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.

The Bride!

The Bride!

Writer & Director ~ Maggie Gyllenhaal

2025, USA-France

Stars ~ Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening

There are title cards and then further explanation via long opening monologue by Mary Shelly, explaining that her spirit has designs on reclaiming her seminal text for the ladies and weirdly indicative of the overkill to come. It's where an exclamation to the name and swearing on the poster is seen as anarchic. One could argue that as a portayal of reckless, irresponsible, egotistical masculinity, ‘Frankenstein’ already has a feminist core, but there’s always room for more elaboration. After all, James Wale’s ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ hardly features the epoymous muse at all, so Gyllenhall sets out to rectify that. It could be seen that Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’ did this in its way, with its its exploration of nature and nurture and Bella Baxter’s determination to discover for herself the outside and what she might be, but coming against patriarchal restrictions. Some felt Emma Stone’s performance overpraised and overacted, but it felt of a piece as a tribute to the herky-jerky Ella Lanchester’s 1935 Bride and the steampunky aesthetic. The cookieness never got in the way of agenda.

Jesse Buckly is a fine actor, but here she is simply dialled to Look At Me!! Ida is set as contrarian and incessant rather than nuanced, and she Never. Shuts. Up. Often, any point slips away because there’s no space to digest. My preference is for Annette Benning and Penélope Cruz, who both have more interesting, rounded characters with feminist points to be made. Frank’s design is good, less Del Toro Slabs-of-Meat and more Karloff-but-not-green, although his rendidition of the monster is more straight lost soul, less charismatic than the rest of the film: Ida is more an art project with a declarative design that moves into The Joker territory of mimicry and violent anarchy (expect splattered faces next Halloween). Ida is often simply annoying and conceited, giving away hiding places by launching into Kathreen Hepburn impersonations. As much irritating as defiant. If any part of her behaviour is down to brain damage from resurrection, this isn’t a plot point. The premise is that these two revenants are outsiders, scorned and unaccepted by society, but they spend a lot of time going to parties and bustling past audiences to their seats in the cinema and becoming anti-heroes.

It is 1930s Chicago but this is the kind of filmmaking where anachronisms don’t particularly matter, in the spirit of throwing jellybeans of pop culture in the air to see what lands. Fever Ray makes a nightclub appearance: doesn’t make any sense but at least she’s good. Then there’s even a dance number for ‘Putting on the Ritz’ which might make you slap your forehead – I mean: really? – before our couple go off to live out Bonnie and Clyde fantasies, by which genre-leap any message has long since lost to freebasing references. It’s a mess with a few hints of brilliance that never come to fruition. And then it ends with ‘The Monster Mash’, which seems to be a last-minute attempt to add “tackiness” to counter whatever was good and seriousness about whatever this was trying to be.