Big Monsters Get Angry, Etc.

So there’s this big prehistoric lizard, see, and once upon a time, the powers that be tried to kill him with a nuclear bomb. No dice, alas. But that turned out to be a good thing, as this gargantuan fire-breathing reptile ended up fighting other ginormous creatures — sometimes called Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (MUTOs), sometimes called “Titans” — and despite doing incalculable property damage in various metropolitan cities around the world, the media-dubbed “King of the Monsters” mostly helped keep the world safe from harm. Thanks!

Oh, and also there’s this huge ape, like really huge, that lived on a remote place called Skull Island. Then he relocated to “Hollow Earth,” a jungle paradise filled with other 300 foot beasties and Land of the Lost rejects that exists below our own Earth, and which can be reached via a number of portals, and may we remind you that some questions are definitely best left unasked. Like the aforementioned lizard, this big-ass simian “bows to no one.” So when these two alpha predators meet, there’s a tussle that leaves tons of wreckage in their wake. But then they band together to defeat a huge robot version of the lizard, which happens to be possessed by the consciousness of a three-headed space monster, and remember that part about not asking too many questions?

Right, except there is one thing we’re wondering about: How the fuck is it that we’re five movies and one TV show into this whole MonsterVerse thing?! Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire adds another entry to this cinematic universe that’s taken Toho Studios’ 400-foot tall intellectual property, along with many of the best known kaiju who’ve fought against and beside him, then thrown RKO’s great ape into the mix for maximum smash-boom-bang. What started as another chance to reboot Japan’s greatest pop-cinematic import had expanded into a franchise, with the end goal being to get both of those horror-movie heavyweights into one multiplex ring. Fandom was apparently strong enough that after Godzilla vs. Kong was released in 2021, a #ContinueTheMonsterVerse movement prodded the real Titans, i.e. the series’ corporate overlords, to keep going. The question would be: Where to now?

The answer is… well, nowhere, really, but why let something like a lack of direction or sense of purpose past a bottom line stop anybody? The New Empire brings back those two A-list monsters, GvK director Adam Wingard, and the previous film’s cast members Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Kaylee Hottle. The closest thing to “new” about it is that word’s inclusion in the title. If you find yourself experiencing an overwhelming sense of déjà vu while you watch this sequel, it’s not just because it’s revisiting familiar territory in terms of a similar narrative and the same virtually rendered environments as last time. What this feels like is a second-generation copy of a copy, and one that suffers from the typical franchise law of diminishing returns. No one expects the reinvention of the MonsterVerse wheel, but it’d be nice to have something that isn’t more of the same and less than the sum of its I.P. parts.

The minute that an opening title card informs us that we’re “Somewhere in Hollow Earth…,” you know things are about to get goofy. Amidst these densely rendered CGI junglescapes, Kong swings to and fro, navigating the netherworld’s steep cliffs like a parkour expert. (Much like Tom Cruise, Kong apparently does all of his own stunts.) The poor guy is also suffering from a toothache, which is about to become a major plot point. This is what brings Kong to the surface world, and one visit from a kaiju dentist named Trapper (Dan Stevens) later, our No. 1 ape is recuperating on a beach in Barbados. This causes a lot of consternation for linguist Ilene Andrews (Hall), as she knows that the only way to keep the peace between the monkey and the lizard is for them to respect each other’s turf. The first thing she asks regarding Kong’s presence is, “Does Godzilla know!?”, in the exact same worried tone that you get when you’re at a party and your best friend’s ex suddenly shows up.

As for Godzilla, he’s busy in Rome fighting some sort of squid-like creature and, exhausted by the fact that he once again must protect humanity from an endless supply of Lovecraftian nightmares, curls up for a long nap inside the Coliseum. Meanwhile, Andrews’ adopted daughter Jia (Hottle) — she’s the last living member of the Iwi tribe that lived on Skull Island and is the only person who can communicate with Kong, as you no doubt remember — has been having weird visions involving a trio of peaks. Andrews, Trapper and the Titan conspiracy theorist/podcaster Bernie Hayes (Henry) think it’s connected to some sort of S.O.S. signal coming from Hollow Earth’s “Subterranean Realm.” The three of them, along with a post-oral-surgery Kong, head back down to check it out. And once Godzilla awakens, he makes a beeline for a nuclear reactor in France and then heads to the Arctic, in the name of powering up against …something.

Once these various chess pieces get moved around the board and put into place, The New Empire toggles between scenes of actors unloading pages upon pages of exposition — which, to be fair, is better than having Godzilla himself explain everything — and long sequences of computer-generated Titans and eye-popping underground environments that don’t involve Homo sapiens at all. There are so many stretches in which Kong and a smaller, chimp-like sidekick (longtime monster-movie fanatics may thrill to the idea that the Son of Kong has entered the franchise, though the little guy’s parentage is never made explicit) grunt, bound, snarl, bellow and fight a warring tribe of rival great apes that you feel like you’re watching an animated film that happens to occasionally feature actual human beings. Jia discovers that she may not be the last living member of her tribe. Kong gets a mecha-hand. Godzilla mega-radiates to the point where he glows bright pink, proving once again that Barbie is the single most influential film of the last 10 years. Mothra has a cameo. Everyone else, we assume, receive hefty paychecks.

Wingard is a talented, longtime director of horror flicks, yet his main purpose here is orchestrating pixelized set pieces and making sure everything remains big, loud and, every so often, goopy with kaiju guts. By the time that the two titular stars team up and get involved in a zero-gravity battle royale that’s a textbook example of sound and fury signifying near-indecipherable noise and chaos, you’re left wondering why so little of this seems to land. With the exception of the first two Godzilla films back in the 1950s, the majority of the Toho series centered around the screamy green giant were mostly kiddie-friendly camp. But as last year’s genuinely exciting Godzilla Minus Zero proved, there are still ways to use this character and the myriad of things he represents in interesting, bold, inventive ways. Ditto 2016’s Shin Godzilla, which took a hard left turn and ended up delivering a sort of kaiju procedural.

The default mode for these MonsterVerse entries are Blockbuster Hype 101, yet there’s always been a curious sense of detachment about them — the kind of studio-sponsored, brand-name, go-for-broke tentpole offerings that are supposed to feel like event movies yet don’t. Coming after those two Godzilla films namechecked above, the lackluster attempt to wring more out of these I.P.s feels even egregious. We’re the last folks to slag the joy of sitting in a theater and gaping at creature-feature icons beat the living snot out of each other, but The New Empire is simply popcorn cinema at its stalest. “Let them fight!”, a human bystander once said in regards to Godzilla and some skyscraper-sized enemy. In terms of future endeavors regarding these two beloved legacy characters, we beg of you, MonsterVerse curators: Just let them be.