Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) – A Brief Review Based on First Impressions and Initial Thoughts:

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By: Noah Benjamin Dobson (redeyecyclops on Letterboxd) | Written on 3.31.2021

The most exciting thing about this movie was imagining how angry a friend of mine was going to be when he finally watched this film.

The movie starts off strong with the utilization of an element that was lacking in the previous American Godzilla films: Charisma. The movie has an energy and the characters do feel alive and their motivations seem…clearer? However, as the plot drags along, that surplus of energy does dry out. And the only thing that raises is the hope that something of quality will finally manifest.

That hope is misplaced. It should be noted that a fight between two elderly veterans and a genius, playboy, millionaire, philanthropist should not be more engaging than an oversized gorilla fighting a radioactive iguana. The fight scenes – are not great, which is worse with the realization that this was advertised as a showdown movie. Two of the four main fight scenes are unimpressive and the last two – are still unimpressive, but by the time it happens you realize caring is a tedious and demanding task.

The movie is also hindered by unnecessary elements, specifically the conspiracy that ensues along with the human villains and their cliche plan.

The only time a conspiracy made sense was in the first Godzilla movie, as there was a mystery looming, continually built by the marketing material and ads. The size of Godzilla was uncertain. The types of monsters who roamed that world were unknown. No one, from the characters in the film and the potential audience awaiting the premiere of the movie, held all the pieces.

A conspiracy also serves the plot well when it is intrinsically personal to one of the main characters, evident by Bryan Cranston’s character in the first film because the cover-up dismissed the truth of his wife’s passing and broke him into a paranoid man. It ruined the character’s career and the relationship with his son and his son’s family.

The conspiracy in this film is obvious and does not deliver a great pay-off in the end due to both its design and implementation into the story. It’s unfortunately shallow and lacks any sense of threat, urgency, and distress.

It’s biggest strengths or rather, the areas that deserved to be the main focal point and themes surrounding the film, was the relationship between Kong and the child, the child and her adopted mother, the protection of Kong from Godzilla, and the overall fear of Godzilla. Godzilla is now the King of the Monsters and is fully capable of wiping out anything he deems a threat to his reign on Earth. Anything that steps in his way can be immediately crossed off as deceased before it enters the same space with Godzilla.

However, just like Kong, Godzilla is the last of his kind making any threat towards him the potential killer of his entire species – a point that is never acknowledged in the film as a consequence. Thus the mere focus on fear could have served well as the main theme and driving force for the film’s plot and characters’ actions based on the fear of loss, the fear of succession, and the fear of extinction. But they were not, and instead overzealous explanations and other agendas were excess that did not complete a tight and cohesive narrative with more thought-out motivations.

Its science is also incredibly convoluted. The basics of science and science fiction are scrutinized and replaced with “bs” jargon and destroys all sense of believability. It can’t be followed – at all.

A general area that I’ve hoped for – if they were going to implement science into these films – was the study of biology and how these creatures work at a mechanical level (What allows Godzilla to contain that much radiation, how does Kong learn, how do these other creatures survive, etc.). These areas, which you would generally see on Animal Planet, Planet Earth, Nat Geo, etc., are factors that would be great to concentrate on as it builds the intelligence, creativity and durability of any monster that enters a fight (The Main Reason This Movie Exists – is to give us a fight scene). Instead, we’re given the explanation of how they were able to drain neurological wavelengths from a skull. Not a brain. Just. The. Skull.

I do not believe it’s the worst of the three Godzilla films, but its weight in both story and fights are lame. A massive problem with the first Godzilla movie was that its characters were bland, however, keeping a cast small with occupations related to hostile entities and collateral damage was ideal as it presented the necessary perspectives to demonstrate how people would handle such a devastation and how they would potentially defend against it. The cast merely required further personalization. It also achieved scale quite nicely. Despite Godzilla being smaller in the first, the weight and size could be felt and immediately interpreted as huge and looming along with the MUTOs.

King of the Monsters had the best fight scenes that were challenged by what is perhaps the weakest and least memorable plot. Kong: Skull Island had the best energy. It was fun and colorful and for some – terrifying. And it further emphasized the dreadfulness of being anywhere near Titans and enlarged creatures.

Thus, it is a shame that these movies paved a path in which plot, characters, and fight choreography should not have been an issue. The experimentation was over and this film was given hindsight of both strengths and weaknesses. In the end – it did not heed any of it.

I’m not angry. I’m not disappointed as that would imply I held high expectations. I feel exactly as my mother felt when watching this movie. Indifferent.