Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

This weekend, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, the newest film in the Monsterverse franchise releases in theaters. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire follows Godzilla and Kong as they must combine forces once again to stop an emerging threat from Hollow Earth. I have really enjoyed this franchise. The movies are dumb yet fun and deliver Monster action. I was looking forward to this film to hopefully get some more mega-monster mayhem.

This movie was a lot of fun to watch. The studio finally cracked the code for a movie like this. It delivers enough monster mayhem to keep people entertained, doesn't take itself too seriously, and doesn't bog down the story with too much human melodrama. This movie does not disappoint with the monster action. Right out of the gate, we get awesome fight sequences from both Godzilla and Kong and it never really lets up from there. All the other movies have the issue of not having enough monster action but this fully delivered the perfect amount. The movie also found a great tone for this kind of movie. It takes what worked about the tone from Godzilla Vs Kong and doubles down on it. Everything feels a lot lighter and the movie seems very aware of how stupid it is and just plays into it. The movie brings in a veterinarian for Kong knowing how silly of an idea it is and just makes the character super goofy and fun. The human characters are also handled so much better here. The movie sticks to just one human plot line that doesn't have much of any drama and gives the characters enough to do so that they don't drag the movie but keep the story focused on the monsters. I also really liked how the movie essentially makes Kong the main character of the story. It gives him his own plotline without the humans and actually puts it through a little bit of an arc. The baby Kong was also really cute and a fun addition to the story. The movie also manages to have a villain that actually has some sort of motivation which gives Godzilla and Kong a more compelling reason to fight him. Finally, the last 30 minutes of the movie are just nonstop awesomeness as the movie finally delivers on the Godzilla-Kong tag team fight.

Of course, the movie is very easy to pick apart. Several of the characters have no real purpose in the story and all of them are pretty thin in terms of depth, there are several plot holes and the plot is paper thin but in the end, I am only there to watch Giant Monkey and Lizard beat up on the giant evil monkey riding a dinosaur and the movie absolutely delivers on that.

In the end, this was an incredibly dumb yet very fun movie that delivers on the monster fights without bogging down the plot with a ton of melodrama. If you are looking for a serious monster movie, go watch Godzilla: Minus One, if you are looking for an entertaining fun time, this is the movie for you.

Score: 7.5/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Watch it if you like dumb monster movies.