Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE
Director ~ Adam Wingard
Writers ~ Terry Rossio, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett
2024, USA-Australia
Stars ~ Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens

Within minutes, Kong is leaping in slo-mo to a dimuendo, and I’m thinking, “|Oh, one for the trailer.” But that’s far from the last. Godzilla curled up in the Colloseum is kinda cute, an example of a ridiculous detail that amuses. But I’m distracted thinking, “Why has she parked on the grass? No tyre tracks…?” Then we have the fast-talking loundmouth blogger that knows better than the uptight experts. And I’m thinking: “There’s a lot of sparks flying around in that underground base where people are running around like headless chickens – isn’t that very unsafe?” It is the kind of film where you notice the nonsensical details, the kind of film that knows you know it’s affronting your intelligence. And anything but red blood. Then it all hinges on Kong’s dentistry and a funky song saying “I gotcha!”, so, you know. Needle-drops that make sure you don’t take anything seriously and add nothing but nonsense (everyone thinks they can do what James Gunn or Tarantino can do).

The first fight between Kong and other giant apes had me locked in for a moment. Baby Kong isn’t as cloying-annoying as you might anticipate from the trailer. How much did this cost? Despite Kong occasionally impressing, very much fake gamesystem visuals, insulting compared to the focus of ‘Godzilla Minus One’, although more expensive – and something like this is why something like that was such a revelation. Whether it meets a “fun” quota depends on your taste. After all, Kim Newman says, “This spectacle fully embraces the toddler-tantrum-on-a-colossal-scale aesthetic and is winning because of rather than despite its essential goofiness.” I sensed shrug rather than goof.  

 

There’s potential in the premise of a bunch of humans trying to co-exist with kaiju, focusing on the minutiae of doing their dentistry for example, serios or fun, but this doesn’t care.  Lots of sound and monsters signifying nothing. Leave your brain and need for internal logic waaayy behind. Stuff on top of stuff with the constant pace of desperately urgent! And a roar! to imply excitement. But it is all just shallow distraction. Just: Kong knows sign language. Good Kong x Bad Kong. Kong has giant super-axe. Kong has … robo-arm? Oh, and here’s Godzilla putting in a cameo.

Godzila: King of the Monsters

Michael Doherty, 2019, USA

So, I recently gave ‘Kong: Skull Island’ another whirl, thinking I may have been too hard on it previously, but a second watch didn’t sway me. There was still something in the drama that aggravated me (and I didn’t change my mind that Samuel L Jackson is just tiresome in it, coasting along as if aggressively bored, as if he is determined not to have fun with the rest in a giant ape movie). But in retrospect it had good monster fights and had a nicely tropical feel.

By contrast, ‘Godzilla: King of Monsters’ insists on being dark and drained and moody, even in the daytime. It often follows on from Gareth Edward’s 2014 ‘Godzilla’ in having the monsters so glumly lit and in the fog of battle that on occasion you wonder if you are actually watching monsters at all. When the screen is lit up, it with the orangey hue of dying cinders. Sure, there’s a large chunk of the city caving in but: monsters? In ‘Kong: Skull Island’, it was brightly lit in dazzling sun so you could see it all. So, you know, there isn’t the excuse for underlighting for hiding any defects of CGI. And digital effects have some so far now that the monsters are magnificent: see the way Godzilla falls into a gorilla’s mannerisms Actually, King Ghidorah probably steals the show.  And maybe that’s also the thing: CGI is so awesome sauce all the time now that it’s hard to be dazzled just by one computer-generated marvel punching down on another. But when you have men in suits or models, there’s charm and mortality that CGI just doesn’t have. There’s a need for more narrative invention for the monsters and to the fights.

For example: Edwards’ ‘Godzilla’ had the parachute jump which nearly transcended the format for a moment: and when Godzilla lights up and gives an impressive light display, all the chiaroscuro made sense. ‘Kong: Skull Island’ gives Kong two great entrances: twice, Kong emerges as other narratives are playing out so that his appearance is unexpected and thrilling. Kong versus the helicopters is a peak for monster battles. It would seem there’s now a studio directive that the monster must appear in the first act so as not to lose the attention-span deficient, but in ‘Godzilla: King of Monsters’ in his introduction he’s just there, demolishing the city; it’s an introduction that’s barely trying. Later, there is maybe one notable fight with Rodan versus the jets: if there is one transcendent image I take from the film it is Rodan spinning in flight to destroy the fighter planes. Oh, and King Ghidoran atop a volcano with a cross in the foreground like a painting of the devil by an old master (and from this you could theorise the film is drawing a line from these ancient titans to the development of religion… but that doesn’t lead too far). But, yeah, we see the tremendously impossible all the time now. Michael Doherty’s previous films ‘Trick’r’Treat’ and ‘Krampus’ were far more alive with attention to detail and quirkiness. 

So: secret organisation Monarch is hiding and monitoring these titans/Kaijū and bad government folk are interfering with things they don’t understand, and then a rogue eco-terrorist group (*raise eyebrow*) frees the titans to risk the world of the plague that is mankind. But they too are messing with things they don’t understand. King Ghidorah takes centre stage and impresses. Rodan gets his moment. Mothra too. The other monsters… not so much. And all this is to now cast Godzilla as a good guy, an apex predator that keeps the others in line. He often appears (tiresomely) just in the nick of time, then King Ghidorah kicks his arse… in fact Godzilla has to be revived a couple of times to continue the fight until he’s a deus ex machina. It’s enough to make you doubt his awesomeness.

But what is most unforgiveable is that when a monster fight is going down between Godzilla and King Ghidorah, we focus on the humans and are supposed to care about the family reunion of the perfunctory human interest. And they aren’t that interesting. It’s a waste of a decent cast. Yes, big monsters are fighting just like mommy and daddy, and now mommy and daddy are making a truce for the daughter - but we’d rather watch the monsters. That’s what we’ve paid money to see. Any splendid stuff just dries up. I mean, even 'Shin Godzilla' made me fairly interested in the politics of it all, so there's no reason for being rudimentary. 

Unkle Lancifer at Kindertrauma gives all the positives but I was left with a feeling of being underwhelmed. Of course, the argument is that aside from the seminal original, all the Godzilla films suffer from silliness and negligible human representation, and that’s undeniably true; but there’s a sense when I go to see a new gorilla-whale film with lots of money and skill behind it, I am thinking maybe this time, it will truly raise the bar more than being half decent. I don’t want to see a mega-budget film with the same flaws because then it just comes across as not caring enough and doesn’t have the same charm. 

There’s a sense these films are just coasting. But there will be some interest is seeing how the tropical colours of Kong conflict with Godzilla’s drained look in the inevitable ‘Godzilla vs Kong’. 

Life

Daniel Espinosa, 2017, USA

Surely it was obvious from the trailer that this was going to be an unambitious ‘Alien’ derivative – and it is. It starts with a long, single take that takes in the entire first scene and gives us a guided tour of the spaceship and crew/victims. This moment and the subsequent “in space” views follow the precedent set by ‘Gravity’. They take onboard a sample of Martian soil and find in a living organism. It’s named “Calvin” by kids back on Earth and soon does what we expect: whilst the humans are falling for it, it starts growing and learning and we just wait for it to turn the tables. Perhaps inevitably, these opening scenes are where the alien is most fascinating, showing its cunning in making a scalpel to wield and then scrambling around the room to make its escape. Then it begins to work its way through the crew, full of actors who are much better than the material but having fun anyhow. There is nothing new here but if you came for the alien, its displays state-of-the-art effects and, perhaps more importantly, “Calvin” is mostly great and fearsome.

In conversation, I was recently in full-flow when berating ‘Kong: Skull Island’ when my friend said, “I think you’re over-thinking it. It’s a film about a giant ape hitting things.” And guilty as charged - that's what I'm here for - but that was because I felt insulted at how it was served up and that meant I didn't feel like enjoying myself so much. It wasn’t the monster stuff I had a problem with – I could even overlook the fact that the island didn’t display at all the wear-and-tear of behemoths and other failures in internal logic – but everything else seemed lazy and weaker. Talking about the original ‘King Kong’ with another friend and I was saying that maybe we overlooked the “Monsters Good/Script Bad” rule that besets these things because that was old, but in the end we agreed that the original ‘Kong’ classic had archetypes that didn’t insult us in the same way. We expect new films to know better, I guess. 

All this to say that even if ‘Life’ is derivative, it serves up a good monster and has a decent script, and therefore is genuinely fun. It doesn’t deliver more than it promises but it entertains.

Kong: Skull Island

Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2016, USA

Over Christmas, I watched ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ which I hadn’t seen in a while: of course, I came for the Harryhausen creations but then it became evident to me that actually the script and the acting were a bit … lacking. Indeed, my Christmassy family left the room and I could hear them grumbling about “bad acting” in the other room. And I thought: maybe it’s always been this way with monster blockbusters, that the monster stuff is good but the scripts and acting are crap.

And ‘Kong: Skull Island’ is no exception. 

To the good: Kong himself is a frequently exceptional special effect. CGI has come a long way and it’s not unusual, with the right amount of cash and an army of multiple effects crews, to get realistic monsters that can stand up to lingering close-ups. Of course, we could be blasé now that we’re used to such amazing spectacles as the recent ‘Planet of the Apes’ films, but I could  only dream of such photo-realistic monsters as a kid. Some have bemoaned that Kong is shown too early but I would say around the first three Kong reveals are good and thrilling. I had no issue with this, although it did imply a rush to the money shot for fear that the audience wouldn't have any patience. There is enough believable heft to these digital monsters that it’s all quite convincing. Yes, monsters yelling and/or plunging into the camera gets a little tedious, but the fights are decently orchestrated, paced and considered – including Kong battling a giant squid (??) – so it’s all good. That’s what you came for, after all.

But oh the script is woeful - by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly. And that’s when you start to notice all that’s wrong. There are many big names in the cast but this means very little when the material they work with is so poor. I mean, why are good actors even necessary here? Only John C. Reilly really comes to life with what he’s given because he’s the comic relief and has more to work with. But even then, he’s the Comic Relief, because that’s what this kind of thing always has. He’s with the natives, but the natives literally have no voice so it’s America all the way (…okay, except for Hiddleston).

Tom Hiddleston is the ex-army Brit whose introduction speaks to how the script seems to be mostly more just ticking boxes than really trying: John Goodman and Houston Brooks are looking for someone to lead their expedition into an uncharted island so they walk into a bar where Hiddleston is playing pool; he has some kind of disagreement and dispatches his opponents with a couple of violent super-moves and Goodman decides that he’s their man – all this in about a minute. He goes on to warn them that the island will be full of diseases, etc. – but seems to forget this major problem as soon as they land. He’s happy to T-shirt the adventure. But it’s okay: the film forgets too, even though it went to the effort of mentioning it. ... and anyway, just because he's good in a barroom fight, why would they assume he'd be ideal for an expedition on a unknown island? Oh, he is though, so that's okay.

Brie Larson is The Female, an anti-war photographer disapproving of male warmongering as females are wont to do, tilting her chin upwards all the time to denote integrity. But she does get to do some action stuff.

And Samuel Jackson is at his most annoying, fronting the troupe of wisecracking military yahoos. Hey, they die and they never made an impression anyway so we don’t have to care. Jackson is meant to look tough, but he looks equally bored. His character is meant to represent the bad side of the American military “Always Win: Kill Kill Kill!” mindset, and there’s lot of allusions to Vietnam, but these are meagre shadings. Perhaps it’s just Jackson’s character that is irritating.

And why in these things do they seem to think rifles can bring down monolithic monsters? But it’s okay if you have endless ammo, I guess.

And for an island full of gigantitude, shouldn’t the natural surroundings show a little more wear and tear? I mean, we see Kong leaping from peak to peak and causing major damage to the island. And do we really need fantasy monsters as opponents when anything else real could be made big? And this isn’t even getting into how Kong Is A Good Guy And Defender Of Humans rather than a naturally morally neutral, fearsome beast. 

You saw the ‘Kong: Skull Island’ trailer, yes? Well that’s Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ aesthetic: the editing seems to have been learnt from trailers, commercials and actions stills from posters. It’s relentless. Gliding shots over everything – not only over the island, which is understandable, but over a pool table, for example – which means the film is in a constant state of “Awesome!” which only diminishes the genuinely notable and remarkable shots, for example the vista of Kong against the sun and the cast hiding out in a giant skull to name just two (we don’t need a sweeping trick-shot through the native city to see how remarkable it is). Now, I’m all for camera trickery and conceits – I give ‘Hardcore Henry’ a pass for this – but here’s it’s in equal measure intrusive as inspired; it’s like the film doesn’t trust the quieter moments in case we notice how insufficient they are and thinks technical bombast will distract. Mark Kermode thinks the pacing is decent and that the direction has some distinction: I disagree. The monster fights are edited with coherence and focus; my problem seems to be that much else is directed as if a box-of-tricks has been dumped all over it, which I always think reeks of desperation.

And the jukebox soundtrack just seems by rote – by the time Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ (sheesh, again?!) is followed by Bowie, I was just rolling my eyes. This just feels emblematic of how cynically packaged the whole enterprise felt (“Hey, people, we know from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ that you like Seventies soundtracks, right? Buy this one!”). It’s gets so that just the opening riffs of songs can be heard to set a tone and that’s it.

So, yeah, come for the monsters. I am reminded that this is the way with blockbusters but I should be the ideal audience for this – I am a sucker for giant monsters and, sure, there are some great shots – but when so much else aggravates, I am left gravely disappointed. Perhaps this has always been the way with such features, even as far back as Harryhausen, but for all its flaws I didn’t feel the cynicism in that; I didn’t even quite feel it in ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Warcraft’ (for all of their failures, they did feel as if they were trying for something individual), but I felt it here. Yeah, I'm nitpicking and I know it's meant to be fun, but it seemed to be so by rote and cynical that I couldn't find it to be so. I don’t demand much, nothing remarkable, not really, honestly: just a reasonable script with my monsters.

And oh yeah, the post-credits teaser for a franchise is crap too.