Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
One Will Fall.
Time to get current with monkey vs lizard. I said I would do it last week, so we are gonna go and do it. This second American attempt at the kaiju throne has been good to us, so it’s time to bring it home. Will the pro-’murica penchant put the monkey on top, or is this force of nature lizard too impossible to overtake? Tonight is Godzilla vs Kong.
Two plots here for this edition - effectively a team Godzilla plot and a team Kong plot as far as I’m concerned. On the Godzilla side, our Stranger Things friend returns to join forces with a conspiracy podcaster to try and get to the bottom of why Godzilla has seemingly started to attack human industries unprovoked. On the Kong side of things, it’s far more focused (story side anyways) on Hollow Earth and a crazy power source that might be down there. To get there however, they need Kong to lead them. Problem is, soon as Kong is outside of his little containment house over on what’s left of a storm ravaged Skull Island, chances are Godzilla is going to want to show up and make him learn his place - and when two Kings meet, rarely does the fight end with someone bowing to the other.
I think what this does the best of the three-piece set (so far) is the human characters. For example, although it feels like the whole Godzilla-side story elements are somewhat unnecessary for the plot, it provides plenty of exposition towards certain motivations and a ton of comedy potential with how the two kids and the one adult-kid act in all the situations they are in. On the Kong side of this, the kid and her monkey and adoptive mom all make a pretty nice family moment, and provide plenty of moments for emotional content that the other side isn’t really delivering on. Throw in some corpo jerks that you’ll love to hate and one guy who gets to have a bit of a redemption arc as he goes from coward to a better dude and you’ve got the strongest human-side elements as far as watching entertainment goes. Don’t get me wrong, the other two movies had their moments - but when combined with the other parts of it (such as the first constantly cutting from the monsters) it ended up feeling more annoying at times than as good as they were.
The actors also do a good job here. Everyone delivers pretty good chemistry where needed, and nobody ever feels much like they are phoning it in. Yes, some of the feel pretty over-the-top and at times some are even goofy, and it can lead to a conflicting feeling of moods - so I won’t pretend that the two sides of characters are going to be equally loved by everyone here. Kong being in the mix also allows for more feeling of acting out of the monsters as well, what with being a monkey allowing for all manner of body language and facial expressions that you just can’t really get out of a big old lizard like Godzilla. That said, it doesn’t stop them from trying, and you generally get the impression of how tired or angry and whatnot our large titan friends are feeling through visuals alone.
Godzilla comes to town.
Those visuals are still great as well. There’s some more moments of Godzilla feeling much faster during battles on land than you would think something of his size and proportions would be, but if you are getting into nitty gritty like that on the animations of a giant monster movie than we are probably trying to bite a little to far into it. Creature effects aren’t the only thing in here getting shown off either - yes, we have the typical things like atomic breath and city destruction, but the hollow earth inclusion provides a pretty fun set piece for the earth’s core with it’s own little biomes. We also get some nice day fights, night fights, and a good range of spots - from underwater and on boats straight to a neon Hong Kong city skirmish. The eyes will not be bored while watching this one, that’s for sure - and the bigger the screen and the bigger the quality the better for appreciating those effects.
Audio is good here. I think I prefer the second, at least probably due to the nostalgia of all the themes getting thrown around, but it’s still solid here. There’s more variation in monster sounds - Godzilla himself making a good few variations of noises instead of just the normal iconic roar action. The music had some pretty good synth jams in there, as well as your big swelling orchestral stuff to boost up. It’s still good and works in the movie though, so it’s not bad - but nostalgia is a strong thing you know? Actor line deliveries are well done as well, so no real hard times hearing folks speaking. It also has a bunch of sign language in there - which isn’t really technically audio, but goes along the same lines as spoken lines so I’m putting it here anyways.
Now, there is some stuff that I guess thought-types could jump into, but for me it’s really not there at all. It’s a big fight movie, and that’s where my brain is. Being in there though, we can find some stuff like finding home, nature balance, bad science, conspiracies having grains of truth in them, to name some of it. Again, I’m not here to think - I’m here to watch giant monsters rock each other, and this movie delivered that - so anything beyond that like story, morals, or characters is just bonus.
Monkey punch.
The fun train just keeps on going. Admittedly it would be hard for me to not find some enjoyment in giant monsters duking out, but these folks are doing a wonderful job of keeping it entertaining. All the departments bring it together, and this one is a good movie for the big screen for sure. Got a friend with a projector? Play it up on that, and have yourselves a good time. It has some kind of jank scifi elements, like “printing power” that are kind of dumb if I’m to be completely honest, but a few negatives really isn’t going to hold back the entire enjoyment of the flick.