After a roaring return to cinematic glory with GODZILLA VS. KONG, the MonsterVerse’s creative aims are quickly waning with a subpar sequel, GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE. The audience’s low bar for entertainment spectacle is assuredly met with a narrative involving the titular protagonists teaming up to put the smack down on their evil doppelgangers, destroying skyscrapers and international landmarks, and sending humbled humans scurrying like ants. However, when it comes to its emotional resonance connecting Kong’s quest to find his tribe to his young caretaker’s discovery of her powerful identity, the picture comes up dishearteningly short – or at least as weightless as the zero gravity fight during the 3rd act climax.
Both Kong and his hard-of-hearing human bestie Jia (Kaylee Hottle) are having a troubling time fitting into their respective new worlds. Hidden Earth’s jungle-like hideaway where pre-historic hybrid creatures roam is a lonely place for Kong, and he’s got a titan-sized toothache. Jia is experiencing difficulty with her studies in the real world, feeling a mysterious magnetic pull that’s caused jarring visions and disruptions with her classmates and adoptive mom, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), who’s at a loss for what to do. It also doesn’t help that Ilene and her director of operations at Monarch, Dr. Hampton (Rachel House), are distracted by Godzilla’s reawakening (he takes to sleeping like a curled up dog in a dog bed in Rome’s Coliseum), which is happening a troubling amount recently.
As Ilene employs conspiracy podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) and charming ex-beau/ debonair veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens, who’s this film’s MVP and lone person who understood the assignment) for help in examining and explaining this matter, they get wind of a threat on the rise: the Skar King. Kong meets him in the Subterranean Realm of Hidden Earth, ruling over devoted slaves with tyranny, fear and violence. The war-painted alpha ape also sports a skeletal whip with a sharp crystal pendant that controls a snow white lizard monster called Shimo, whose breath brings an extreme icy frost to everything in its path. It becomes clear to Kong and the humans supervising these kaijus that Kong is going to have to team up with nuclear energy-enriched, supercharged Godzilla to take out their netherworld opponents. And it’s gonna get messy.
For every clever creative decision made, two poorer ones arise. Wingard’s picture suffers greatly from problematic pacing. Act one is virtually endless, followed by an all-too brief act two transitional phase accompanied by a handful of expositional speech dumps (gifted to Hall in an ancient hall of hieroglyphics). Everything culminates in a dull, low-stakes and rather ugly-looking finale set in a blurry, murky Volume posing as Brazil. All of this drags down any narrative momentum that the strong sequences – like Kong’s dialogue-free adventures through the underworlds – manage to muster. Every time we’re feeling slightly immersed in Kong and Godzilla’s wordless world, the film frustratingly cuts to the humans narrating the kaijus’ actions when no explanation is necessary. Plus, it experiences tonal fluctuations, being too violent and scary for youngsters and skewing far too young for adult crowds.
Outside of Kong and Jia, characters’ interpersonal conflicts and logistical conundrums also fail to muster any intriguing thrills. Wingard and screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater (working from a story by Rossio, Wingard and Barrett) set up relationship dynamics that are then weakly fleshed out and contain little to no earned emotional impact when their dire situations resolve. Ilene and Jia’s mother-daughter connection is an interesting component, but severely lacks in heartrending poignancy and doesn’t properly conclude Jia’s arc when it comes to her feeling adrift without cultural connection – which is posited as her main problem. The love interest angle with Ilene and Trapper that’s initially broached is a total nothingburger. Henry is played for comedic relief, but given nothing genuinely funny to do or say. His long-running opportunistic streak is abated by a brief chat with Trapper on the effects of exploitative colonialism. You know, stuff kids love to hear.
There are, of course, toys to sell and the crass commercialism from the consumer products division directly infects this narrative like a virus. Instead of just Kong’s returning battle axe fashioned from an indestructible scale off Godzilla’s back, the filmmakers also include tons of potential merchandising upgrades, like a neon pink glowing Godzilla, a TRANSFORMERS-inspired power brace for Kong’s hand (which is the film’s lone genius metaphor for disability advocacy), and the research team’s spiky camouflaging HEAV crafts. There are also cameos from a few kaijus we’ve seen before in the series.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY homages aside (which BARBIE did better), there’s little powering Wingard’s follow-up feature. It’s a virtual slog, despite its run time being about the same as its far superior predecessor. You’re almost guaranteed to get even less return on your franchise investment. This new empire is a degradation of the one in our not-too-distant past.
Grade: 1.5 out of 5
GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE opens in theaters on March 29.
