Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire | The Marvelisation Of The MonsterVerse

ADAM WINGARD’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the fifth film of the MonsterVerse, and a direct sequel to Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). It is absolutely nothing like the retro-cool Kong: Skull Island (2017) and the impossibly cinematic Godzilla (2014); there’s no time or space for aesthetics. The trashy spectacle, so-inane-that-it’s-insane action and overstuffed-CGI pieces put peak-Michael Bay (replace the transformers with…animals?), peak-MCU and peak-Jurassic World to shame. That’s a lot of shaming.

Reviews are futile, of course, because who won’t watch a giant ape argue with a giant dino-fish? This is a franchise that my teenage self often fantasised about, not least because it could shamelessly merge the best and worst of two of my favourite franchises — Planet of the Apes and Jurassic Park — and pass it off as one reckless nightmare. But Godzilla x Kong is — how do I put it? — simultaneously the stupidest movie of the MonsterVerse and its smartest yet.

Let’s start with why it’s possibly the most brainless film I’ve seen. For starters, it exists. It has the narrative depth of a WrestleMania match, where the heels who were once sworn rivals change their loyalties and team up to take down someone worse than them. It opens with Kong feeling lonely in Hollow Earth — his new ‘home’ after his showdown with Godzu (this is my nickname for Godzilla; deal with it) — and looking for company. He finds some in the hidden Subterranean World, except it’s an underground ape kingdom ruled by a fascist leader named Skar Kong.

Meanwhile, Godzu is getting restless on top, abandoning its cosy afternoon naps in Rome’s Colosseum, and going to charge itself in the Arctic ocean, as if in preparation for a war — the biomechanised monster can sense the rising of Skar Kong. They have history. So Godzu and Kong meet in Egypt, smash a few pyramids, and then decide to dive into Hollow Earth and use their skills on Skar Kong instead. The finale unfolds in Rio de Janeiro, because the tired titans look like they’re planning a quick beach vacation after a long work trip.

The humans remain utterly useless in the film. They are incidental to the carnage. It’s not just the sheer futility of the main characters — ‘anthropological linguist’ Dr. Ilene Andrews (a comically serious Rebecca Hall), last Iwi native and Ilene’s adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), super-vet Trapper (Dan Stevens), and former whistleblower and conspiracy-theorist podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Hayes). In general, humans as a concept are a joke to this franchise. Apparently, the goal is to “save the world,” but beastly protagonists Godzu and Kong casually turn cities into dust while going through their own existential meltdowns; they sprint and run across earth like it’s a personal garden with some pesky ants.

One day it’s Rome, the next it’s France, the next it’s Egypt and then Brazil — the body-count just for the two to realise their mission (while running towards each other) is embarrassing. It is simply taken for granted that this is an age in which “collateral damage” has a new meaning: What’s a few hundred billions worth of destruction and a few million crushed people in the larger scheme of things, no? All through, Ilene and her crew stay so focused on Kong and co. that you wonder if they’re the same species. The stakes are ridiculously low.

There’s also the corny world-building and myth-making habit of these movies, where the ‘writers’ present some sort of plotty framework for the big-ticket monster battles. Once the gang fixes Kong’s sore tooth (really) and follows him down to the hidden corners of Hollow Earth, Jia is revealed to be the Chosen One of an ancient tribe — the only one who can telepathically communicate with both Kong and Godzu. In essence, she’s a glorified translator between two pissed-off world leaders with nuclear bomb buttons. At another point, Ilene and the others discover a cave with scriptures and tales, which she reads out aloud — her voice-over scoring Kong’s experience with the lower-apes — so that we know the monsters’ back-stories (because, you know, they can’t tell us themselves).

The other option would be flashbacks; imagine Godzu having a trauma-dream while curled up inside of the Colosseum. The exposition is so awful that it’s audacious, making you wonder if studios are happy to throw money at creators who reduce actual storytelling and emotions to time-filling devices. All that matters are the creatures and their macro-aggressions. When in doubt, let Godzu finish a scary aquatic monster in the Arctic and let Kong kill a massive water-snake-ish thing — the closest the film gets to conveying that their journeys are interrelated now.

Another thing the franchise has done over the years is erase the wonder of watching such magnificent beasts on the big screen. There’s so much overexposure of Kong and Godzu that the fantastical element is all but extinct; it’s now like seeing two weird-looking fellows dealing with the perils of displacement. There is no excitement, no suspense, about their entry or intro shots; there’s no breath-taking ‘emergence’ or primal curiosity anymore, the way Peter Jackson last managed with King Kong (2005). Marvel did this with superheroes — ‘humanising’ them to hell in pursuit of screen-time — and the fatigue is similar.

At most points, you forget that you’re witnessing the mighty King Kong and mythical Godzilla, the fundamental building blocks of our childhood imaginations. The fear they generate disappears. The awe factor becomes the aww factor, where you almost feel like cuddling them when they trip on the pyramids or dive into the Atlantic ocean for a swim. The film immediately starts with Kong in a battle with some annoying creatures in Hollow Earth, establishing them like 9-to-5 strivers before letting us admire their form. It normalises the allure of artistry, which isn’t nice in an age that has normalised human atrocities.

All of which brings me to why Godzilla x Kong is also strangely enjoyable. For starters, it exists. The direct hulk-smash tone aside, it’s like a parody of our perception of what monster movies should look like. (I know, I know, that’s how Marvel and DC started, too). But its disdain for humans is nearly an in-joke — it’s refreshing on an environmental level, because it suggests that the ‘monsters’ are simply reclaiming a planet that was once theirs. They’re no heroes or villains; those are human constructs. The buildings and people and bridges and cars aren’t meant to be there, and it’s not Kong or Godzu’s fault that they’re so big and have no other way of commuting cleanly.

The stakes are still hard to define, because the few good humans think they’re protecting the world while actually protecting the creatures — who’re on their own trip in terms of a moral divide. Kong and Godzu may have killed millions of people, and may have turned Rio into the venue for their own Royal Rumble contest, but they’re actually just living and surviving. Technically, they’re the “good guys” too, if you take into account who they’re fighting here. It’s only collateral damage if you look at these films from the perspective of a human. If you look at it from Kong and Godzu’s point of view, it’s a slightly choppy coming-of-age journey.

As for the lack of wonder and the trivialisation of allure, the same logic applies. The creatures are the new normal (and empire), and perhaps the franchise would do well to reach a stage where seeing a human is actually more exciting or shocking. The Hollow Earth is not a new planet; it’s how this planet allegedly was before evolution mutated into civilisation. The inflated screen-time offered to Kong and Godzu — at the cost of their mystery — implies that exoticism lies in the eyes of the modern beholder.

The stage is theirs because it always was; the humans, literally and figuratively, have no say. The revenge-coloniser theme can be reframed as Killers of the Flower Moon: The MonsterVerse Edition or Inglourious Basterds: Godzilla x Kong. The only problem is that, genre-wise, this is not an original concept; the Planet of the Apes films have done it repeatedly over the decades. Except it’s a little more timely today — what with fascism and genocides and tyrannical leaders becoming everyday events. After all, desensitising the audience to the sight of monsters is desensitising the world to the violence of man.