गॉडज़िला और कौंग: एक नया साम्राज्य

Monster = hurrah Humans = garbage

Another Monster-Verse installment to the collection gave me another reason to visit my cinema. Luckily, I wasn't disappointed, I got everything what I expected which might be summoned by the two equations above.

About humans: If you want to watch the movie at home, don't waste time on humans subplot. It's completely pointless. The dialogues aren't funny or smart. They serve poor exposition which is painfully exhausting to watch. You see the monsters fighting and these "characters" are explaining in between: oh, he is protecting! - Come on, who wrote this? In my opinion if Legendary Studios wants to include humans, they should at least try making them just little interesting or just remove them completely. None of them is doing anything necessary, furthermore whatever they're doing doesn't make any sense. Why the hell are they in the Hollow Earth without protection? One guy is just in a Hawaiian shirt. The amount of dangerous monsters is not alarming, I guess... Paper Boy is filming everything but the British guy in a Hawaiian shirt says something like: It's better to keep it in a secret, this ancient civilization shouldn't be exposed to our world. The girl from Godzilla Vs. Kong (she is from that world and has weird X-Men power (?)) is among modern people, so the world already knows the underground world. What does he want to hide? There is more of this stupidity.

About the monsters: Kong is the lead. His journey is simple, he feels lonely, he wants to have a family of his kind. From the trailers you know, there is more giant apes, so I am happy to see them because I am Team Kong :) I'd want to appreciate the "dialogues" between Kong and this little ginger fella. They don't use words as we do but believe me, these two are more interesting than the humans. You will enjoy it.

Godzilla and the rest are just monsters. Sadly Godzilla isn't intimidating in this movie, his only goal is to gain the pink level of nuclear power and then use it to fight the bad monkey. However, the fight scenes are awesome - this is why we are watching this type of movies, so if you're a fan of giant monsters, I recommend Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire... and don't expect to see raise of "the new empire" in this movie. It's a kinda awkward title generated by ChatGPT.

Lots of Titans fighting. That's why we go to something like this, right?

G X K is about the same for entertainment wise as G vs K, though I'd give the newest entry a slight edge for a couple of reasons. For one, there's a bit less silliness. There's comic relief of course, but it's not out of place or goofy. The 80's throwbacks with the tunes, synths, and vibes were great. And lastly, the Titans were back to being the bad guys instead of humans. I always find it a bore when you watch a movie about monsters fighting, but have to bare through a story of human villains and their idiotic ideologies.

A side note, it's hilarious that these Titans seem to really enjoy having their royal rumbles in the biggest cities on the planet, or while destroying some of the world's most revered structures. Like really guys, you couldn't have thrown down in the middle of the Sahara? More destruction equals more entertainment I suppose. Also, Godzilla just casually murders hundreds if not thousands just walking around from point A to point B. I digress. Go pink Zilla!

It serves up a berserk dreamscape with plenty of payoff to please the MonsterVerse faithful. Shame about the human stuff, though. Director Adam Wingard has a lot of fun with textures, colors, and camera work, and he's adept at giving fans the over-the-top monster action that they demand via an imposing new villain. Unfortunately, there's no time to spend on making things make sense or even matter all that much, and what few emotional punches are thrown lack the necessary wind up to connect, save for some very well done moments between Kong and his Hollow Earth kin.

Overall didnt live up and the plot was mediocre at best.

The movie features very few scenes with Godzilla, only a few fragmented shots, including the final battle. Godzilla's total screen time is probably less than 7 minutes. The movie is filled with monkeys throughout, making it more like an independent Kong film because it barely depicts Godzilla, with Kong having far more screen time than Godzilla. I feel like Godzilla's role was forcefully added and feels disconnected from the rest of the movie. Also, the portrayal of SHIMO is superficial, failing to showcase its power, while Skar King is portrayed as a clown; it can't even defeat King Kong one-on-one, lacking a strong antagonist that leads to a rushed conclusion of the final battle. Finally, I have a big question: why do the director and writers like monkeys so much?

As a hard-core Kaiju fan of many years, I love that we are being treated to all of these Godzilla movies as of late. My opinion of the first two in this series (Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters) is that they were (somewhat) reality based and not obviously made for children. My criticism of G v K (the ending in particular) and this movie is that so much of it is far-fetched and fantasy based. Much more cartoonish.

The bottom line is, they're making the monsters out to have too much human intelligence when they should actually be more animalistic. This was like watching a superhero movie and in my opinion, making the monsters out to be superheroes is a huge mistake. That's what happened when Toho did this in the 60's/70's which resulted in Godzilla movies becoming silly, low-budget kids movies, which has since been ridiculed for decades and has tarnished Godzilla's image. I understand the writers are trying to be creative and give the fans something different from all of the other monster movies out there, but this can be done without all the cheese. Please stop making the monsters so human!

I enjoyed the movie but have to admit that I am somewhat disappointed.