Movie Thoughts: Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (2024)

• Released: March 27, 2024
• Directed by: Adam Wingard
• Running time: 1h 55min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

Kong and Godzilla team up to defeat an evil giant ape intent on taking over the surface world.

My Thoughts

My opinion on Kaiju movies really hasn't changed with this one. I usually find myself invested in the characters and the more quiet scenes, but the big epic battles, which seem to be the big appeal for a lot of people, really do nothing for me. I don't care of giant creature A beats up giant creature B, no matter how flashy and epic the scene is presented. It just does not interest me and honestly comes across as rather silly.

There are some scenes in this movie I genuinely like, particularly regarding Jia and especially Kong. It was nice seeing both of them discover more people/giant apes like them. Particularly Kong really stole the show in some of the more quiet scenes where they just let the body language, music and atmosphere to all the talking. I don't need the human characters to come in and point out what is happening every so often.

But sadly the latter does happen from time to time with some clunky expository dialogue that doesn't really work. Genuinely, if this had just been a silent film about Kong discovering more of his kind and trying to fit in with them, with no try-hard big action scenes, I think I would've been far more invested and could've given this a higher rating. Because the stuff with Kong that works, really works. But for every moment like that that's great, there's another where the writing was clunky or we have the comic relief guy say some silly remark.

Also, while I like the stuff with Jia and it was nice to see her connect with her family, the whole Iwi tribe we meet here does really lean into the magical native stereotype. Which isn't exactly great. They have some king of supernatural connection and can communicate telepathically. I do love Jia as a character but the whole Iwi culture  and characters in general (aside from Jia, of course) aren't super well-developed and I just don't think it's a great call to have your only indigenous characters be the stock magical native stereotype.

The writing, like I've mentioned before, can also be a bit clunky with some needless comic relief and expository dialogue. There's also one point in the movie where Kong ends up with a frostbitten arm, and the mother of all plot conveniences just so has it that a giant mechanical arm enhancement specifically fit for him with built-in frostbite healing serum is located only a few hundred meters away. That's the part of the movie where I really started to check out because not only was the dialogue in this scene written very ungracefully, this is just far to convenient and it genuinely feels like it's just something they pulled out of their ass. Because at no point in the movie was it established prior, it is just brought up in the scene where they meet an injured Kong and the next scene they just conveniently manage to locate the mechanical enhancement and get it to the giant ape in time.

Also, not that I particularly care because I'm not a big Godzilla fan, but the titular lizard is barely in this movie until the climax. This really should've just been called Kong: The New Empire instead if you ask me.

So yeah, while my review is mixed I did overall enjoy this movie, but mostly for the Jia and Kong moments that don't have too much dialogue. The rest, eh, not so great. If there's ever one of these movies just about Kong doing stuff without some try-hard big battle, call me.