Godzilla vs Kong

Godzilla vs Kong

Director: Adam Wingard. Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Kyle Chandler, Brian Tyree Henry.

The film certainly delivers on its silly title providing some epic and spectacular battle (in fact battles) between the two “titans”. This is why we’re here after all: they’ve been building up for three movies (the so-called Monsterverse mythology) to this moment. However beyond those fights, the film gets tangled up with one of the most untinteresting plots about something called “Hollow Earth” (some kind of mirror world beneath the Earth) and the search of some secret power source hiding beneath which not only feels like they belong to another film (A Sci-fi) but most crucially they are just utterly boring.

Having missed the previous film I had to try to put the pieces together to work out what was going on, but believe me, it’s not rocket science and actually, to be honest, who cares?

I hated this mixed of technology, spaceships and ancient lands. Robots and beasts. Wasn’t enough to have 2 of most incredible creatures in movie history? Why did they need to make it so complicated?It also goes without saying that despite the charismatic and quite decent actors every time the film tries to follow an of them and it stirs away from the monsters, it comes to a dead end (with the possible exception of the little girl who has some nice moments with Kong).

So when the first encounter and clash between the two monsters finally happens, at around the 40 minutes mark, I really wanted to scream “About bloody time!!”. It is an incredible sequence that almost redeems the idiotic dialogue scenes, the cardboard-thin characters and the dull dull dull plot.The effects are incredible. We have certainly come a long way since rubber-suit Godzilla and stop motion-Kong and however much I loved those early movies I don’t think anything is lost in terms of expression or phisicality.

Unfortunately 8 minutes later, once the first the first round is over and done, we are going to have to wait more than half hour for the re-match.It really stretched my patience beyond belief. By the time the second fight happened I was so bored out of my mind that it took me a while to actually properly enjoy the spectacular night fight in Hong Kong, which admittedly is pretty awesome (Alas intercut with more boredom with some people)..

There’s also a surprise in the last act (mainly for the fans) which gives the film an excuse for another unexpected fight. Overall though I must say 2 monsters in one film is an idea that actually pays disservice to both, as not enough time can be devoted to any of them, even more so when the film is so concerned about filling up time with so many uninteresting characters (with so little to do).

I was expecting something silly and I would not have minded if it had been just that, but I wasn’t ready to be so bored.

The film is out now on streaming platforms and if you’re like enough to have cinemas open where you are, then it’s on the big screens too.