Review: 'Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire'

A wacky, wild, visually wonderful adventure that delivers on its title, 'The New Empire' also works as a grimly comic parable for our current disaster-a-day hellscape

Three years after Godzilla Vs. Kong saved movie theaters ($100 million domestic, $188 million in China and $470 million worldwide) by assuring Hollywood that it was safe to offer a 2021 summer movie season, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is more of the same. We’re far from the awe-inspiring “gods among ants” scope and scale of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla and Mike Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Adam Wingard again leans into the 80s’ genre sensibility of its predecessor, offering a status quo where once-unthinkable kaiju attacks and world-imperiling threats are just another manic Monday. There’s tonal risk in portraying the once-unthinkable as run-of-the-mill. However, as Godzilla shows up to dispatch a random kaiju with such 9-5 indifference that it could have been set to The Vogue’s “Five O’Clock World,” the skewed ordinariness plays as macabre comedy. 

Set a few years after the events of Godzilla Vs. Kong (Kaylee Hottle’s Jai is old enough to have opinions and angst), there’s a certain measured peace. King Kong lives in Hollow Earth, even if he hasn’t had much luck finding other creatures like himself. At the same time, Godzilla occasionally pops out of the sea before dispatching a kaiju threat and then taking a nap wherever the hell he wants to, thank you very much. Godzilla Vs. Kong played up the notion of Kong as an audience surrogate puppy. Godzilla is now reappraised this time out as the world’s largest house cat, complete with a “Fuck you, that’s why!” attitude and a casual indifference to the chaos he creates. It’s an inspired choice that allows the film to make the most of Zilla’s comparatively limited screen time. 

A more accurate title might have been King Kong: With a Special Appearance By Godzilla. To be fair, Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Skull Island (still my favorite MonsterVerse movie) earned $568 million in 2017 versus the $529 million cume for Godzilla in 2014. Moreover, Kong vs Godzilla revived the franchise after a $390 million-grossing King of the Monsters in 2019. Considering how many of Godzilla’s brief scenes are essentially walled off from the rest of the story, it’s clear that Legendary generously worked around his schedule while he flew to Japan to film Toho’s Godzilla Minus One. And now that the giant fucking radioactive dinosaur has an Academy Award, Legendary and WBD can expect Marlon Brando levels of on-set cooperation. Better to build this franchise around the still humble and grateful Kong. He’ll come out of his trailer when requested.

In terms of conflict, an apparent distress call from Hollow Earth sends a handful of courageous humans on a Jules Verne-ish adventure while Kong concurrently investigates. Jai reprises alongside Rebecca Hall’s Dr. Andrews (now essentially a big boss for Monarch) and Brian Tyree Henry’s still-paranoid podcaster Bernie Hayes. Franchise newbies include Alex Ferns as the cranky pilot, Rachel House as a high-level Monarch manager/exposition deliver-er, and Dan Stevens as a Dr. Dolittle for kaiju. Stevens, an Adam Wingard vet from The Guest (which, along with You’re Next, put Wingard on the map), is pure goodhearted sexual charisma, offering Eurovision-levels of charm and movie star presence. Having a veterinarian specializing in kaiju care (while, as the film bemusingly notes, dressing like Ace Ventura) is an inspired idea that further grounds this film’s “how we live now” status quo.   

No one goes to MonsterVerse movies for the people, and New Empire is a more kaiju-centric chapter than ever before. However, by offering a handful of human characters who are all more-or-less kind and decent people, with no actual human villainy, the film gets away with having Hall and friends primarily exist to deliver exposition and explain to us what is happening as Kong eventually encounters a world-imperiling threat in the form of (as revealed in the trailers) the tyrannical Skar King. It also allows the film to feature quite a few dialogue-free sequences where the creatures take center stage in scenes that are almost staged to resemble a nature documentary. However, the major human-skewing emotional payoff delivers accordingly. New Empire shows that the franchise could sustain a sequel with few if any, sequences focused on human characters. 

I’m skirting around the “action and spectacle” conversation because Warner Bros. Discovery generously left quite a bit out of the marketing. While the 115-minute feature takes its time getting to the title bout, the payoff is absolutely worth the wait. Prior to the royale rumble, the plunge into Hollow Earth is again a vertigo-inducing ride, and Wingard again has fun showing off a fantastical world akin to (if not quite in the same ballpark as) Middle Earth or Pandora. In terms of the settings and the kaiju carnage, New Empire again shows that an abundance of CGI is not in itself a problem. Godzilla x Kong is awfully close to an animated film. Yet it’s visually convincing (the animals have an actual weight and tangibility when they battle), occasionally inventive and primarily successful in creating a sustained illusion.  

Unless you’re #teamGodzilla, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the platonic ideal for these ongoing MonsterVerse movies. The film’s matter-of-fact treatment of this once-unthinkable chaos, including kaiju attack insurance, feels like a natural franchise progression. It’s also a macabre metaphor for our current world gone mad amid constant political turmoil and climate-caused devastation flying through the news cycle with little more than a shrug. Godzilla Vs. Kong unquestionably saved theaters amid the first year of COVID-19. Godzilla X Kong arrives as the multiplex is again in peril due to Hollywood’s idiotic push to streaming, which resulted in dual labor strikes. Maybe saving theatrical (and thus the industry) is – like preserving America’s democracy via electoral participation – less a one-time event and more a neverending battle. If Godzilla can realize this and begrudgingly show up, maybe we can too.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
rated PG-13/115 minutes/$135 million
opening in theaters worldwide the week of March 29

• Produced by Legendary and Warner Bros. Discovery

• Released by WB (globally), Legendary East (China) and Toho (Japan)

• Directed by Adam Wingard

• Written by Terry Russio, Jeremy Slater and Simon Barrett

• Story by Terry Russio, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett

• Produced by Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Alex Garcia and Eric McLeod

• Starring Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Rachel House and Fala Chen

• Cinematography by Ben Seresin

• Edited by Josh Schaeffer

• Music by Tom Holkenborg and Antonio Di Iorio