My Thoughts on "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"
Well, I just saw the latest MonsterVerse movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. I made it a point of seeing this movie in the theater because I hadn't seen Godzilla vs. Kong in theaters. I had seen pretty much every MonsterVerse movie in theaters up until Godzilla vs. Kong. And that was really because of the pandemic 😷🦠, and there were a lot of restrictions at the theaters during that time. You still had to wear a mask 😷, you still had to social distance, and all the kind of stuff. And I just didn't feel comfortable seeing a movie in theaters at that time yet, and no one else in my family did either. So, I ended up just watching Godzilla vs. Kong on HBO Max (now called Max) and it was an excellent film.
I know that movie gets a lot of hate, and gets called stupid, but I still love that movie. I rewatched it last week to get ready for this movie, and it still holds up three years later. The fights between Godzilla and Kong in the Tasman Sea and in Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and as well as the climactic fight between Godzilla, Kong, and Mechagodzilla made it all worth it. And I guess that tag team fight at the end, where Kong helps Godzilla defeat Mechagodzilla inspired Adam Wingard, and the writers, Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, Max Borenstein, and Eric Pearson to push that idea even further by making the next film in the MonsterVerse a full-on tag-team matchup between Godzilla and Kong, and two new original monsters called the Skar King and Shimo.
Although, of those five writers on the last movie, only Terry Rossio returned to write Godzilla x Kong. Now, he's working with Adam Wingard, which is interesting, and a guy named Simon Barrett. I had no idea that Adam Wingard had a writing credit on this movie until I read the Wikipedia page, but I guess it makes sense since Adam Wingard did do an interview with IMAX where he talked about the script, and how he actually wrote dialogue for the monsters, the Titans. Like, all of the scenes between Titans in this movie were written like actual scenes between two characters with dialogue, and when they filmed and animated those scenes of course, they just replaced those with the growling, and roaring sounds that the monsters.
But, they used that dialogue in the script to convey what the Titans were thinking, and what they were saying to each other. That was a further step in making the Titans seem more like actual characters with thoughts and emotions rather than as big special effects that are just there to fight and cause destruction. I really liked that, I really liked to seeing the scenes with just the Titans and no humans, and seeing them interact with each other, and actually communicating with each other without dialogue, and just through facial expressions and through body language that was really cool. I think that this movie more than any other MonsterVerse movie, or even other kaiju movie, this was the one where the monsters (or kaiju if you prefer) felt like actual characters equal to that or more than even the human characters. When Adam Wingard said that Godzilla and Kong were the stars of this movie, he wasn't kidding.
Speaking of other movies, I feel that I should address something that kind of has me peeved when it comes to the discourse about this movie, and that's the comparisons between it and Godzilla: Minus One. If you're a Godzilla fan, or just a kaiju fan in general, then you probably already know what Godzilla: Minus One is, but for those that don't, I'll explain it a little bit. Basically, Godzilla: Minus One was a Japanese made Godzilla film 🇯🇵 that came out last year in October or November 2023, and it completely blew up, and took the world by the storm.
Like, it broke all kinds of box office records when it comes to Japanese Godzilla films 🇯🇵. It became the highest grossing Japanese made Godzilla film 🇯🇵, and the highest grossing Japanese made Godzilla film 🇯🇵 to be released in North America. It won a bunch of awards, including an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, putting Godzilla firmly within the Oscar club along with Kong. Even people who aren't Godzilla fans, and normally don't care about this stuff saw Minus One and loved it 🤩, I'm sure plenty of people came out of that movie as new Godzilla fans, which I grateful for. If Minus One was good for anything, it was creating new Godzilla fans.
It also came apart of the culture war here in the US 🇺🇸, which is annoying in and of itself, like people were pointing to Minus One and using it as example of how Japan 🇯🇵 makes better movies than "woke Hollywood," whatever that means. "Woke Hollywood" really just means any movie that has a person of color, or an LGBTQ+ character 🏳️🌈, or a female lead ♀︎. It doesn't even have to be a movie that has a particularly left-leaning political message, it just has to have diversity and anti-SJW idiots online will automatically call it "woke." And people were using Minus One as an example of how to make a big budget blockbuster movie that people will actually want to go see. Like, they pointed out how this movie only had a budget of $10 million or $20 million 💵, and yet still managed to have award-winning special effects that look better than a lot of movies with twice or thrice that amount of money 💵.
And people were just generally praising Minus One left and right, and calling it one of the best movies of 2023, and calling it one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever made. In fact, some were even saying that it was the greatest Godzilla movie ever made, which is kind of a stretch for me. Like, even if Minus One is half as good as people say it is, I doubt that it's the best Godzilla movie ever made. I haven't seen Minus One because I had no interest in it.
I mean, I did kind of have interest in it at first when it was first announced, like "Wow, a Godzilla set in post-war Japan 🇯🇵, like during the American occupation 🇺🇸, when Japan 🇯🇵 was still struggling and trying to get back on its feet after losing the largest and deadliest war in human history," sign me up. Even, the trailers kind of intrigued me. But, once the movie got all this mainstream success and popularity, my interest in it dropped dramatically. Like, I sort of have this thing where I don't like it when movies be too mainstream, or too overhyped, or too trendy, and put so high on a pedestal.
It feels a lot like Barbenheimer, they Barbenheimered the hell out of Godzilla, and kind of threw me off. Even when the movie won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, I still couldn't get excited for it. As cool as it is that a Godzilla movie won an Academy Award for the first time ever, it was still for this movie. Why did it have to be this Godzilla movie? Of all the Godzilla movies could have been nominated or won an Oscar, why did it have to be Minus One? To me, Minus One just seems to me like Shin Godzilla, but more accessible to an American audience 🇺🇸.
It's Shin Godzilla but more accessible, and less alienating to an American audience 🇺🇸 without all the boring Japanese politics 🇯🇵, cabinet meetings, and all the Japanese words, terms, and sayings 🇯🇵 that Americans 🇺🇸 wouldn't really understand unless they really knew the language, and knew the culture and politics of modern Japan 🇯🇵. And
if they understood the very specific allegory that movie was going for,
which was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which led directly to the
Fukushima nuclear disaster ☢️. Which a lot of Americans 🇺🇸 evidently don't.
It also doesn't have any of the Hideaki Anno-isms that might otherwise alienate and polarize people. I mean, I'll give Anno this, he does have a specific style that all of movies and shows have, even it isn't for everyone. But, Takashi Yamazaki managed to strike a middle ground, or he struck a perfect sweet spot where he could make a darker and more allegorical Godzilla movie without alienating anybody, or alienating as many people as Hideaki Anno's work tends to do.
They just took all that shit out, put it in the post-World War II world, and just make it more of a drama about a Japanese soldier 🇯🇵 who's returning from the war, and having problems adjusting. I really don't know what the plot of Minus One is, but I'm assuming that's what it is based on what I've heard about it. This is all Toho seems to want to do with Godzilla nowadays, they just want to do Shin Godzilla over and over again because it was so successful. They're just ripping themselves off at this point. And it worked because Minus One surpassed Shin Godzilla in terms of financial and critical success 🤑. Even Godzilla: Singular Point ripped off Shin Godzilla a little bit. So, that all kind of turned me off to Minus One despite my minor interest when it was first officially announced.
But, the point is that people love Minus One so much 🤩 that when this movie, Godzilla x Kong came out, people were comparing it to Minus One. People kept saying that it wasn't as good as Minus One, and this movie is just stupid whereas Minus One was actually "smart" and "profound," and that there is no place in the franchise for movies like Godzilla x Kong, and every Godzilla movie should be like Minus One. "We deserve better" is what I saw when people talked about this movie in relation to Minus One. Minus One is being treated as the gold standard and Godzilla x Kong doesn't reach that standard. But, it's so stupid to compare these movies.
Even though I've never seen Minus One, I know for that these two movies are nothing alike. One's a dark and serious movie that tries to be an allegory for the atomic bomb ☢️, and be a metaphor the trauma that the Japanese people 🇯🇵 were experiencing after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after World War II, losing that war to the Allies, and bringing shame upon the nation. While, the other is a more light-hearted action-adventure movie that doesn't try to be gritty or realistic in the slightest, and just tries to be fun and cool. And also, one has Kong and a bunch of other monsters, whereas the other just has Godzilla. So, comparing them is asinine, and wish people would stop doing that.
Even the directors of both movies, Adam Wingard and Takashi Yamazaki had come out, and do a face-to-face interview with each other, and just tell everyone to just chill out, and that these movies can co-exist together. Just as Serizawa tried to convince everyone that humans and Titans can and should co-exist. BTW, Takashi Yamazaki is a huge Godzilla fan, and has been wanting to make one for his entire career. He's the same director as those Always: Sunset on Third Street movies, and he put Godzilla in the second film, Always: Sunset on Third Street 2, in a dream sequence 💭. Now, he finally got his chance to make a true and proper Godzilla film. Good for him 👍.
Speaking of Kong, this is a Kong centric movie once again. Godzilla vs. Kong was very much focused on Kong, and this movie is too. He's pretty much the main character, he's the protagonist, and the story, and the main conflict is mostly centered around him, since the villain of the movie is a member of Kong's species, a giant ape. The plot of the movie basically is that Kong, Godzilla, and the adopted Iwi girl ♀︎ from the previous movie, Jia are sensing this signal from the Hollow Earth 🌎 that no body really understands, but those three know that it's something bad. This leads to Kong discovering a secret underground realm that is unexplored by humans, and he finds a lost tribe of Kongs, a tribe of other giant apes, meaning that Kong is no longer the last of his kind.
However, things are not so hunky dory here, as these Kongs, these giant apes are being led by an evil Kong, an evil ape called the Skar King, who has enslaved them all, and is just overall a cruel and tyrannical leader. He has ambitions of conquering the surface world, and he was the one who started the war between Godzilla and Kong's species, and it was Godzilla who imprisoned him underground in this subterranean level of the Hollow Earth. But, when the humans brought Kong down to live in the Hollow Earth as his new home, he opened a window for the Skar King to make his escape, and conquer the surface world like he wanted to do all these years.
And if that wasn't enough, Skar King commands another Titan, another giant reptile called Shimo, who is somewhat similar to Godzilla, but is not the same species as him. She is a completely different species to him, but vaguely looks somewhat similar, as she's a giant reptilian creature with three rows of spikes on her back, and has a beam weapon, that she breathes out of her mouth. Only, instead of an atomic breath ☢️ like Godzilla, Shimo has an ice breath 🧊 that can freeze anything on contact 🥶, almost froze Kong's entire body 🥶, and gave him severe frost bite ❄️, which is the reason why he gets that mechanical glove, and she apparently is the one who caused the last Ice Age ❄️.
That glove that Kong gets does have a name actually. It's called the BEAST Glove. The word BEAST in this case is an acronym which stands for Bio Enhanced Anatomical Seismic Thunder. I love that, that's a pretty cool name for what that thing is. Anyway, Shimo's ice breath 🧊 is apparently that powerful. It isn't even just her breath either, like her body emits like this cold air ❄️ that causes anything to freeze over 🥶. Like, when she walks or runs, everything around her starts freezing over, and getting covered in frost ❄️. Making her a formidable threat, and a useful asset for the Skar King to use to destroy the surface world, and make it part of his empire.
Godzilla and Kong can't have that, so the two must work together to defeat Skar King and Shimo, and prevent them from taking over the surface. Although, they still don't really like each other. Or rather, Godzilla still doesn't like Kong. Kong is willing to put his differences aside to defeat a common enemy, while Godzilla just doesn't. He doesn't want to work with Kong, he just wants to kill him, or just assert his dominance over him. Even though he defeated Kong in the last movie, he still doesn't very satisfied, and still wants to beat Kong down, and put him in his place since he's the King of the Monsters, not Kong. The power got to this head, and he has a huge ego problem. He almost kills Kong again during the fight in Egypt 🇪🇬, and it takes Mothra to come in to break the two up, and convince the two of them to stop fighting, and work together as a team to defeat Skar King and Shimo.
That's another thing too, Mothra is in this movie too, making her the second Toho kaiju to appear in more than one MonsterVerse movie besides Godzilla. Unless you count that King Ghidorah skull in Godzilla vs. Kong as an appearance. I wish that had been a surprise or a shock for me, had it not been spoiled for me, thanks Internet 😑. I was actually surprised at how much Mothra was in this movie. Like, she had way more screen time and had a much bigger role than I was expecting her to. I thought she would just appear at the end, maybe do one thing, and then leave.
But, we actually get to see her do some stuff, we actually get to see her fight. She even saves the human characters, during that anti-gravity battle, which is one of the best action sequences in the entire movie BTW. In fact, I'll go as far to say that she has more screen time in this movie than she did in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). She gets way more to do here than she did in that movie. And it's just so cool to have Mothra and Kong in the same movie, even if the two don't really interact with each other that much. But, we do get to see Godzilla, Kong, and Mothra on-screen together at the same time in the Egypt scene 🇪🇬. It's the last shot of the second trailer, only in the trailer, they edited out Mothra to keep her appearance in the movie a secret. She really cemented herself as the Queen of the Monsters in this movie.
I also liked the Skar King and Shimo, they were both really cool characters. I like that now the MonsterVerse has reached a point where they can have original monsters that are just as memorable and just as distinct of characters with personality as any of the Toho monsters, or of Kong. Skar King is the main villain of the movie. This is the first MonsterVerse movie to not have a human villain, and instead only have a Titan villain (unless you count the MUTOs in the 2014 movie as villains), and Skar King is an excellent one. He's just an asshole, and a bully, and you want to see him get what's coming to him, and see Kong and Godzilla beat his ass. I mean, he is weaker than Kong, like Kong could easily defeat the Skar King, if it weren't for that spinal cord whip that he uses, and if it weren't for him mind-controlling Shimo, and forcing her to obey him.
And we see in the final fight in Rio de Janeiro that once he loses his whip, and once he loses that little crystal that used to control Shimo, the Skar King was nothing, and easily got defeated. I loved his death too, how Shimo just freezes him 🥶 after the little Kong, Suko breaks the crystal that binds her to him, and then Kong just smashes the frozen Skar King on the ground and shatters into a million pieces. I was kind of expecting Kong to just cut him down with his axe after Suko brought it to him, but that probably would've been a bit too gory 🩸 even for this movie, but I this is good too. The Skar King was definitely a villain you loved to hate.
One detail I liked about the Skar King's design is that they him look more orangutan-like 🦧, like they give him red hair (or red fur), gave him this thin, lanky, tall body with long arms. Like, he has longer arms than Kong. I thought that was a cool design choice to set him apart from Kong, who has always been portrayed as either a giant gorilla 🦍, or a giant ape that's very gorilla-like 🦍.
The one I was surprised the most at was Shimo. When I went into this movie, I was expecting her to be just as evil as the Skar King. Like, what I imagined going in was that Skar King would be like a villain for Kong, and Shimo would be a villain for Godzilla, and the two would have their own motivations for doing what they were doing, and their interests kind of aligned, and kind of just decided to work together for mutual benefit. And I also expecting the plot to be that Shimo is the reason why Godzilla gets involved. But, that's not the case in the movie itself.
It turns out that the Skar King is the only evil one here, and Shimo is kind of just a victim, like she's a slave just as much as the other Kong apes are. The Skar King just sees her as a weapon that he can use to kill his enemies, and conquer the world. She tries at several points to break free from the Skar King's control, but he still manages to assert his dominance over her using that crystal that he attached to the end of his whip. And it's only when that crystal is destroyed that she's finally able to break free, and able to finally kill her captor.
I also didn't know that she was female ♀︎. I was kind of wondering if she was male ♂︎ or female ♀︎ going in, with me leaning more towards her being male ♂︎. Because Shimo is a very Japanese-sounding name, and some Japanese names are gender neutral. Shimo is a very gender neutral name. But, no, it turns out that she is a female ♀︎, and that's pretty cool. She is now the fifth confirmed female Titan ♀︎ in the MonsterVerse along with Mothra, the female MUTO ♀︎ in the 2014 movie, MUTO Prime from Godzilla: Aftershock, and Queen MUTO/Barb in King of the Monsters (2019). Unless Scylla and Tiamat are also both female ♀︎, but I'm not too sure about that one.
I really like her design, she looks really cool, and I like her ice breath ability 🧊. It's very unique. We don't really see too many kaiju with ice powers 🧊, so it was nice to see one here. She's way bigger than Godzilla too. Like, Godzilla's already pretty big, like he's over 393 feet tall in this, but Shimo is twice as big at least. It's cool to have a monster that's bigger than Godzilla, especially ever since that stupid dick measuring context that Legendary Pictures and Toho were having each other to see who could have the bigger Godzilla.
Godzilla doesn't always need to be super huge, and he doesn't always to be the biggest monster in the movie. Sometimes, you can have monsters that are bigger than him. Even though, of course, Godzilla outclasses Shimo in terms of sheer power, like his atomic breath ☢️ can easily cancel out her ice breath 🧊 as he can melt the ice 💦. He especially outclasses her after he absorbs that energy from Tiamat, and becomes Evolved Godzilla, with the pink spikes and the pink atomic breath ☢️.
It kind of reminded me of the Godzilla from Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, where Godzilla had pink spikes that really pointy and sharp, and had an orange or a white atomic breath ☢️. That particular Godzilla design is usually referred to as the "Millennium Godzilla," or MireGoji, or GiraGoji, or just Godzilla 2000. The name "Millennium Godzilla" doesn't really work since there's more than one Millennium Godzilla.
The Millennium series was an anthology series just like the current Reiwa series is. That design was the most common Godzilla design used in media out of the movies prior to the MonsterVerse, as this was the design in all three Atari Pipeworks Godzilla fighting games. That's what Evolved Godzilla reminded me of in this movie, only his spikes were kind of small and his atomic breath ☢️ was actually pink instead orange or white. Still, his new spikes are still bigger than ones he had in the 2014 movie.
The majority of this movie does take place inside Hollow Earth 🌎. Like, we got a little taste of it in Godzilla vs. Kong, but now we get to see even more of it since it's pretty much the entire movie. We only get a few scenes that set in the surface world, and 99% of those are Godzilla's entire screen time. Because the whole idea is that Godzilla lives on the surface, while Kong lives down in the Hollow Earth 🌎. They've made those places their respective domains, and that's how Monarch keeps Kong safe, and keeps Godzilla from killing him. As long as Kong stays in the Hollow Earth 🌎, and doesn't come back up to the surface, he'll be fine, and Godzilla will just mind his own business. And when Kong does come back up to the surface, it creates some problems.
I mean, not the first time since he just comes up to get dental work from the veterinarian, Trapper, and he just stayed in Monarch's watchful eye until he woke up, and went back. But, the second time he comes up to the surface, he is putting his life at risk, and is directly incurring the territorial wrath of Godzilla. But, then it was intentional since Kong needed Godzilla's help to defeat the Skar King and Shimo. There's a scene taking place in Italy 🇮🇹, there's a scene set in France 🇫🇷, there's a scene set in the Arctic Ocean, near the North Pole, there's a scene set in Egypt 🇪🇬, and there's a scene set in Brazil 🇧🇷, which is pretty much the climax of the film. And of course, there's all the scenes set at the various Monarch facilities and that school for kids who have parents or guardians who work for Monarch.
But, the rest of it is set in Hollow Earth 🌎, which is fine by me because Hollow Earth 🌎 looked really cool. They made such an awesome looking and breathtaking sci-fi world. It was fun to see all the creatures they had inside the Hollow Earth 🌎 that weren't Titans. I would love to have an art book showing all the concept art of all the Hollow Earth creatures 🌎 that they put in the movie, as well as some they probably didn't put in the movie. I would also like to see a wildlife book giving in-universe facts about the various creatures inside Hollow Earth 🌎 just like we did for the Peter Jackson version of Skull Island from King Kong (2005). I would even like to see Universal Studios do a full ride or experience for the MonsterVerse based around the Hollow Earth 🌎, just like Disney did for Pandora from the Avatar movies.
The action scenes are excellent in this movie. This movie probably has some of the best monster fights of the entire MonsterVerse so far, which probably isn't saying much since the MonsterVerse has only had five movies so far. From the get-go we get a fight, where Kong is being chased by these wolf-looking creatures that sort of resemble those things from the tie-in comic to Kong: Skull Island called Skull Island: The Birth of Kong. I don't know if they're the same creatures or not, but they look a lot like them. Then we get a fight between Godzilla and Scylla in Rome. Then we get a fight between Kong and a lake serpent.
We get a scene where Godzilla attacks a nuclear power plant ☢️ in France 🇫🇷 and absorbs all the radiation ☢️ to make himself more powerful to take out Tiamat, who's basically a sea serpent who lives up in the Arctic, and draws power from solar radiation ☀️. She's literally solar powered ☀️. We get a fight between Godzilla and Tiamat, which ends quickly with Godzilla killing Tiamat absorbing her energy to make himself even more powerful. So that he'll be ready to fight the Skar King and Shimo.
Then we get a fight between Kong and couple of other Kong apes that work for the Skar King. Then we get a fight between the Skar King and Kong, which Kong loses, but only because Skar King played dirty, and just suck Shimo on him and had her take him down for him. Then, we get the fight in Egypt 🇪🇬, in Cairo, where Kong rises up to the surface and tries to ask for Godzilla's help to prevent the Skar King and Shimo from reaching the surface, and Godzilla just beats him up because he just hates his guts. Apparently Kong is loud enough for Godzilla to hear him all the way from Gibraltar 🇬🇮, because when Kong rises up from Hollow Earth 🌍 in Egypt 🇪🇬, Godzilla's at Gibraltar 🇬🇮, which is on the Iberian peninsula right next to Spain 🇪🇸.
Gibraltar 🇬🇮 is a British territory 🇬🇧. And when Kong calls out to Godzilla from Cairo, he's apparently loud enough for him to hear all the way from Gibraltar 🇬🇮. That pisses him off 😡 since he hates Kong, and the surface world is supposed to his turf, and Godzilla's hella territorial. He won't tolerate Kong coming on to his turf, even if it is just to ask him for help. So, he leaps into the water 💦, and swims all the way to Egypt 🇪🇬 to teach that damn dirty ape a lesson. See, what I did there? I just made a Planet of the Apes reference, since you know, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is coming out in a few weeks.Then, we get the fight in the Hollow Earth 🌎 between Godzilla, Kong, Mothra, Suko, the Skar King, a few of his ape goons, and Shimo.
And finally, we have the final fight in Brazil 🇧🇷, in Rio de Janeiro between Godzilla, Kong, the Skar King, and Shimo. There's plenty of monster action to keep you entertained throughout. But, there's not too much of it to where it becomes overwhelming, like there's plenty of scenes in the movie where the monsters aren't fighting, and just walking around, eating, swimming, and just sitting around chilling. And those scenes are particularly entertaining and engaging, just as engaging as any of the fights themselves. But, my favorite action sequence is the anti-gravity fight, which is the only time in the entire movie where Godzilla's actually inside the Hollow Earth 🌎. It's the scene from the trailers where you see Godzilla and Kong running side-by-side together.
It was a creative and exciting sequence, and it was an example to me of a scene that couldn't have done in any of the older Toho films with suitmation. Like, there's no way you could pull off a scene like that without CGI, and part of that is what makes it so impressive to me. I'm glad that they did a lot of things that you couldn't do without CGI in this movie, like they had Godzilla do things in this movie that you couldn't have done with the rubber suits.
Speaking of which, it goes without saying that the CGI in this movie is excellent. This has some of the best CGI of the entire MonsterVerse series, and the MonsterVerse has had some pretty great CGI. If this movie doesn't get nominated for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, I'm going to be a bit upset. Godzilla vs. Kong got snubbed in the 2022 Oscars, not even getting a nomination. So, with Godzilla: Minus One winning the Best Visual Effects Oscar this year, it's only fair that this movie gets nominated for Best Visual Effects at next year. This is just a really cool movie, I had a great time with it, and I'm sure you'll have a great time with it if you choose to see it.
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Here's the IMAX interview with Adam Wingard:
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Here's the IMAX One-on-One Conversation Between Adam Wingard and Takashi Yamazaki:
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