IR Film Review: GODZILLA X KONG - THE NEW EMPIRE [Legendary/Warner Bros]
The trajectory of a film franchise like Kong depends on the angle needed and what it is trying to accomplish. With its latest entry: "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire", all sense of scale and reality seemingly go out the window but the film and its tone lean into it. This is not dark and brooding and yet there is plenty of destruction. It is a pretty bad movie but it is aware of it so in terms of entertainment, it is actually decent if you let that go. While the introduction of baby Kong as seen in the trailer is not as bad as one thinks, it is not handled with the gravitas of the way the new "Planet Of The Apes" franchise did nor should it. The humans are completely secondary here but key obviously to the team up. The film moves back and forth from the surface to Hollow Earth. But for the most part it is always either with Kong or Godzilla before they come together, using a final catalyst to work.
While the earlier movies especially with Vera Famiga and Millie Bobbie Brown tried too hard to make it emotional but the tone didn't gel with the destruction making it into melodrama, "The New Empire" understands that the line just to need to be the surface and have those characters that represent the best plot progression. "Jurassic Park" did this well but that was a different time. That first film really knew what it was doing but like "Kong x Godzilla", "Jurassic World" entries made the same mistakes but not as egregious. The reason this works comes with the balance of Trapper (Dan Stevens] and Dr. Andrews (Rebecca Hall). One would say that it has some of the elements of "The Core" too but that film despite its outlandish concept really did figure out the emotional underpinings in a way that these movies now cannot because the impact of dread (which Garett Edwards' "Godzilla" had) is gone. Stevens gets the tone undeniably and pushes it right to the edge. Hall has the emotional range but knows also to only push it too far. That is the balance.
The only one that tends to get a bit grading though he is supposed to represent the younger view in a way (now that Millie Bobbie Brown's character is not there) is Bryan Tyree Henry as Bernie. Henry is a good actor but it is just what the character is. Kong himself is more interesting this time because of his relaying of narrative of emotion. Again, it will never be as good as Andy Serkis in Peter Jackson's version but it shows the essence of what the character is. The big bad that one finds and sees is not what one was hoping. It felt initially that there might be something along the lines of Sauron in "Lord Of The Rings" with the way that Godzilla started gathering power.
Even one of the final images in a recent Kong movie had Kong sitting with his axe on a underground throne like "Conan". That almost changed the tone but building a whole movie off that without enough narrative wouldn't work. There is almost a "Lion King" element at one point with a specific character which isn't even covered up. The McGuffin of the story is a specific tech, which is pretty cool but comes out of nowhere, though it does amp up the action. The rest of the movie plays like a cinematic in a video game (though many of those do it much better). Again "The New Empire" is decent if you let go and just enjoy it realizing that it is trying to be an 80s sci-fi movie (synth score and all) but one with a extremely large budget. B-
By Tim Wassberg
