Journey to the Center of the Hollow Earth

Far be it from me to critique the logic of a GodzillaThe acknowledged King of the Monsters, Gozilla has grown far beyond his early days as a nuclear fallout allegory into one of the biggest, and longest running, franchises ever. movie normally. The point of one of these flicks is to see a big monster, or several big monsters, beat the shit out of a city (and each other) for a couple of hours until one of them is called the winner and somehow humanity thinks they came out ahead in the deal. And then humanity rebuilds between films, another monster shows up, and the whole cycle begins anew. This is the way of Godzilla films, as it has been since Toho started the series, and it’s only gotten more elaborate and stupid with every passing film.

But even by that logic, there’s something incredibly dumb and ironic about Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The film opens by showing us Kong, living in the Hollow Earth, while the big lizard stays up topside and battles whatever new titan arrives on the scene. Rome is the target for a giant crabby-spider monster, so of course Big G comes running, smashing through whole blocks of the city, before tossing the crab into some very ancient buildings, destroying them before blasting the crab with his breath weapon. Oh, and then he goes to sleep in the Colosseum, probably doing damage to the delicate structure as well. And the humans think Godzilla is the hero? Really? Did they not just see the carnage he caused?

This is, fundamentally, the issue with the whole Legendary Pictures Godzilla series (which started back in 2014 with Godzilla). Each time, massive parts of the world are destroyed by giant monsters, Godzilla comes to fight them, the monsters are defeated, and Big G is hailed as a hero. Except some many people have died and so much of human civilization has been wrecked in the process. I get that if the titans remained around they’d cause more carnage as well, but, honestly, are we really better off with Godzilla than without? Is Godzilla the solution or more of another problem?

Now, yes, sure, the movie shows scenes of his destruction and people running from it, but it never doubts that he’s a hero. The protagonists of the movie treat Godzilla as a hero even while he’s destroying everything in sight. He doesn’t care about who he stomps on or what he destroys, literally cutting a path of terror through Europe on his way to the next big threat, but the movie still says, “yes, Godzilla! He’s our hero. He takes titans back to zero!” It’s like when Roland Emmerich (who also directed a Godzilla film) would stage massive spectacles about cities dying or the end of the world coming, but he’d also glorify it and spend huge chunks of the movie enjoying the destruction. That’s this film and it never feels right while we’re watching it.

Weirdly, at the same time the film loves to revel in the destruction of major human cities, it also fails to deliver on the part we’re actually here for: monsters beating the shit out of each other. Too often the film pits two monsters against each other, like Kong against a giant serpent, or Godzilla facing off against Tiamat, and then, just as the battle begins and we expect the monsters to wreck some shit, the film cuts way to a far vantage point, there’s a lull, and then some bits of the “bad” monster come tumbling down, while our heroic monster is safe and sound. The actual fight happens off screen and we don’t get to see anything. Which… why? Isn’t the point of these movies to see giant monsters fighting? The perspective of these films is wrong and I can’t quite figure out why.

We do finally start to get some actual monster battles in the back half of the film but this is over an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie and, by that point, I’d started to get really bored. It was a lot of teasing, a lot of edging around the monsters, and a lot of people expositing about what the hell is going on in the movie. This is one of those films where they have to explain everything to you, with huge info dumps at random moments, because the film itself can’t convey anything that’s going on with any kind of consistency. Why is Godzilla doing what he does? What are the bad guys (a bunch of Kong-like apes) planning? How does this threaten the Earth? Well, the film can’t convey this simply through showing us actions and letting the monsters fight. It has to use info dumps and exposition because it’s too dumb to understand actually showing us the things we need to know and it can’t trust us to understand.

Even during massive monster fights the film has to grind to a halt to say, “hey, this is why this monster is fighting that one” and “this is what this creature is, so you should be in awe of it.” The pacing for this whole film is terrible, cutting back and forth between stories while very little of consequence actually happens for most of the film. And all of this could be papered over if the film would just show us monster fights regularly and let us revel in the battles, but it takes so long to get to any of them and, even still, those fights really aren’t that great.

There’s a basic formula to these movies that Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (and don’t even ask what the “new empire” is because I have no clue and I just watched the film) stick very closely to: a big bad is revealed, our heroic monster fights him, loses, has to go recharge, heal, and power up, and then the big battle happens again, this time with our hero coming out on top. It’s not Godzilla that goes through this pattern this time, though, with the film instead relying on Kong for most of its “story”.

Where is Godzilla in all this? Off powering up and avoiding the main meat of the movie. Despite this being a film titled after both titans, Godzilla and Kong, the Big G is actually missing for most of the movie, off doing his own thing topside while the actual action is going on elsewhere. “Oh, Godzilla has to go get more power, and then more power, and then more power. Just wait, he’ll arrive on the scene eventually.” It’s a really weird way to work both monsters into the film because it essentially ignores one of them for most of it until the kid in charge of this toy fest is ready to smash his other action figure into the fray. “Just wait! It’ll eventually get good,” seems to be the whole modus operandi of this film.

The big climactic fight, too, is just awful. It’s what we’ve been waiting for, with all the various monsters in this film (most of whom don’t get top billing) battling against each other in a massive arena fight. First, despite the film treating these creatures like heroes, an entire city is leveled in the middle of their battle, so hundreds of thousands of lives are lost at least. But it’s also just hard to watch. It’s jumpy and strangely edited and the position of characters in the fight isn’t even clearly established. Is the CGI animated version of powerslop, with just happening simply “because. It was just a terrible ending.

And it reminded me, honestly, of the last film, Godzilla vs. Kong, in which the various monsters that were introduced (not all of which got top billing) came together for a massive battle that leveled a city and capped the film, all to lead to the survivors being treated like heroes. It’s the same fight. It’s the same story. It’s the same damn movie. Seriously, this formula has gotten so rote that I could probably guess the setup for the next film, and how it will all play out, and likely be right.

You will note that we’ve gone this whole review and not once talked about the actual plot of the movie. That’s because it’s totally pointless and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. There are human characters, and they’re around to explain all the things to the dumb audience, but in the end it’s all just a vessel to get us to bad fights and CGI chaos. Nothing here matters. Nothing has weight or reality or substance. It’s just action figures, one now with kung fu grip and the other with special light up action, smashing together in the end. If that appeals to you, great. This is another film for you. But if you want maybe something a little more then Godzilla x King: The New Empire is not a film you’re going to enjoy.

Long run, it feels like this franchise is running on fumes. The same story, the same monsters, the same chaos. I wouldn’t say any of these films were really good to begin with, but clearly its possible for them to get so much worse.