The Godzilla vs. King Kong film franchise dates back to the 1950s. The iconic 1962 movie “King Kong vs. Godzilla” marked the first crossover between these colossal monsters. In this epic clash, audiences witnessed the battle of titans as King Kong and Godzilla faced off in a spectacular showdown. Fast forward to recent years, and we’ve seen the MonsterVerse continue to evolve with films like “Godzilla,” “Kong: Skull Island,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” and now Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

Godzilla x Kong

While the first couple of films in the Monsterverse didn’t exactly display Terry Gilliam-levels of creativity or Nolan-like intricate narratives, they at least attempted to blend the mindless smash ’em-up kaiju genre with a semblance of something extra. However, by 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, the cracks in that effort had become more than visible.

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As Millie Bobby-Brown’s silly character overacted her way through increasingly ridiculous situations, making Gamera-sized leaps in logic to luck her way into doing little of anything more relevant than dragging the cameraman along to the next action set-piece, at least audiences were treated to moderately decent CGI and a few fun designs and ideas.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire shatters what thin veneer of attempted excellence that was left like a sugar glass beer bottle across your brain and goes full B movie. With a script written in crayon and bound by glue paste, the biggest question that the movie will have audiences asking is how, in the name of Godzooky, is it possible for this almost certainly 15-page script to have had three writers?

No plot point happens without magic-like technology, actual magic, or a shamrock field’s worth of Blarney Stone mountains of luck. When characters aren’t fumbling their way into success, they’re either making boneheaded decisions or pulling logic bombs directly out of their rectums.

The budget for WB’s MonsterVerse films has always hovered near the $200 million mark, with them peaking at 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters. However, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’s final tally was $135 million, and it shows. Every aspect of the film suffers from its shriveled budget. The production value has plummeted, and the cast has been reduced to a handful willing to work for scale.

That said, no one goes to a giant monster movie to be wowed by a nuanced screenplay and moved by passionately deep performances. We go to be blown away by cool fight scenes and epic levels of destruction. As story fragments float around in Godzilla x Kong, crashing into one another like the remnants of Fantasia, cartoon monsters do cartoon battle.

Unfortunately, with its embarrassingly bad CGI and overblown runtime devoted to at least two mind-numbingly boring subplots, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire doesn’t deliver much of a “wow factor.”

Ironically, the movie does manage to shine so brightly in one area that I’m on the fence about marking it as Worth it. Either thanks to apathy or general incompetence (probably a bit of both), Godzilla x Kong has taken Hollywood kaiju back to their full-on campfest roots. Gone are the rubber suits of old, replaced with improvised weapons that will make you laugh out loud from their sheer unadulterated stupidity and computer-generated baby monster-apes that look like Harry Potter’s Dobby got very drunk one night.

There is one genuinely positive aspect of the movie, and it’s enough to keep most fans engaged regardless of its many, many warts: that is its heart. The poor technical quality of the CGI notwithstanding, the animators in charge of digitally puppeteering Kong manage to make him a sympathetic character that you find yourself rooting for despite yourself.

The fights are frequent, even if Godzilla is largely absent from them, and there’s a lot of dumb fun to be had. If you like cheesy movies and you need to shut your brain off for a couple of hours and have a few laughs, both intended and at the expense of the movie, then it’s probably not a complete waste of your money to go and see Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Girls, Girls, Girls

• The chickifying of this series began the moment that Millie Bobbie-Brown was introduced into the mix, with female characters filling the screens in the most artificial-looking setups, and there’s some of that in Godzilla x Kong too.

Boys

• There are no serious male human characters, and certainly none in a position of authority, save an incredibly brief scene with a meaningless submarine captain. They’re either goofs or silent extras. But it hardly matters because none of the human characters really matter.

Nobel Savage

• When the MONARCH team discovers ***SPOILER*** an indigenous tribe in Hollow Earth, there’s a stupid line delivered that says something about western civilizations ruining indigenous cultures. ***END SPOILER***
  • It’s one line, and it’s stupid, but the concept is never again brought up.

Pink Godzilla

• It’s entirely possible that this was a purely aesthetic choice, but with today’s Hollywood, would anyone be surprised to learn that Godzilla’s transformation/evolution being marked by a change in his energy color from blue (a traditionally male color) to traditionally female pink was a metaphor?
  • That being said, there is absolutely nothing in the film to indicate that this was an ideologically driven decision. As such, I didn’t remove any points for it.