Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire - Review: A Monkey and a Lizard Walk into a Brawl

In an age of increasingly noisy, smashy, crashy adventures that try to posit themselves as something more, it is admittedly refreshing to see a film not only know exactly what it is, but also communicate and excel at that aspect. Now the fifth film in Warner Bros. and Legendary’s american “MonsterVerse” series, “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire” is exactly as absurd as that title would lead you to believe. 

Set three years after the events of the previous film, Godzilla is mostly roaming the Earth’s surface, fighting back stray kaiju and other creatures to protect humanity while Kong roams Hollow Earth, the gravity bending inner surface of our planet. However, the two are forced to team up once again when a crazed ape leader named the Skar King attempts to conquer the surface. 

Yes, there are humans here, but refreshing they feel far more like background characters than ever before. While Rebecca Hall (“Christine,” “The Town”), Dan Stevens (“Beauty and the Beast (2017),” “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga”), Brian Tyree Henry (“Causeway,” “Widows”), and Kaylee Hottle do the best with their admittedly thin material, they’re clearly aware of the kind of stuff they’re chewing. Stevens and Henry especially are hamming it up at almost every turn, and Hall and Hottle do provide some unexpected bits of pathos. When you’re handed a script with lines like “they just took out the power generator electrical... thingy,” it's easy to grasp the tone of what you’re doing. 

In an interesting inversion, meanwhile there are large swaths of the film spent with the Kaiju with no dialogue or even other humans. It’s refreshing to see for a series that has routinely had plenty of great actors wasted due to characters who were shoehorned in to explain things. Not only does it feel more natural, but it's also a bit smarter in its execution since so much of what it needs to communicate in those moments is communicated wordlessly. 

That being said, it is still a movie called “Godzilla x Kong” and when the fists and fur flies, it's pretty fun. Numerous moments in the film go for pure Looney Tunes levels of absurdity and it really works. It’s fun and lightweight, getting in and out in under two hours with writer/director Adam Wingard (“You’re Next,” “The Guest”) and writers Terry Rossio (“Aladdin,” “Shrek”), Simon Barrett (“Blair Witch,” “The Guest”), and Jeremy Slater (“Death Note (2017),” “Fantastic Four (2015)”) crafting all the junky, cool looking action one could hope for. 

It quite obviously isn’t anything spectacular. It’s the same kind of “excuse for a fight” story these films have been pumping out for years, and in a world where “Godzilla Minus One” exists, it's even more apparent this “MonsterVerse” is content to essentially exist as junk food and not much else. But it is junk food coated with chaotic colors that pop everywhere and a thick bundle of synths cranking a clearly “Miami Vice” inspired score from Tom Holkenborg (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Deadpool”) and Antonio Di Iorio, so what’s there to complain about?

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is about as mindless an action film can get while still being giddy and fun. It’s getting smarter with the balance of humans and monsters without smoothing things over too much. This is the sort of movie that looks like action figures smashing together with bright colors and cool sounds and delivers exactly what is advertised. 3/5