Despite what you may think, I take no pleasure in trashing films. That kind of criticism is reserved for YouTube grifters who hate for likes. I’m all for mindless entertainment, and I have plenty of guilty pleasures I will defend with my life that have no business having any defenders.
For many, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is precisely the kind of bonkers monster fun they’ve been waiting for, and honestly I’m happy for them. I’m just not nor have I ever been a kaiju fan (“Godzilla: Minus One” being the exception and the not the rule). Rock ’em sock ’em monsters is just not my kind of fun even if it’s yours. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” sports some of the most horrendous CGI I’ve seen in a while, so poorly conceived and rendered it sets VFX back 50 years. But more than that, after 4 of these kinds of films, “The New Empire” just can’t escape its human problem, once again packing the entirety of the film with useless humans that do nothing but poorly react to even more poorly rendered green screens.
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” sees Adam Wingard return to the director’s chair with a screenplay from three writers: returning writer Terry Rossio, and new to the franchise Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater. I’m not even going to try and give you a proper synopsis because I’m not entirely sure there is one that matters. The whole thing is as hollow as hollow earth itself. Kong is in Hollow Earth, searching for a family. Godzilla is running around the surface wrecking shit and charging up for something, and the humans run around both making shit up as they go along and desperately trying to find new reasons to be around. New evil monsters are awakened, and Kong and Godzilla have to team up to take them down. “Godzilla x Kong” inexplicably stars Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, and Kaylee Hottle.
It looks like a bad PS2 video game, and floods every frame with shoddy color grading, indecipherable cinematography and blinding lighting. The first 30 minutes I thought there was something wrong the projector or the screen itself, only to realize that the film just looks like that. It looks BAD bad, the kind of unbelievable carelessness of VFX you’d think they made the whole thing in photoshop. It’s the kind of film that looks so shoddy you start questioning where the hell the $150 million budget went. On the heels of “Godzilla: Minus One,” this is an embarrassment, visually.
It’s 2024; films should not look this bad and the argument that it’s cheaper to digitalize everything crumbles when gigantic budgets look like a graphic designer’s student project. You can’t tell me practical effects are too costly when “Godzilla x Kong” doesn’t have a single frame of physical location and still looks like shit.
Sure, the last 20 minutes is a blast; with blatant, wanton destruction. But that’s not enough to make up for 85 minutes of exhaustive slog. Wingard (a more than capable director who knows action and should know better) seems to care so little about what he’s putting in frame even with 4 giant monsters laying waste to Brazil you have no sense of scale or scope because the camera work is so frantic. “Godzilla x Kong” does at least try to give some heart to Kong and center the emotional journey on the monster instead of the humans. Ugliness aside, everything to do with Kong actually interesting, but because we have to constantly shift away from it to catch up with what the humans or Godzilla is doing, any effect is diminished and overshadowed. Hall, Henry, and Stevens have no business being here. Not just for the dumb human plot that plagues every single one of these films, but also for their careers. Every single person in this film is infinitely better than this schlock, and they all look like they made this film from their living room since there’s not actual set you need to show up on. Just green screens and shitty CGI.
This film will assuredly have its fans and people who live for this kind of goofy mess will probably have a ton of fun. And that’s great. I’m not being sarcastic, either. Love this with your whole heart, I won’t stop you. This is just not for me, and I think this is the final nail in the coffin. I’m giving up on the American monsterverse. I just can’t do it anymore, and this shows no indication of changing its spots any time soon. Hell, it’s getting worse, and I just can’t sit through another one of these. They did it; “Godzilla x Kong” broke me. The grumpy old man who doesn’t like fun things has been defeated and will just settle for skipping these from now on.
Unless it’s “Godzilla Minus 2: Electric Boogaloo,” you can count me out.
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.
