Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Adam Wingard
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry,
Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Kyle Chandler, Demián
Bichir, Kaylee Hottle
Godzilla Vs Kong – they gonna get it on cos they don’t
get along. Out of Skull Island is Kong, the eighth wonder of the world,
or rather a version of the beast expanded to a height that allows him to
compete in the same weight class as his lizard opponent. From the depths
of the Pacific is Gojira, or as we westerners call him, Godzilla, once
the saviour of our planet but now mightily pissed off for some unknown
reason.
I have to admit I'm firmly Team Kong. The 1933 film represents
Hollywood spectacle at its best, only outdone by the arrival of George
Lucas and his wars in the stars four decades later. Even as a kid I
could never quite get into the Godzilla movies. I was, and still am, a
sucker for stop-motion, so men in suits just didn't do it for me. That
said, I'd gladly take a man in a rubber costume over the soulless CG of
this franchise. No amount of rumbling sub-woofer can prevent
Godzilla Vs Kong's titular titans from feeling weightless.
Just like its immediate predecessor,
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, this sequel from director Adam Wingard (great when he's doing
his own thing with indies like
You're Next
and
The Guest, not so much when working with established IP like
Blair Witch
and
Death Note) suffers from an over-abundance of human characters.
Millie Bobby Brown is back as the Gen Z Nancy Drew she played in
KOTM, accompanied now by a pair of Mantan Moreland-esque comic relief
ethnic sidekicks played by Julian Dennison (who was great in
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
but gets nothing interesting to do here) and
Brian Tyree Henry (whose character is essentially an anti-vaxxer,
which tells you this was definitely made before the COVID era). They go
snooping around a facility recently attacked by Godzilla in search of
answers as to why the lizard is so peeved.
A separate plotline takes us to Skull Island, where Kong lives a dull
existence inside a dome that looks a lot like the new Tottenham Hotspur
stadium. In a fun opening sequence we watch him wake up, scratch his ass
and take a shower under a giant waterfall. But then it's onto more
boring homo sapiens in the form of Rebecca Hall, a scientist
studying something or other, and Kaylee Hottle as a deaf native
girl who chats with Kong through sign language.
Alexander Skarsgard arrives as another scientist with a PHD in
taking up unnecessary screen time. I never could figure out the need for
Skarsgard's character. 20 years ago he would have been a love interest
for Hall (they'd most likely have been a bickering divorced couple who
bond while trying to save the world), but Hollywood doesn't do sexual
tension any more so he serves no purpose. Anyway, Hall, Skarsgard and
Hottle sedate Kong, strap him to the deck of an aircraft carrier like in
the much maligned 1976 film, and set off for Hollow Earth in search of
the golden macguffin.
So who wins between Godzilla and Kong? Well, as you might expect,
neither of the eponymous monsters are the film's real villain. That
comes in the human form of a billionaire played by Demián Bichir.
You can tell he's evil because he drinks Scotch and sports the same
swept back hair and beard combo as Alan Rickman in Die Hard. He
has an evil daughter in the form of Eiza Gonzalez, who heads to
Hollow Earth with some mercenary types in tow. I never quite found
either of them as evil as I think we're supposed to, and the latter just
seems to annoy people because she's an assertive woman in a position of
power. Of course, two Mexicans aren't going to square off against a pair
of 50 storey tall monsters, and so Mecha-Godzilla, a giant human
controlled robot lizard, shows up to join in the fight.
Said scrap, when it finally arrives, is entertaining enough, but by
that point you'll probably have already dozed off. The choreography is
nicely handled – it's a proper brawl, with the monsters punching each
other other square in the face like John Wayne and Victor MacLaglen at
the climax of The Quiet Man. But it takes place in a CG recreation of Hong Kong that makes the
city look like that old vector graphics Star Wars arcade game from the
'80s, or the simulated world of Tron (Godzilla Vs Kong
is so littered with CG and iris-searing neon lighting that it's not so
much a movie as a lava lamp with credits). As skyscrapers are torn from
their roots like Bonzai trees, we never once get the sense that this is
a heavily populated metropolis. What made Gareth Edwards' 2014 franchise
starter work so well was how he kept his camera largely at ground level,
placing us in the shoes of the citizens scurrying away from the
rampaging kaiju. Wingard's camera often feels like it's attached to a
virtual drone in the sky, removing the sense of scale necessary to make
this work.
When will one of these movies get rid of the boring boffins and
military characters and give us an everyman protagonist who just happens
to be going about their day when their city is stomped on by a giant
hairy foot? You know, like Tom Cruise in Spielberg's
War of the Worlds, still the only Hollywood movie of the 21st century that managed to
replicate the thrills of golden age mid 20th century sci-fi
cinema.
