Size Matters in ‘Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire’

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Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The key to the rapidly expanding Warner Bros. “Mosterverse” of films, now on its fifth installment, is the enduring pleasure of watching giant creatures laying waste to entire cities. Godzilla and Kong are entirely digital creations, but they have all the personality we need in a movie like this.

Bogging down the action with interpersonal conflicts and family drama is never a good idea, and the less time spent with humans the better. Director Adam Wingard was responsible for 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong,” which was essentially one long cinematic royal rumble, where the entire planet looked like a frat house after a toga party, so he should know better.

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

“Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire” makes the mistake of thinking we actually care about any of the ostensibly human characters here … none make much of an impact even though Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry were in the previous movie. Dan Stevens comes closest as a quirky vet who dresses like Ace Ventura.

When we last left the big ape, he was learning to adapt to his new habitat in hollow earth, a natural world located deep inside the earth, while Godzilla is back up on the surface battling other titans and occasionally causing some major collateral property damage. But as they say, there is a disturbance in the force. Turns out a mysterious distress signal from an ancient civilization still keeping the peace in a secret settlement in hollow earth is sending those monitors vibrating and giving visions to Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the displaced teen who telepathically communicates with Kong.

I won’t give anything away that’s not already in the trailer, but suffice it to say that Kong finds a Mini Kong and others of his own kind who are ruled by the ruthless Scar King. This big old bitter ape is using a titan of his own in a quest to find a way back to the surface. He’s also terrorizing the abused monkeys under his thumb and all those who stand in his way. Meanwhile everyone’s favorite atomic-energy-eating lizard is sucking up all the radiation and he’s mighty ticked off. There’s also some old returning favorites that Godzilla fans will recognize and that I won’t spoil here. And along the way Kong gets a super robot arm. Why? Because in a movie like this, why not? It doesn’t make a lick of sense but it does occasionally lead to some cool shots.

When Godzilla X Kong actually gets down to watching Godzilla and Kong going at it against each other and then teaming up as uneasy allies battling the Scar King and other assorted monsters it still kinda works in a “lizard brain” kind of way. It balances the enjoyment of stuff getting reduced to rubble with the affection we still have for these characters after all these years. And the movie has some crowd pleasing moments that elicited a few hoots and hollers in the theater I saw it in.

Come Together: ‘Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire’
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

However there’s not nearly enough of it until the predictable finale. Every time the action switches away to the human scientists, or the girl Jia from the tribe of Skull Island … who is Kong’s main confidant … it stops the movie dead in its tracks.

Sometimes size does matter in a movie like this, and blowing up a big dumb spectacle onto the big screen can make things more fun than they would be at home, for instance it was more fun than the soulless “Transformers” mechanical ape movie from last summer. Godzilla and Kong still have the goods, but the movie needs to know when to stay out of their way.

By SPIKE WALTERS Contributor HollywoodChicago.com spike@hollywoodchicago.com