We Agree: Godzilla vs. Kong

 2021, d. Adam Wingard - Crave

seriously, the scale here is redick

I ended my review for Godzilla:King of the Monsters, I noted that Warner Bros had greenlit and fast tracked Godzilla vs. Kong before it was released.  Had they waited, and G:KotM having performed poorly at the box office and being critically lambasted, this film wouldn't exist.  But, I'm so very happy they did so blindly and egregiously move ahead.  This film is so delightfully overblown, with real go-for-broke comic-book-science that it leaving no shred of reality remaining and it may be my favourite of this era of Kong/Godzilla films, even if it's not the best.  I really hope I get to see this in theatres at some point... (well, I really hope I get to see anything in theatres at some point).

It's a film that moves so fast it just doesn't leave time for you to question the whys or hows of people's actions, things just need to happen in order for giant creatures to fight each other. If you think about almost anything in this film too much after the fact, oh, it's insanity what these filmmakers are asking you to accept.  But it's not asking you to legit accept it, it really just wants you to have fun, and go along with the ride.  

Yet, it's almost the same formulae they used for King of the Monsters which made for an utter mess of a movie that is borderline unwatchable. The difference here is nobody's trying to take their role in this too seriously. They're there to deliver expository lines, provide human reactions to events, and otherwise just get out of the way of titanic tussles.  Wingard clearly understands the tone.  While it's not the same as a classic Toho, like those films there's an overblown sensibility that makes it all larger than life.

Nobody's really coming to a Godzilla film for the story, and WB have finally learned the people in these things don't really matter all that much, but they do need to be there to push a framework. So in order to at least provide something to hold onto for this clash of kings, they casted very well with likeable personas, actors with enough personality to deliver a dozen or two lines of dialogue over the runtime and the audience won't mind seeing and hearing it. Rebecca Hall and young Kaylee Hottle playing her adopted, deaf daughter are great. Millie Bobbie Brown and Brian Tyree Henry make a very enjoyable duo (with Julian Dennison a welcome tag-along but also a wholly unnecessary presence). Demian Bechir, Eiza Gonzalez, Alexander Skarsgard are all here as well doing what's needed (I mean, to tell you just what kind of film this isn't, Skarsgard never takes his shirt off.  This is really all about the monsters). 

It's a hyper-anthropomorphised Kong here that is the lead of the film and, well, he nails it.  Unlike Kong: Skull Island where Toby Kebble brought his mo-cap ape skills from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as Kong, there's no single credited performer.  He's even more of a cartoon now, but more on the soulful Pixar side than classic Looney Tune. The animator give Kong a life and inner thoughts and emotions.  He needs people around to help explain them but they're rather clear in the performance.  Godzilla, meanwhile, is credited as olayed by "himself".

There's a central nonsense plot (see Toasty's recap for all the films multitudinous nonsense) involving the humans taking Kong on a voyage to a hollow middle earth, and that journey is definitely worth making, if only for what's there once you arrive.  The film wisely keeps the middle earth's charms fairly mysterious, rather than seeding in another half hour of laborious world building. Instead there are many visual cues to pour over from which you can extrapolate its own story, lending the film, certainly, some form of rewatchability.

While scale is an issue here (as Toasty points out), how big the titular characters are in relation to their environment all seems to be related to what looks good, not what's consistent. And yet, it does look good, so that's really what matters. The fights are great, as if the filmmakers finally realized they're just big cartoon action sequences and you can do whatever you want, physics be damned. It's just a fun film delivering exactly what it should, and under 2 hours with no post credits to set up anything else.  

This is likely the end of Warner Brothers' underperforming Giant Monsters shared universe, as they've been too costly and hardly smashing successes critically or financially. I've enjoyed to varying degrees most of them (save for King of the Monsters) but I recognize that at this scale and this budget they're never going to deliver the same sense of delight that one had watching them on a lazy Sunday afternoon catching half of one on basic cable.   There are expectations when you sink over a hundred million dollars into a film and while I think that these are entertaining, they most definitely did not need to spend as much to elicit the same reaction.   Spending more money on the film and marketing may get a few more butts in the seats, but are those same butts going to watch over and over again.

But before they shut it all down for a time and then start it again, I really want Kong and Godzilla to crossover into Pacific Rim territory.  Please?