Bananas
We know it’s early but ‘GxK’ is 2024’s strongest contender for best good-bad movie.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Director: Adam Wingard • Writers: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kayloo Hottle, Rachel House
USA • 1hr 55mins
Opens Hong Kong March 28 • IIA
Grade: C
We’ve all noticed that brands started signalling how relevant and hip they were by throwing an “X” between a couple of famous names a few years ago, somehow indicating “exclusive” or “limited edition” hoo-haa, right? That whole “H&M X Madonna” or “Gucci X A Bathing Ape” or some nonsense. Well, herewith people is the movie version of that, two great brand names that are super-cool when put together. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which in addition to totally not being an Oscar winner is not the Godzilla movie we want. That would be Godzilla Minus One, which the overlords at Legendary, Warner and the traitorous Toho have conspired to keep out of theatres so as not to compete with this. But it’s the Godzilla movie we’re getting.
So to that end: What the fuck did I just watch?
GxK is all the movies, among the hodgepodge-iest of all Frankensteined sci-fi actioners in recent memory. It’s got Planet of the Apes, Jurassic Park, a little Jumanji, lots of Star Wars and MCU, maybe I’m seeing some Innerspace and hearing Transformers in there, and a whole mess of WrestleMania. Director Adam Wingard (who’s better on a tight budget like You’re Next and The Guest) returns after Godzilla vs Kong and he has completely abandoned all sense of story (the script, such as it is, is by Pirates of the Caribbean’s Terry Rossio and Wingard regulars Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater) in favour of a series of cage match set pieces. Noisy to the point of deafening (there’s that ILM sound library stock roar), blindingly CGIed, horny in its destructiveness – goodbye Pantheon, Pyramids of Giza, Rio – it borders on straight-up trippy at times. I’d kill for a gummy to go with it. It is bad, but it’s good-bad.
GxK picks up after everyone discovered the Hollow Earth in GvsK, in which Godzilla handed Kong’s ass to him, but doubles down on the alternate realm nuttiness it hinted at. Kong’s downstairs suffering with a toothache and hearing the same odd signals (?) from somewhere else in the HE as the Monarch outpost set up there. Kong meets a Monchhichi-esque ape when he falls through a portal to the subterranean HE (wouldn’t that put him on the other side of regular earth?) and they have sushi. In the meantime, Godzilla is eating nuclear power stations and getting ready for some kind of massive Titan throwdown, and Monarch Kong-whisperer Dr Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is wrangling a teenaged daughter, Jia (Kaylee Hottle, whose entire performance pivots on varying degrees off upward-furrowed eyebrows), who feels like she doesn’t belong. When the outpost goes offline, Andrews, Jia, Hawaii shirt-wearing giant monkey dentist Trapper (Dan Stevens, in a totally different movie in his head) – who evidently travels with his own ’80s power ballad soundtrack – and conspiracy theorist podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) head to HE to find out what’s going on.
This is one of those movies that throws a blanket over “science” – physics, anthropology, linguistics, tectonics, sociology, IT, cybernetics, veterinary medicine... all science, so “scientists” know all. Andrews and her pals stumble into the lost Iwi kingdom so she naturally reads the ancient (we’re talking pre-Byzantium) glyphs or some shit on the walls and details the connected history of Godzilla and Kong (fuck you, nuclear radiation), Hayes breaks down gravity for us (?) and Trapper goes Top Gun. There is a prophecy, and if you thought there wouldn’t be a Magical Chosen One, you’d be wrong, and it’s Jia, previously believed to be the last of the Iwi tribe.
There is a metric tonne of zaniness in GxK, least of which involves Kong literally beating another monkey with the Monchhichi, new-age Newtonian crystal physics (huh?), and so much punching in the face you wouldn’t be wrong for confusing this with one of The Rock’s early outings (see? WrestleMania again). The cornball dialogue is laugh out loud funny on occasion, the info dumps come fast and furious, and very little makes any real sense – even though it does, because you’ve seen all these movies before? It’s hard to put into words how bonkers all this is while managing to go absolutely nowhere. Bottom line, this is the kind of nonsense that needs to be seen in a theatre with friends, to best take advantage of shared looks of bafflement and chuckles at GxK’s most egregious lunacy. The “X” makes a lot of sense when you bear in mind the brand-forward nature of the MonsterVerse and the high gloss, fleeting impression it leaves. Do you remember the Madonna line from H&M? Didn’t think so. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is kooky and hilariously enjoyable in the moment, but like any brand collab it’s just as fleeting. — DEK