How funny is it that, in the wake of Godzilla Minus One’s critical acclaim and success at the Oscars, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire seems like the outlier. Both Minus One and Japan’s previous effort, 2016’s Shin Godzilla, were serious, somber movies. Suddenly Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire being a proudly, unabashedly stupid movie makes it seem like it’s the one that doesn’t fit with the franchise, when in reality the majority of the nearly 40 Godzilla movies are quite silly. So the timing of the latest American kaiju romp’s release shouldn’t be held against it, as some of the most beloved giant monster mashes are quite dumb. If only Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire was a little better at being dumb.
The King of the Monsters and the Eighth Wonder of the World’s previous bout, 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, was exactly what it said on the tin. Godzilla fought Kong and it was exhilarating if not especially intelligent. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a title whose promise is much less clear and harder to deliver on. What does “x” mean in this instance? What is “The New Empire?” Is it in any way related to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which came out a week earlier and also featured a bad guy with ice powers?
The answer to the second question is no (“empire” must just be testing well with focus groups), but Godzilla x Kong doesn’t quite get around to explaining the lofty expectations it set for itself. Following their Hong Kong-leveling fight and eventual tag-team defeat of Mechagodzilla, Kong and Godzilla have gone their separate ways, with Kong living inside Hollow Earth and Godzilla up on the surface fighting other Titans and causing marginally less damage to cities like Rome than if he’d just let the other monsters go nuts on their own. However, there’s a strange beacon coming from inside Hollow Earth. Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the last survivor of the tribe of people who used to live on Kong’s former home of Skull Island, is receiving an ominous psychic message, much to the concern of her adoptive mother, Kong expert Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Dr. Andrews takes Jia and conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry, the only other returning human character from Godzilla vs. Kong) into Hollow Earth to investigate, joined by Trapper, a new character played by Dan Stevens who gets laughs as the world’s only (?) kaiju dentist. Up top, Godzilla’s building up strength for a looming fight.
It’s a surprising amount of setup, and it’s not until shockingly late in the movie that we learn what the big threat is: Skar King, an evil, lanky member of Kong’s species, wants to escape from Hollow Earth with his giant ape followers and rule the surface. He’s aided by an ice-breathing kaiju who trumps even Godzilla in size, though what this monster’s whole deal is never really clarified. Thankfully Skar King makes the most of his role as a villain to rival Mechagodzilla, King Ghidorah, or other heavy-hitting kaiju that fans are already familiar with. A surprising amount of Godzilla x Kong is dialogue-free, as Kong communicates plot through gestures in his interactions with Skar King, Godzilla and a Baby Kong who is, begrudgingly, pretty cute. It’s like a silent movie, only with giant CGI apes instead of Buster Keaton.
Meanwhile Rebecca Hall does her best with the human plot, which is (rightfully) secondary to the main action. If Hall—who directed Passing and stars in some truly upsetting and ambitious horror films like The Night House and Resurrection—is too good for this franchise, she mostly doesn’t show it. She’s there to deliver exposition and to make the one plotline with any emotional heft, Dr. Andrews’ relationship with Jia, earnestly moving in the middle of all this monster nonsense. That’s fine—the monster nonsense is what we’re here to see, but boy is it nonsense. The title fighters get upgraded new forms (Kong gets a power glove; Godzilla turns pink and extra-spikey) in ways that are so nakedly toyetic that it’s almost laudable, and they throw themselves against their foes in over-the-top ways, including a zero-gravity brawl in the center of the Earth.
The over-the-topness of the monster sequences ends up undermining their impact. A lot of Godzilla x Kong’s failings are the sort of contrived, late-franchise nonsense that audiences have grown tired of in superhero movies, but the innate thrill of building-smashing kaiju hasn’t lost all its novelty just yet. It’s unfortunate then, that Godzilla x Kong’s monsters are so rarely granted a sense of scale. Inside Hollow Earth, devoid of any human-scaled frame of reference, the Titans’ main selling point (how big they are) gets lost. The climactic battle, which absolutely levels Rio de Janeiro, fares a bit better, though it feels surprisingly brief. At no point does Godzilla x Kong skimp on the kaiju action, but despite—or, perhaps, because of—this Titanic overabundance, it never quite feels big enough.
Thank goodness for the little things, like a bit when Kong, fed up with Baby Kong being a little stinker, uses the little monkey as a makeshift club to bludgeon the other apes that are attacking him. There are fleeting moments like this when the movie’s dumbness is sublime. Most of the time, it’s just plain ol’ dumb. It’s what you want from a movie called Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, though, so maybe it’s actually on me for wanting more.
Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen
Release Date: March 29, 2024
James Grebey is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor. His bylines include Vulture, Polygon, TIME, Inverse, and more. He is one inch taller than Lee Pace. You can follow him on Twitter, should you wish to debase yourself.