REVIEW: ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Is The Monsterverse’s Best

Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse has been a fascinating experiment in translating Toho’s kaiju characters to an American audience. A mostly successful experiment at that. With the exception of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, all of the films have been positively received by audiences. With no exceptions, all have made tremendous returns at the box office. Godzilla vs. Kong was a huge early COVID-19-era box office success story. A sequel became inevitable.

Director Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong, The Guest) harkens back to a very different kind of giant monster movie than Godzilla’s previous outing. This is an all-out kaiju smackdown. He takes all the elements that worked in prior Monsterverse movies and trims the fat. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a cheer-worthy throwback to the Shōwa era kaiju movies. The goal? Put as much adrenaline-fueled monster action on screen as possible. Consider that goal met.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire finds Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her adoptive daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle) protecting Kong in his new Hollow Earth home. Godzilla, meanwhile, is content to live above ground guarding humanity from Titan threats. This tenuous peace hits a snag upon the arrival of the Scar King. He’s an ancient adversary who seeks to use the Great Apes to conquer humanity. Kong alone is no match. It’s time for Godzilla and Kong to put their differences aside to defeat Scar King. Both their homes, and the fate of humanity, depend on it.

Immediately, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire corrects an issue with prior Monsterverse entries. Here, the lead kaiju are fully defined. Kong is more of an anthropomorphized, level-headed action hero. Godzilla, on the other hand, comes off as more unpredictable. One’s the guardian of humanity, the other the guardian of nature. They have the perfect buddy-cop type dynamic.

You just want to see their personalities clash. It helps that much of the screen time focuses on just kaijus. The screenplay by Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater gives the big guys the spotlight. The trio and Adam Wingard have fun with their creatures, treating the Monsterverse like the sandbox it is. They also know what people have been clamoring for: making the humans secondary and telling the story through the kaiju.

The best sections of Godzilla x Kong involve Kong exploring Hollow Earth. He discovers and communicates with a society of apes using mostly grunts. The visual effects work, supervised by Alessandro Ongaro, is detailed to the point where whole conversations can be inferred simply by watching the lines on the apes’ faces move ever so slightly. The extremely cute and spunky Baby Kong is a highlight of the film. His little brother dynamic with King Kong is a stroke of brilliance the filmmakers communicate entirely through great animation. The Scar King also has a menacing swagger that pops off the screen. There’s a scene where he challenges Kong to a fight, using a long whip tipped by a spear. With it, Scar King controlling the ice kaiju Shimo in a scene rife with tension, spectacle, and emotion based on visuals alone.

The Monsterverse has left looking “realistic” in the past to go for a more expressive look. It’s a massively beneficial choice. After all, side arcs like Godzilla on the hunt to consume as much nuclear power as possible wouldn’t be nearly as fun in the dour tone of, say, the 2014 Godzilla. Unfortunately, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire still tries to be a little too fun with its human characters. Other than Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle doing fine work, of course. In particular, Hottle gets some great material that helps add some heart to the proceedings. Otherwise, the humans feel like one-note jokes. It’s always good to see Dan Stevens, but does he need to be a played-out roguish adventurer? Worse yet, Brian Tyree Henry gets nothing to work with here. Unless you count grating one-liners that could summon a groan from the most generous of moviegoers.

Really, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire would’ve been better off relegating its human element to just Rebecca Hall giving the exposition that can’t be communicated nonverbally. Either way, the third act of Godzilla x Kong delivers the goods-hard. The tag-team match of Godzilla and Kong versus Shimo and Scar King takes a bit of build-up. But once we get there, it’s kaiju heaven. Each character has a distinct fighting style; the fisticuffs of Kong, the beastly viciousness of Godzilla, slick weapon-play of Scar King, and the uncontrollable primal energy of Shimo all clash together. Wingard keeps finding new ways to pit their differing move sets against each other.

Meanwhile, the fight goes through various locale changes, allowing cinematographer Ben Seresin to craft some downright epic sequences. Scar King crossing up Godzilla with a whip in Rio De Janeiro, all the monsters slamming into each other in zero gravity, a game of Hot Potato with Scar King’s spear. The carnage simply doesn’t end. Seeing these monsters whale on each other, causing endless amounts of property destruction, brought a smile to my face. Clearly, Adam Wingard gets why audiences go to these things.

If giant monsters tearing up cities sounds up your alley, then Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the consummate idea of a classic kaiju movie. It properly translates the kaiju smackdown silliness that directly followed the original Godzilla from 1954. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a great kaiju picture and an outstanding blockbuster. It gives you exactly what you came for. Maybe even a bit more. Although Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire focuses on who will reign Earth, there’s no question which Monsterverse film reigns above all the others.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is in theaters March 29th.