Fantastic stories of mega monsters have been with us as long as we've been telling each other stories. The word "Titans" goes back to the greeks and legends of giants and monsters were already old school by then. Genre novels like Doyle's The Lost World or Burrough's A Princess of Mars were full of pulpy adventures. Early cinema's golden era featured monsters of all varieties destroying things and perhaps reaching us about ourselves. We've never given up on our fascination with these sorts of stories and Legendary's ultra match up of the Titan Kings is just the latest in what will likely live on for generations after us.
The approach with Godzilla vs. Kong is to keep it simple stupid. The story is just enough to give the monsters a reason to fight without making either a villain. Are the giant Kaiju size plot holes and do characters do ridiculous things. Sure there are and you bet they do. But does any of that matter? Hell no! What GvK doesn't do is talk down to its audience. Despite the amount of suspension of disbelief required for a film like this, the film isn't stupid just simple. It is what it sets out to be, never trying to pretend it's anything more, a fun story of two monsters fighting and the rest of us caught up in their wake.
And like our post-modern era demands, it is us, the humans who are the villains. We've pretty much set that up for this entire run of this specific monster series so it's not a spoiler, and GvK is the pay off. The moral here isn't revolutionary. It's the same "man's foley" story we've seen a thousand times. It is appropriate and what a film like this sets out to do. I wouldn't have expected anything else. I'm not saying you can't make a monster movie that transcends the tropes of the genre, we have plenty of examples of that (including the vastly superior predecessor in this series Kong Skull Island), I'm just saying Godzilla vs. Kong isn't that and that's okay. This is about spectacle and little lesson about taking humanity down a peg. It's about children or all ages loving these giant monsters and wanting to revel in that love. The film's tight run time and straight forward plot allow it to forgive the story's weaknesses and just let yourself live in this joy.
And the film is gorgeous. Setting the majority of the battles in Hong Kong at night creates a visual palette that is just irresistible to watch. Sure the monsters are wonderful rendered but we've seen that done well in this series before so here it's really about how they are used in the frame, how they interact, and the world they inhabit. It is spectacular. COVID got in the way of many seeing this as it was intended, on the biggest screen possible, but whatever size you are seeing this on it is gorgeous.
For me the film had just the right amount of emotional punch, child like glee, modern big screen effects glory, and the bare minimum narrative thread to tie it all together to make it work. While it didn't exceed expectations or break open the genre, or revolutionize cinema, it entertained and gave the kid in me a fun ride that I thoroughly enjoyed. And that's enough.
Godzilla vs. Kong
Starring: Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Robecca Hall, Bryan Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza Gonzalez, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyla Chandler, Damian Bichir, Kaylee Hottle
Director: Adam Wingard
Writers: Eric Pearson, Max Borenstein
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