‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ (2024) Movie Review - A Mushy, Fatigue-Inducing Vehicle

Somewhere in the Hollow Earth lives a giant gorilla called Kong. He spends his days hunting for meat and getting excited by noises that suggest to him that there is someone else like him in this realm. The source of these noises underwhelms this giant, as they turn out to be some small species (say, a Parrot Frog). Kong feels lonely. Those white hairs on his face make him look wise - he seems ready to be a daddy. Godzilla, on the other hand, stays on the Earth's surface. When not destroying architecture like the Pyramids or saving humanity from monsters, this beast rests in the Colosseum because the world's an abode for him.

During the opening credits, a character assures everyone they shouldn't worry about anything as long as Kong and Godzilla are far apart. This line registers like a promise that Kong and Godzilla will indeed come face-to-face at some point. The dialogues in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire are of the expository kind. The human characters explain the ongoing situation, dispense scientific mumbo jumbo, or underline the monsters' feelings for the audience. So, if you were unable to grasp from Kong's expressions that he is feeling lonely, don't worry. A line has been placed here to inform you about this. Director Adam Wingard should have had more faith in the CGI. The monsters are awesomely expressive. Kong, as well as other creatures like him, emote so clearly that you don't need subtitles to understand what's happening to them on the screen. Subtitles, anyway, don't appear when Kong interacts with other species of his kind.

Human characters turn out to be casualties in more ways than one in these movies. I am not just talking about those faceless individuals who are crushed by either debris or Godzilla's feet. Take the gang from this film. We have Ilene (Rebecca Hall), Jia (Kaylee Hottle), Trapper (Dan Stevens), and Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry). Despite having a substantial amount of screen time, they look as disposable as those poor, panicky souls who become collateral damage during the fight. A character, after seeing dead bodies, remarks how these people, too, must have had families, but this doesn't mean those scared men and women running on the streets are treated any differently. The screenplay by Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater tries to add meat to Ilene and Jia's relationship by making it mushy. The results, though, are unintentionally funny, sometimes even off-putting.

Both Kong and Jia feel lonely in their surroundings - a point Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire puts out in bold letters so that we can grasp that the story is about connecting with your roots, and your family. This drama is transformed into a simple-minded hokum. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the epitome of old wine in a new, monstrous bottle. The clichés are covered with a fresh coat of paint before their execution. The whole routine of Kong fighting with a cruel slave owner and freeing the slaves is older than the mountains Kong climbs on. You have seen it all before with human actors. Now, the same thing is repeated with CGI creatures. What's more, the way these sequences unfold is also sorely unoriginal. Creativity is a word that is not present in Wingard's dictionary. When Kong is drowned in the water by a snake-like animal, the camera quietly stays on the surface, waiting for Kong's victorious emergence. We see Bernie's confused face for a few seconds before he is allowed to deliver a joke (the joke can be a gesture like a thumbs up).

Like the Avatar films, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is packed with beautiful images, but its substance remains unremarkable. As a result, even the beautiful pictures slowly start to feel dull, and monotonous (the setting and the objects are not seen through a new, exciting, or inventive lens). If Trapper experiences excitement while fixing Kong's infected tooth, Wingard undergoes the same sensation when the monsters scream at or hit each other. Squint a little, and you will see the director saying, "Boom!" during the clash of the CGI creatures. The fight scenes, however, are a noisy mess. They numb your senses. The world of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is devoid of texture. Everything resembles a screensaver. I came out of the theater exhausted and beaten up. I was crushed by this monumentally unimaginative vehicle.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times