, the enormous gorilla has too often been a second banana. The 1998 American remake of “Godzilla” was a disappointment, critically and financially. The blockbuster would, at least in the hearts of kaiju devotees, be outshined by a Saturday morning cartoon spin-off. “Godzilla: The Series” was popular enough that someone decided to cash-in. European animation company BKN International – perhaps better known as Bohbot Entertainment to old millennials like me – would create a competing cartoon based on King Kong. “Kong: The Animated Series'” original run last from 2000 to 2001, totaling forty episodes. The series would even, for a short while, air on the same network as “Godzilla: The Series.”

Much like the previous “King Kong” cartoon, “Kong: The Animated Series” took very little from the original films. The series followed a modern day clone of the original big gorilla, made by a scientist named Dr. Jenkins. The ape shares a bond, and some DNA, with her grandson, Jason. After a villain attempts to capture the gorilla, Dr. Jenkins moves him to the remote Kong Island. (I guess the name “Skull Island” was too gruesome for the kiddy crowd.) Now a teenager, Jason arrives on the island with his best friend, the meat-headed pilot Tann. There, Jason, Kong, Tann, and jungle girl Lua have a number of adventures. 

The show mostly turned King Kong into a standard action cartoon hero. Through a device called the Cyber-Link, Jason and Kong can combine into a shared consciousness. A villain named De La Porta seeks the power of the Primal Stones, thirteen magical MacGuffins linked to the history of Kong Island. He grabbed his own Cyber-Link, fusing with different animals, in other to give Kong an anthromorphized creature to grapple with in every episode. The show invented a convoluted backstory linking Kong to the lost continent of Atlantis and an evil god named Chiros, the ultimate antagonist of the entire series. A whole litany of mystical plot devices, shamanism, mythologies from all around the world, and even time travel get involved eventually. 

Despite all the ideas floating around inside it, “Kong: The Animated Series” was an extremely mediocre cartoon. The animation was bland, the character designs deeply uninspired. The ensemble never rose above being shallow cartoon archetypes. The voice cast – largely made up of familiar performers like Scott McNeil and David Kaye – did not contributed especially memorable work. Most episodes don't even take advantage of what we associated with “King Kong,” the giant ape rarely fighting dinosaurs or rampaging through cities. Instead, it had a standard structure of our heroes travelling around the world, usually foiling the same villain every week. Compared to the grotesque enemy monsters of “Godzilla: The Series,” the antagonistic beasties here are completely forgettable. I watched all forty episodes on Tubi and I've endured much shittier cartoon shows. However, “Kong: The Animated Series” has rightly been consigned to the dust bin of animation history. 

Why am I bringing this up? In 2005, King Kong would return to theater screens in the big budget and much anticipated remake from Peter Jackson. Hoping to cash-in on the hype, “Kong; The Animated Series” would find its way back onto TV around this time. Yet the coattail riding did not end there. BKN decided to resurrect the show for a short, hour long, direct-to-video movie. Two weeks before Jackson's “Kong” roared into multiplexes everywhere, “Kong: King of Atlantis” would shuffle onto video store shelves. Ignored by most, the cartoon's technical inclusion as part of the “Kong” legacy made me morbidly curious enough to give it a look.

“King of Atlantis” takes place after “The Animated Series,” though it doesn't reference any of the show's events. (In fact, I'm pretty sure it contradicts some of them.) A strange eclipse is beginning above Kong Island, worrying Lua and making Kong antsy. Jason and Tann notice strange things around the island, such as a tar pit seemingly springing to life. Soon, it becomes apparent that evil, reptilian Atlanteans emerge from an alternate timeline. They take Kong back to their world, where the evil Queen Reptilla intends on brainwashing the big ape. Jason, Tann, and Lua follow behind and team up with the local rebels, in order to save Kong and stop the evil queen.

Though it was made four years later, “King of Atlantis” basically feels like a double-length episode of “Kong: The Animated Series.” The movie does little to distinguish itself from the show that birthed it. The quality of the animation is slightly higher than the average episode. They throw in a cave bear sidekick to follow the heroes around that wasn't present in the show. This is totally standard stuff. The sci-fi setting is equal parts generic and slapped together, mixing together many different types of aliens with little coherence. The evil queen is a stock-parts villain and her sycophant henchman – literally named Scyophantis – is annoying. Jason and Lua's sexual tension carries over from the show to uninspired results. Tann becomes attached to the Amazonian leader of the rebels, in a totally last minute subplot. Kong fights some cyborg dinosaur critters after spending most of the movie moping and being bossed around by the bad guys. 

It's not much to write about. While “Kong: The Animated Series” at least didn't talk down to the viewers with obvious moral lessons, the movie does include one. Jason and Lua can't agree throughout most of the film and their bickering alienates Kong. It's only after everyone works together that everything turns out okay. How is this message communicated to the viewer? Through something that the series definitely didn't include: Musical numbers! Yes, “Kong: King of Atlantis” is somehow the second direct-to-video, animated “King Kong” musical. Let me tell you, the songs here make me pine for the lyricism of “The Mighty Kong.” The lyrics are deeply inane, the melodies annoying. Each time the characters burst into song, I felt a full body cringe come over me. Moreover, there's absolutely no reason for these songs to be included. The show never featured any singing. Why does the movie? 

In other words, “Kong: King of Atlantis” is only for the most obsessive of Kong Kompletest. With the exception of those shitty songs, it's really no worst than any two episodes of “Kong: The Animated Series.” It is also, I must point out, also no better than any episode of the series. Much like the show it's attached to, “King of Atlantis” is a project that little effort was expended on. The writing is kids show slop. The animation is unambitious. The characters and acting are lacking in any memorable personality. Unless you are really desperate to see a giant gorilla wrestle some monsters, and have exhausted all other options, there's zero reason to seek this out. I wish I could say something pithy like “But at least there's no singing and dancing” but, inexplicably, there is. You have my permission to keep doing what you were going to do with this movie anyway and ignore its existence. [4/10]

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Episode 1.10: Beyond Logic

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Beyond Logic

“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” finally fulfils some of its promises in the final episode. “Beyond Logic” has Lee and May finding Cate, in the company of her grandmother, within the Hollow Earth. Shaw has a tearful reunion with Keiko, who is dismayed to learn that sixty years have passed while she's stayed the same age. She refers to this realm as Axis Mundi, calling it a half-way point between the surface world and the deeper inner Earth. Keiko fashioned a distress signal out of the device that came down with her. With Lee's help, they are able to increase the strength. This catches the attention of Kentaro and Hiroshi on the surface. The quartet find the Project Hourglass shuttle, still in working condition because of the time dilation. Just as they are about to use it to blast out of there, the Ion Dragon attacks. The cavalry comes in the form of the King of the Monsters.

All throughout “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” I've characterized the show as an extended tease for giant monster fans. Every time a Titan appeared on-screen, it rarely did anything truly noteworthy. You know something is amiss when an ice-spewing giant rat-thing has more screen time than Godzilla himself. “Monarch” has continuously done nothing to dissuade this notion. Whenever the Big G did bother to show up, he didn't do a damn thing beside glare at the human characters. In the final episode of the season, “Legacy of Monster” finally gives kaiju fans something to chew on. This is exactly by design, of course. The show gave us just enough monster action to get us to stick around, never actually satisfying us until Apple TV+ producers could be certain we're going to watch all of it. 

I'm extremely reluctant to say it was all worth the wait. However, the kaiju battle in “Beyond Logic” is pretty damn cool. Godzilla's arrival is given the proper amount of respect, the King of the Monsters stomping into Axis Mundi like a pissed-off stepfather. The camera swirl around the massive beasts as the Ion Dragon takes flight. As far as CGI kaiju duels go, this is a good one. We find out that the Ion Dragon even has a projectile weapon, spraying noxious slime into Godzilla's face. The MonsterVerse version of Godzilla is all but unstoppable, as far as strength and superpowers go. It's not a long battle. Yet, as a life long fan of this particular radioactive dinosaur, watching him beat the shit out of an opponent is always a good time.

As entertaining as this monster brawl is, I can't help but feel like it is too little, too late. Even in its final hour, “Monarch” still drags its feet at times. Whenever “Beyond Logic” cuts away from Shaw, Cate, and Keiko in the underground realm, I felt exhausted again. Kentaro and Hiroshi have the heart-to-heart you'd expect from a son confronting a cheating father. It's resolved when Kentaro's mom forgives him. This meeting is, ostensibly, something we've been waiting to see all season. Ideally, this family reunion should be just as hotly anticipated as Godzilla fighting another monster. That is undeniably not true though. Ten hours into this show and Hiroshi is still a character we're more informed about than we actually know. It robs this meeting of any emotional impact. 

Still, at the very least, “Monarch” does live up to its subtitle in this final episode. The multigenerational element comes full circle. Three generation of Randas are reunited. Even if the characters have never been as resonant as the showrunners clearly hoped, Hiroshi finding a mother he assumed was gone forever is still a good moment. John Goodman is even given a little cameo. “Legacy of Monsters” never truly succeeded in making us care about every generation of this family. Yet it's still a cool idea, to show the history of a monster-hunting organization through the clan that molded it. 

“Beyond Logic” ends with another predictable time leap, seemingly bringing the TV show up to date with the events of the MonsterVerse. The final moments include a cameo from another A-list monster, continuing the formula of insuring viewers stay hooked by dangling the possibility of future kaiju appearances in front of us. Simply because it actually delivers on Godzilla dueling it out with another enormous beastie, “Beyond Logic” almost has to rank higher than every other episode of “Monarch.” Any other issue I have with this particular program, I can't give an all-together negative review to any hour that features Godzilla ripping a dragon's wings off. [7/10]

Ultimately though, I came away from “Monarch: Legacy of Monster” extremely frustrated. The show follows every trademark of modern, serialized television that I absolutely despise. Over the course of ten hours, there's maybe sixty or so minutes of shit I actually cared about. Legendary's MosnterVerse films have struggled to make viewers care about its human cast members. Devoting an entire TV show to this only made those weaknesses more apparent. After watching all ten episodes, I still don't entirely know why the show wasted as much time as it did with May's entire subplot. Most frustratingly of all, when “Monarch” was good, it proved that the show didn't need to be as much of a waste of time as it was. It's unknown if Legendary plans on producing more of “Monarch.” I suspect that depends on how many eyeballs it attracted to Apple TV+ and how well “Godzilla x Kong” does at the box office. Truthfully, I sincerely hope another season isn't produced, so I don't have to suffer through so much nonsense just to get a few minutes of Godzilla being cool. At least it was less annoying than “Singular Point,” so that's something, I guess. [Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: 6/10]

NO ENCORES: The Mighty Kong (1998)

1. The Mighty Kong

Director: Art Scott

“King Kong” was considered so shocking in 1933 that it supposedly sent audience members fleeing from the theater in terror. Even from a modern perspective, there's a certain unnerving ferocity to the scenes of Kong chomping on people or crushing Skull Island natives under his feet. Despite that, people – and children especially – loved the enormous, murderous gorilla. Only thirty years after Marian C. Cooper's killer creation terrorized viewers, the big ape had been reconfigured into a fangless figure for youngsters. “The King Kong Show” was the simian star's debut in animation, a 1966 Saturday day morning cartoon that recast the killer ape as a hero that fought mad scientists, robots, and aliens at the command of a precocious kid. This was far from Kong's last appearance in animation either. In fact, a new “Kong” cartoon tends to appear just about any time the big monkey rampages across theater screens. 

This is not the case with “The Mighty Kong,” which appeared directly on video store shelves with little prompting in 1998. In fact, there's not much behind-the-scenes information on this obscure, usually forgotten motion picture. Which is frustrating because its mere existence raises a lot of question. Doing a cartoon based on “King Kong” is one thing but transforming the classic horror film into a low-budget, Disney-style animated musical is a bizarre idea. “The Mighty Kong” was the sole directorial feature of Art Scott, who got his start as a writer with Disney in the forties before working extensively with Hanna-Barbera Television from the sixties onward. I have no idea if “The Mighty Kong's” unlikely logline was Scott's idea. Maybe the project had its origin with producers Lyn Henderson and Denis deVallance, both of whom worked extensively in the music industry. Either way, it remains probably the oddest part of Kong's cinematic legacy. Known almost exclusively by animation nerds and kaiju obsessives nowadays, “The Mighty Kong” is usually regarded as the worst “Kong” movie in a world where “King Kong Lives” exists. 

Like most slightly off-brand versions of this story, “The Mighty Kong” is not based on the classic 1933 film. Instead, it's an adaptation on the novelization of Cooper's script by Delos W. Lovelace, which was published a year before the film and notoriously fell into the public domain some time later. This means “The Mighty Kong” still more-or-less follows the outline we're all familiar with. Even relatively minor scenes – like Denham directing Ann in a screen test on the boat's deck or the Skull Island locals climbing aboard via a chain – are maintained. However, there are some minor differences. Such as Carl Denham being named C.B. Denham, the boat being called something different, and Jack Driscoll encountering a triceratops on Skull Island, instead of a stegosaurus. 

However, the story we all know is here: In the thirties, stage producer and director C.B. Denhem plots a trip to the mysterious Skull Island for his next motion picture, which he promises will be an epic. He recruits struggling actress Ann Darrow off the street to star before the crew – which includes Jack Driscoll – pile onto the boat. They make the journey to Skull Island, which is a dangerous place inhabited by killer dinosaurs and savage natives. And, of course, an enormous gorilla god named Kong. Ann is abducted to be Kong's latest sacrifice, the ape falling in love with her. Denham and his team knock Kong out with sleeping gas and take him back to New York City, intending him to be the biggest star on Broadway. Instead, the gorilla breaks loose and goes on a rampage. 

Of course, “The Mighty Kong” also changes many details in order to make it suitable for young children. (And condensed the runtime down to 71 minutes.) Kong doesn't eat or kill anybody. Neither do the dinosaurs on Skull Island. The giant gorilla doesn't split the T-Rex's jaw open. Instead, he just bops it on the head and knocks it unconscious. A kid sidekick named Ricky is added to the boat's crew, who has his own sidekick in the form of a monkey named Chip. Most prominently, the ending is altered. Kong still grabs Ann Darrow and climbs the Empire State Building. However, he's not gunned down by biplanes and falls to his death. Instead, the huge ape is grabbed in a massive net hulled by a blimp, which breaks his fall enough for him to survive the climatic swan dive. 

Yes, “The Mighty Kong” has the audacity to rewrite the most famous tragic ending in monster movie history. However, by the time you get to that point, the cartoon has already sucked all the grandeur and terror out of the story. Quite a lot of extremely pedestrian slapstick is added to the premise. A large-nosed camera man stumbles and falls all across Skull Island. The natives of Skull Island are reduced to farcical figures, rotund bodies hidden behind clownish masks or face paint. When Kong escapes his shackles on Broadway, his rampage across Manhattan results in nothing but comedic set pieces. And, folks, let me tell ya, most of these gags are pretty fucking dire. The physical comedy is designed to be as toothless as possible. 

No decision robs the “Kong” story of its foreboding atmosphere or hair-raising adventure more so than turning it into a musical. It's not that people bursting into song and dance seems all that improbable in a story that already includes a giant gorilla and living dinosaurs. Instead, the quality of the music is more the issue. “The Mighty Kong” managed to lure in the Sherman Brothers, legendary Disney songwriters, to provide the songs. Needless to say, this does not represent their best work. The opening number, “Wild Animal Follies,” and the song Denham uses to lure Ann into his plan, “Lotusland (Hollywood),” are incessantly catchy in a very annoying manner because the sound and lyrics are so inane. The inanity reaches its peak with a number called “Dolly of Pa-Pali,” where Ann imagines herself as a Polynesian queen during questionable fantasies. As lame as these songs are – they are all repeated several times – the film's worst number is its love ballad. “I've Known You All My Life” is a warbling, discordant song full of romantic clichés. Worst, it forces Ann and Jack together into a romance that's never hinted at in any scenes before this one. 

The songs and presence of a cute animal sidekick makes “The Mighty Kong's” other main inspiration all the more apparent. Yes, this film is one of the many attempts to copy the Disney formula that flooded the market in the nineties. Unlike other coattail riders of the Disney Renaissance, “The Mighty Kong” couldn't afford much in the way of decent animation. The character designs are bland. Ann looks like a generic blonde Barbie heroine, Driscoll looks like a more hirsute version of Prince Eric. Some of the more minor characters, such as the Skull Islanders or that cameraman, are outright ugly. While the film is ostensibly set in the thirties, Ricky looks like a reject from “Wish Kid.”

There's one or two moments when the animation has something like a fluid quality to it, such as Kong's first appearance or when he escapes his shackles. Or when a duo of lobsters are dancing. (Don't ask for context.) However, the animation is mostly janky, the movements often stiff and weightless. The colors are bright but indistinct, the backgrounds lacking detail. The subpar quality of the animation is especially notable during the musical numbers, which sometimes resort to roughly drawn still images. The love ballad is devoted to weird, star-like images flashing on-screen. Animation of this quality would be about standard for a middling Saturday morning cartoon of the time, well below what you'd expect from a feature length film. 

I recall seeing advertisements for “The Mighty Kong” in Disney Adventures Magazine as a kid. Those paper ads highly promoted the presence of Dudley Moore and Jodi Benson in the voice cast. Benson's presence, as Ann, makes the movie's desperate attempt to emulate Disney's blockbusters all the more obvious. Benson is clearly not invested in the material. Moore, in what would be his final credit before his 2002 death, at least provides a little bit of pep and energy to the part of C.B. Denham. Not that the script gives any of the voice cast – most of which is not noteworthy – much of anything to work with. The dialogue ranges from prefunctory to asinine. 

I've long heard about how lackluster “The Mighty Kong” is. The film's many detractors are not wrong. This is cheaply assembled slop meant for the most undiscerning of kiddie audiences, a bastardization of a classic character and story. Still, the movie is not as totally wretched as it could've been. It doesn't reach the depths of even more pathetic direct-to-video animated schlock, like “Titanic: The Legend Goes On” or that Christopher Columbus cartoon. This is admittedly a very low bar indeed to clear. Morbid curiosity got the best of me with this one but I cannot recommend “The Mighty Kong” to anyone but the strictest of “Kong” completists. In the varied landscape of bizarre and dispiriting “King Kong” spin-offs – which includes at least one other attempt to turn the story into a musical – this definitely ranks somewhere near the bottom. [3/10]

Series Report Card: Godzilla (2021)

36. Godzilla Vs. Kong

In 1991, Toho wanted to remake "King Kong Vs. Godzilla" but the complicated legal rights surrounding Kong made this impossible. These same issues would keep cinema's two most iconic giant monsters apart for fifty years. It would take the machinations of Hollywood's hunger for cinematic universes to make it happen again. Legendary Pictures – in partnership with Warner, Universal, and Toho – was determined to make "Godzilla Vs. Kong." Indie horror specialist Adam Wingard, gifted a mega-sized budget, was drafted to direct. Following multiple delays, due to reshoots following the underperformance of Legendary's "Godzilla" sequel and the COVID pandemic, the massive monster showdown is finally in theaters and on TVs. It's a rematch kaiju fanatics have been hungry for their entire lives but was it worth the wait? 

Sometime after the events of "Kong: Skull Island," the immense gorilla has been captured and kept in a holographic recreation of his home island by MONARCH. This is out of Dr. Illene Andrews' fear that, if Kong was out in the wild, Godzilla would inevitably hunt him down. Meanwhile, Godzilla attacks Apex Cybernetics seemingly unprovoked. Apex CEO Walter Simmons reaches out to Dr. Nathan Lind to find a way into the Hollow Earth, the mythical origin point of the Titans and home to a new power source. It's ultimately decided that Kong will be used to lead the way to Hollow Earth. This attracts Godzilla's attention and the two alphas are soon warring for supremacy. Meanwhile, Madison Russell – returning from "King of the Monsters" – partners with a conspiracy theorist to uncover Apex's horrible secrets. It all leads to a massive showdown in Hong Kong. 

First off, Godzilla fans should know that "Godzilla Vs. Kong" is more of a King Kong movie. The enormous gorilla, the biggest he's ever been in any movie, motivates most of the story. His empathic connection with humans is emphasized more than ever. Deaf little girl Jia, the last survivor of Skull Island's native tribes, communicates with him via sign language. Kong, unexpectedly, emerges as an underdog hero beset by challenges who only desires to return to his ancestral home lands. Godzilla is rendered as a largely unfeeling, unknowable animal driven by instincts. Considering how much personality the previous Legendary films gave Godzilla, it's a little disappointing. At the same time, Godzilla has had 35 films to his name while Kong only has eight-ish. So I guess it's a fair trade. 

In a far shorter amount of time, Legendary's Godzilla series has undergone a similar transformation as Toho's sixties movies. In 2014, Garett Edwards attempted to create the most realistic Godzilla movie possible, obviously indebted to Ishiro Honda's grim original vision. Wingard's sequel, meanwhile, has far more in common with the high-camp of the later Showa period. "Godzilla Vs. Kong's" plot is absolutely ludicrous. It involves an entirely new biosphere existing inside the Earth, sci-if hovercrafts, an ill-defined magical power source, a giant battle axe, and telekinetic kaiju bones that take possession of a Titan-sized robot. The story is so elaborately ridiculous that Godzilla boring a tunnel into the Hollow Earth with his nuclear breath isn't even in the top five silliest things that happen in this movie.

Of course, the disregard for grounded science and outrageous content is what made those sixties and seventies Godzilla movies so much fun. They were child-like in their gleeful surrealism. Wingard's film comes a lot closer to capturing that "anything can happen" atmosphere than I expected. Halfway through the movie, a light show in the style of "2001's" stargate sequence occurs. Kong floats through the air because of Hollow Earth's wacky gravity. Any connection to our actual world has long been severed. This allows moments like a battleship being flipped through the ocean multiple times or the simple application of some spilled alcohol destroying a complex computer to go down a lot easier.

A reoccurring criticism of Legendary's MonsterVerse films has been directed at the human characters. The first "Godzilla" had boring, wooden leads. I thought "King of the Monsters" got around this by filling its cast with lovable character actors and letting them do their thing. A lot of people still weren't satisfied. "Godzilla Vs. Kong" dispenses totally with any concerns about its cast. The puny humans are irrelevant to the movie's point. Bernie Hayes, the conspiracy theorist, is the goofiest kind of comic relief and given the most absurd dialogue. Madison Russell is reduced to a rebellious teenage archetype, gifted her own clownish comic relief in the form of a nerdy sidekick. The villains are cartoonishly evil. Dr. Andrews and Dr. Lind have the tiniest specks of emotional arcs. Only Kong's bond with his child companion, played by Kaylee Hottle, makes much of an impression. 

Nobody goes to see a movie named "Godzilla Vs. Kong" for the human subplots and Wingard and his team clearly understand that. Yet it is a little frustrating that, after the prior MonsterVerse movies took time to establish how humanity is affected by these enormous monsters stomping around, that this film reduces everyone to the simplest of roles. The cast is given so little to work with. Alexander Skarsgård has a winning smile and one or two funny moments but is given nothing else to work with. Rebecca Hall and Kyle Chandler, reduced to a bit part, do nothing but spout silly exposition. Brian Tyree Henry, Demián Bichir, Eiza González, and Julia Dennison – all talented performers – play their roles in campy manners that are somewhat distracting. Millie Bobby Brown probably gets it the worst. The character of Madison is almost unrecognizable from her last appearance and Brown is clearly at a loss with how to enliven such a routine part. 

Director Adam Wingard, who once made a whole movie for 2,000 dollars, clearly is not put off by switching focus from human matters to giant CGI monster fights. All of the visual and aural trademarks that defined his previous features are present here. In fact, the love of neon lighting shown in his other movies is pushed to an entirely new level here. The penultimate battle in Hong Kong is lit almost exclusively by searing pinks, golds, blues and reds. Wingard takes any excuse he can to get those bright colors in the film, whether it be the interior of a secret lab or a sketchy Chinese restaurant. The director also includes some of his beloved needle drops. Familiar tunes by Bobby Vinton, Elvis, Judas Priest, and the Hollies stand in contrast to the monster movie mayhem. (The score, by Junkie XL, features some of Wingard's beloved synth alongside Ifukube-style orchestral choruses.)

The big budget and heavy use of CGI allows Wingard to push his visual style into directions he never has before. The camera swoops along with the monsters and characters as they swing and fall through cities or underground tunnels. As Godzilla and Kong tussle around a fleet of battleships, spinning up and around the waves, the camera follows them. At one point, the hover crafts even glide around Kong's face and roaring mouth. In these moments, “Godzilla Vs. Kong” feels as much like an amusement park ride – one of those 3-D motion rides – as it does a movie. While sometimes exhilarating, this approach is also occasionally a bit tricky to follow. The movie is zooming along so fast, the viewer sometimes looses track of what's happening exactly.

Yet, when you get down to it, “Godzilla Vs. Kong” doesn't skimp on the massive monster movie action. Godzilla's huge tail cleaves battleships in two with ease. Kong and his reptilian opponent deliver roundhouses and bitch slaps of gigantic size to each other. The acrobatic gorilla swings around buildings and gets his arms around his enemy's neck, with Godzilla delivering at least one of his trademark judo flips to his hairy opponent. Wingard often directs the movie like it's a titanic sized pro-wrestling match. Monsters slam each others' faces into skyscrapers like they are turnbuckles. In all this massive carnage, the film even finds time for some classical Kong action. When he encounters an enormous cobra-bat in the belly of the Hollow Earth, he swings it around by his tail. It's gloriously silly and highly entertaining stuff.

One of the most consistently entertaining things about “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was the clear affection the film had for the history of Toho's “Godzilla” series. “Godzilla Vs. Kong” doesn't have that level of callbacks or in-jokes. However, there were still a few moments that made me cheer. The best of which is when Kong recreates the most iconic moment from Toho's original “King Kong Vs. Godzilla” with the handle of his massive battle axe. Some of the movie's plot points directly resemble events from the Heisei “Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah” or “King Kong Lives.” Most surprising of all is an amusingly random shout-out to, of all things, “Lethal Weapon 2.” 

The biggest nugget for classic kaiju fans is, technically, a spoiler. Or it would be, if the last round of trailers and merchandise hadn't spoiled it for everybody. Yes, MechaGodzilla is in this movie. Compared to the skillful redesigns of the classic monsters seen in the previous Legendary films, I don't love this take on MechaGodzilla as much. The robotic kaiju has an overall boxy look to his appearance. This is especially noticeable when you look at his spines, which are very rectangular. His arms seem disproportionately long and awkward when compared to his organic counterpart. I also wished the Legendary MechaGodzilla shared some of the special attacks and superpowers of the Toho version. Still, I can't complain too much. There's a robotic version of Godzilla in a big budget Hollywood movie. He sails across a city with his jet-pack and clotheslines King Kong. I never thought I'd see that. 

Obviously, “Godzilla Vs. Kong” is not one of those kaiju movies with an especially vivid sociopolitical message. Yet even a “Godzilla” movie this goofy can't avoid the ideas that characterizes so many of these films. Before the end credits roll, the main villain reveals his motivation: To put mankind back atop the food chain. To reclaim control over the natural world. Of course, he learns a big lesson: That the natural forces of the world – and the giant monsters that represents her – cannot be so easily tamed. Mankind, no matter how powerful we think we are, are ultimately at the mercy of the planet we so often abuse. Godzilla, and all his cohorts, are here to put us in our place. 

Ultimately, a movie about Godzilla and King Kong fighting could not be more my kind of thing. Obviously, I am predisposed to enjoy a movie like this. Truthfully, I have loved every one of Legendary's MonsterVerse movie to varying degrees. I can't not love a movie where King Kong and Godzilla beat the shit out of each other. That finds a satisfying way to give the title bout a definitive winner without pissing off either camp too much. Yet I do wish Wingard and his team found a way to tell this highly entertaining, wonderfully ridiculous story in a way that didn't disregard the human element quite so much. Nevertheless, I do hope Legendary can give us more stories of this type, further Kong adventures if not another Godzilla feature. It just makes me really happy that these fantastic characters are back in movie theaters again. [Grade: B+]