Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
(2024)

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 🦍 

Godzilla has had an insanely busy five months.

In November, we had Apple TV+‘s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and then in December, TOHO Studios blessed us with what many consider to be the greatest Kaiju movie of all time in Godzilla: Minus One, but now we return to the Warner Bros. universe as the sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong has officially released with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

After the events of Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong finds himself trying to acclimate to Hollow Earth while searching for the roots of his ancestors. Things take an interesting turn when he stumbles upon a gorilla army deep in a molten abyss—an army seeking to relive a lost history and regain their status as land dwellers.

I’ll admit that I’m unapologetically biased about this current iteration of the MonsterVerse, and even though the mythology grows more ridiculous by the second, I can’t get enough.

My main source of enjoyment stems from Hollow Earth and how creative they’ve gotten with it. It reminds me a lot of the Dark Continent in Hunter x Hunter, where the more you peel back, the more fascinating the depth of the world becomes.

The order of the food chain is frequently mentioned throughout the movie, especially humans place in it now that the monsters have awoken, but for whatever reason they’ve continued to shoehorn human stories into what’s clearly become a primal jousting match to create an appropriate social hierarchy amongst these Titans.

It’s their world, and we’re just existing in it, which is what this movie gets right.

Even though it continues to showcase humanity’s perspective through all this, they’re more like avatars and placeholders so the audience can see the goings on in this newly explored world, while the Monsters (in this case, Kongs) more personal stories can take centre stage.

There’s an awesome Donkey and Diddy Kong type relationship that’s formed with Kong and a newly introduced character, which I feel (and hope) will be a launching pad for future stories to come.

This movie definitely has its flaws. The convenience of how they move through the story and how Kong essentially gets what I’m just going to call the infinity gauntlet is speed ran through, then we get the reveal of an entire civilization that felt unearned, but I just rolled with it because it got us back to the most fun parts of the movie, so why complain?

The New Empire navigates uncharted territories in Hollow Earth with a story that unpacks the lore behind this new world, while continuing to evolve the Kaiju story passed the human constraints of its predecessor in a dumb, fun clash of titans. 

Enjoy!

7/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr55mins
Where: Now Playing In Theatres

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review (2024) The Richmond Reviewer -  March 31st, 2024.

#Godzilla #KingKong #MonsterVerse #Kaiju #MovieReview #Review #GodzillaxKong #WarnerBrosos