Kong has conquered his literal and metaphorical demons and now resides in the mysterious Hollow Earth looking for more of his kind. Godzilla finds contentment as the peace-bringer to earth’s balance and exterminator to any challenging monsters. In this bizarre age of co-operating peace, a new threat begins to arise when Kong discovers more of his own kind, who reveal themselves as slaves to the tyrannical Scar King: a fellow giant ape who seeks to rule the surface with a new ice age. With his skeletal whip and formidable sneer, this new villain controls the powerful ice-powered monster Shimo, who he intends to use with his soul-broken slaves to spread his invasion.
With Adam Wingard behind the wheel once again as director, having brought the previous Godzilla-Kong entrée’s colourful style to life, he achieves this film’s potential to varying results. The ultimate positive with The New Empire is the drama with Kong and his apes. The scenes we have with Kong’s lone survival, curious but ruthlessly-assertive interactions with his rediscovered, abused kind and the father-son relationship he finds in a small new companion all make for some fun engaging drama with the lack of dialogue and unique giant-monster perspectives. However, the merits of the Kong drama show the film ultimately has too much on its plate when compared to the human characters.
Our heroes, while infinitely better written than the travesty that was King of the Monsters’ characters, still prove that writing attachable and memorable characters in a carefree Hollywood monster flick remains difficult. Brian Henry and Dan Stevens try to bring energy to a couple of comic-relief adventurer roles but both end up nearly forgotten by the film’s climax. The film even introduces another parent-child relationship between our protagonist and a rescued Skull Island child, whom has been struggling to fit in at school and starts receiving telepathic signals of an upcoming monster crisis. While this relationship shows potential, there is ultimately too much else to focus on for it to shine. So, as we venture on other path-crossing kaiju storylines, the girl’s personal struggles as a misfit instantly get washed away when she joins our heroes in communicating with Kong and that is basically that.
Does Wingard have some true tricks in the bag to keep us invested further?
However, Wingard undoubtably brings his blockbuster game with the action. Whilst King of the Monsters had intensely unappealing colour gradients and shots which rendered it akin to, as Mark Kermode rightfully described, ‘wet Transformers,’ The New Empire thankfully has a sharper vision in its colour and cinematography. Close fights with Godzilla in Egypt and Rome are gloriously over-the-top, akin to full-on WWE matches, whilst Kong’s ape-on-ape scenes make a complete tonal flip into the more slow, painful, and human. Thus, the finale, where all sides erupt against each other in Rio, makes for exactly what the posters signed you up for: the most self-indulgent explosion of Hollywood’s spin on Japanese monsters. What prevents this film’s action from being simple braindead monster mash, however, is the care put into the personalities of Kong and Scar King. This makes for a notably gripping rivalry, as Scar wordlessly mocks Kong on his acceptance of humanity, whilst his habitual executions of his slaves make him a despicable force.
Godzilla x Kong marks another carefree and self-indulgent entrée in the MonsterVerse. While more engaging in its simple blockbuster style and action this time round, we need to see some truly well-written human characters mixed in with the action if this series is set to grow any further. With 2021's Godzilla vs Kong having gained countless traction due to the desperation we had of some gigantic escapism in our times of coronavirus, as well as Japan having recently seized the crown back to its radioactive figurehead with Godzilla Minus-One, does Wingard have some true tricks in the bag to keep us invested further?