In a sentenceKong sighs, Godzilla glows, and everyone in a lab coat explains the hollow planet one more time
Kong lives under a vast dome on Skull Island, a monitored reserve, watched over by Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and understood only by Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a deaf orphan who talks to him in sign. When Godzilla comes ashore at Pensacola, Florida, and tears through a plant belonging to Apex Cybernetics, its chief executive Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) recruits Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), a discredited scientist who believes in a world beneath the Earth’s crust, to lead an expedition there with Kong as guide. The ape is loaded onto a naval convoy bound for Antarctica. Meanwhile Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown), convinced Godzilla had a reason to attack, tracks down the conspiracy podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) with her friend Josh Valentine (Julian Dennison) to find out what Apex is hiding.
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Adam Wingard gives this series the fights it kept promising: in daylight, in one piece, with a sense of who is winning. The human scenes between rounds are as lazy as anything in a film this size. Kong carries it.
Four films in, the shared series that began with Godzilla (2014) has arrived at the only thing anyone wanted from it. The tagline says “One will fall”, the title says who, and Adam Wingard’s job is to get the two of them into the same shot and let us watch. He does, three times, and the fights are the best this series has staged: lit, legible and long enough to have a shape. Between them sit the human scenes, and those are among the laziest we have sat through in a film of this size.
The setup is brisk. Kong lives under a dome on Skull Island, watched by Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and understood only by Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a deaf orphan who signs to him. Godzilla comes ashore in Pensacola and wrecks a plant owned by Apex Cybernetics. Its chief, Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir), hires Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), a discredited scientist whose book about a world inside the Earth nobody bought, to lead an expedition there with Kong as the guide. Meanwhile Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown) decides a conspiracy podcaster called Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) is on to something and goes looking for him with her friend Josh (Julian Dennison).
What Wingard understands, and the previous two films did not, is that a punch needs a camera that stays still. Ben Seresin shoots the first bout in flat sea daylight, off the decks of a naval convoy, so that we can see the fur, the scales and the exact moment Kong’s foot slips. Josh Schaeffer holds the shots. When Kong lands one on Godzilla’s jaw and the lizard goes into the water, we grinned like children and were not remotely ashamed of it; that is the reaction this series has been chasing for seven years and it took until now to get there. Hong Kong, later, is lit like a nightclub in pink and blue, and Tom Hammock and Owen Paterson’s world beneath the crust has its gravity the wrong way up and a ruin with an axe in it, which is exactly as much backstory as a giant ape requires.
Kong is the performance of the film. The animators give him a heavy sigh on an Antarctic ice shelf, a rub of a sore shoulder, a way of looking at Jia as if she were the only sensible person present, and she is. Hottle, acting opposite an animal that is not there, is the one human we believed. Godzilla, by contrast, is a weather event. The film knows this and gives him the entrances and Kong the close-ups, and that is the right call.
Then the people talk. Max Borenstein and Eric Pearson’s script gives them two jobs, to explain the hollow planet and to explain the evil company, and they perform both by telling each other things they already know. Skarsgård plays his scientist as a man mildly surprised to have been asked. Hall has one expression, worried, and is asked for nothing else. Henry works hard for laughs and gets some; Brown and Dennison stand behind him and react. Bichir does the smirking billionaire, Eiza Gonzalez as his daughter is there to look impatient in a cockpit, and Kyle Chandler, Lance Reddick and Hakeem Kae-Kazim are present in the sense that their names appear on the credits. Somewhere around the second boardroom scene we were bored, and then irritated, because a film that can build that ocean fight plainly knows what it is doing and had chosen not to do it here.
Junkie XL’s score is synthesiser pulse and brass, loud, and in the neon stretches it suits the pictures; elsewhere it is simply on. Ann Foley’s costumes tell us who is corporate and who is field by the colour of their jackets, which is more than the dialogue manages.
Against the series’ own standards this is the best of the American entries for action and the worst for everything around it. Kong: Skull Island (2017) had people you could stand; Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) had a plot; this has neither and does not mind. The 1962 Japanese original, King Kong vs. Godzilla, at least had the sense to be funny about it.
See it on the largest screen in the house with the sound up, and keep a hand near the remote for the middle stretches. It runs 114 minutes and carries a 12, and at least forty of those minutes are as good as this kind of thing gets.
Most critics come down in favour, though few with much warmth. The praise clusters on the monster fights: they are staged clearly, lit so you can see what is happening, and choreographed so every blow registers. The neon-lit Hong Kong brawl and the shipboard battle are named again and again. Kong himself gets credit too, for expressive animation and a bond with Jia that several reviews find touching.
The reservations are as consistent. Nearly everyone finds the human story thin, the dialogue tired and the mythology muddled, and the disagreement is over how much that matters. The spread is wide. Some take it as pure escapism and forgive everything; others find it wearying. The New Yorker calls it emotionally hollow and says it shrinks its own monsters, Slant finds the central fights dull and arbitrary, and Eye for Film goes further than most in faulting the effects themselves, the water in particular.
Bramesco finds the crossover underwhelming, despite its monster fights. He praises the clearly choreographed clashes but criticizes the humans’ drawn-out, unnecessary subplots.
Read the full review →Kiang finds the film a welcome, giddily escapist blockbuster despite its rudimentary plotting. She especially praises the spectacular kaiju battles and the fun of its oversized, neon-lit destruction.
Read the full review →Hans finds the film vastly superior to its predecessor, with spectacle more involving than its plot. She praises the dazzling image of Kong floating skyward among glowing purple rocks.
Read the full review →Erbland finds the film an entertaining, satisfying MonsterVerse entry whose battles deliver the franchise’s best action yet. She especially praises the clear, coherent staging of the Titan fights, including the ocean-set showdown.
Read the full review →The review finds the film an entertaining spectacle, despite its hurried human storylines. It praises the monsters as appealing protagonists and their energetic, pro-wrestling-style battles.
Read the full review →Rooney finds the monster showdown an enjoyable, worthy franchise match despite muddled mythology and thin human characters. He especially praises Kong’s expressive animation and its poignant connection with Jia.
Read the full review →
King Kong vs. Godzilla · not on Fi1m yetThe first time they met, in rubber suits, with a straight face and a wink.
Shin GodzillaThe monster as a bureaucratic crisis; committees argue while Tokyo burns.
Pacific RimDel Toro’s robots hit his monsters in the rain and everyone knows the rules.
The Host · not on Fi1m yetBong Joon-ho’s river creature, one family, and a government that lies to them.
Godzilla Minus OnePostwar Japan, a survivor’s guilt, and the lizard as something to be atoned for.
