The worst thing that could have happened to Warner Brothers over the last few months was the release of the film ‘Godzilla: Minus One.’

A movie that was made on a 12 million dollar production budget from a film studio in Japan managed to create one of the greatest Godzilla films of all time. The film blew American Godzilla movies out of the water and managed to solve a critical issue of American Godzilla films: it made the audience care about the human characters of the movie.

A few months later Godzilla: Minus One wins an Academy Award and needless to say, Warner Brothers has a tough act to follow with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The film is not a straight-up Godzilla movie but the character is front and center in the title. Whether Warner Brothers likes it or not, this is a matter of Pride. There’s no way that one of the major film studios in the United States with 150 million dollars on its side could allow itself to be upstaged by a small Japanese Studio that had better catering than they did.

Hollywood needed to respond and respond in a big way. The problem is that this film was already in the can by the time Godzilla Minus One reached theaters meaning there was nothing they could do to steer this ship away from the iceberg it was destined to smash into.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a direct sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). After the defeat of Mechagodzilla, Kong travels around the hollow Earth to see if he can find any other species that looks like him. A weird energy signal from Hollow Earth is causing Mass disruption around the planet and is drawing the attention of Godzilla who is going around consuming as much nuclear energy as possible.

Fearing that Godzilla and Kong could be on yet another Collision Course for a fight, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) Reunites with Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) and assembles a team to head down to Hollow Earth to figure out what is causing the destruction that is drawing Godzilla to go crazy on Earth.

What the group doesn’t know is that deep within the Uncharted land of Hollow Earth there is a group of Castaway giant Apes who are plotting their escape from their prison and their leader is a threat to Kong, Godzilla, the entire Earth if he is not stopped.

If you’re expecting a whole lot of Godzilla out of this movie you are going to be disappointed. Despite being the first name in the title of the film,  Godzilla is a secondary character for the overwhelming majority of this movie. The film spins many of the first two acts on Kong rather than our giant nuclear lizard.

The story of this film is told almost in a television format.  Rather than having a set premise blending all of our characters into one movie,  the film formats itself with a plot line being Kong, a b plot line involving the humans, and then they see a plot line which is Godzilla himself.

Godzilla is seen as an afterthought for most of the movie, but the villain of this film doesn’t even make his first appearance until hours into the runtime. Those of you who were captured by the original teaser trailer for this movie evolving a giant orange orangutan that was supposed to be the villain for this film will be disappointed by his on-screen presentation.

The majority of this movie is nonverbal meaning that characters either communicate in sign language or do not speak at all. A film that relies majority on emotional interpretation is not the best strategy for those expecting a giant monster melee. But at least the bright news is this film will get good check marks using a deaf girl for their diversity equity and inclusion responsibility index at the end of the year.

Once again, America Godzilla fails to make its human characters appealing, a handful of characters are brought back from the last movie however they are not exciting enough to even warrant a second go around.  It’s difficult to make the characters interesting because there is little of a story to make the film interesting either.  It’s not until the last 20 minutes of this movie that the film goes off the rails and turns into a giant CGI mess for both good and bad reasons. 

If you want to see Godzilla suplex Kong like Bret the Hitman Hart, for some that may be worthy of the price of emission.  For others, you’ll be forced to sit through an hour or 40 minutes of a complete mess of a narrative until the film turns into a giant video game worthy of its premise.

If you were wondering if Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Could answer the gauntlet laid down by Japan,  the answer is no.

2/5

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