Godzilla vs. Kong: Thud and blunder

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, relentless carnage and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang

Back in the golden age of Universal Studios monster movies, when one character’s popularity began to wane, he’d be set against another.

 

Although completely dwarfed by the massive Kong, Jia (Kaylee Hottle) isn't the slightest
bit afraid of him; indeed, she and the mighty ape share a special bond.

Ergo, we got Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943, followed by the triple-threat of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man in 1944’s House of Frankenstein.

 

And when Universal got really desperate, their monsters became shameful comedic foils for Abbott and Costello.

 

Despite being silly, pratfall-laden spoofs, even they were far more entertaining than this noisy, landscape-leveling dust-up between Godzilla and Kong (this revived franchise apparently having dropped the “King” from the latter).

 

In fairness, director Adam Wingard’s monster mash — available via HBO Max, and at operational movie theaters — is somewhat better than 2019’s thoroughly deplorable Godzilla, King of the Monsters (although, yes, that’s damning with faint praise). Wingard and editor Josh Schaeffer move this entry along more efficiently — at least until the interminable third act — and the CGI animators get a welcome level of emotional depth from Kong.

 

But the major problem, as before, is the script: a sloppily assembled, seemingly random collection of set-pieces populated by — for the most part — stiff-as-a-board characters too vacuous to be regarded as even one-dimensional. (A few exceptions stand out, and I’ll get to them in a moment.)

 

This (ahem) Frankenstein’s monster of a story is credited to Eric Pearson, Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields and Max Borenstein, the latter three responsible for writing the aforementioned Godzilla, King of the Monsters. So I guess we can credit Pearson and Rossio with this new film’s slight improvement.

 

Matters begin well, with Kong safely — but unhappily — housed in a huge biodome located on Skull Island (presumably cleared of all the other huge and nasty beasts we met in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, by far the best of these films). He has bonded with Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a young, deaf/mute orphan whom the mighty ape both trusts and — to a degree — obeys, via their shared sign language. This relationship is the film’s strongest note, due to the nuanced sensitivity of Hottle’s performance; she immediately wins our hearts and minds.

 

Jia shares a similarly loving and caring bond with her adoptive mother, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), an anthropological linguist attached to Monarch, the world government’s crypto-zoological agency dedicated to the study of “Titans” such as Kong. Hottle and Hall work well together; it’s a shame they’re not granted larger roles. Like, in place of everybody else in the film.

Godzilla: Radioactive waste

Godzilla (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem, creature violence and civilian casualties
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.16.14

The good stuff, up front:

Fairness demands that I acknowledge visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel and production designer Owen Paterson, who have done a superb job with this film’s monster mayhem. As also was the case with last year’s Pacific Rim, the massive sense of scale is handled quite persuasively, and Northern California audiences will get a kick out of seeing familiar San Francisco landmarks flattened like pancakes.

When Godzilla trails a winged, radiation-chomping MUTO (Massive Unidentified
Terrestrial Organism) to San Francisco, you just know the Golden Gate Bridge
will be toast!

Additionally, our dino-sized star is granted a quite distinctive personality.

However...

If mankind as a whole behaved as inanely as the cretins in this narrative, the monsters would deserve to win.

Writers Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham have concocted a truly absurd premise, and their dialogue sparks unintentional laughter at every turn. This is purple, afternoon-soap melodrama at its absolute worst, and matters aren’t helped by director Gareth Edwards’ insistence that his actors deliver all their lines with the sort of clipped, wooden stoicism we associate with stuff that routinely got skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

OK, let’s assume — for the sake of argument — that Edwards & Co. deliberately tried to imitate the hilariously grave tone of the post-atomic sci-fi flicks back in the 1950s. That would suggest we treat this update of Godzilla as high camp: the sort of romp that becomes entertaining precisely because it IS so solemnly sincere.

Except that this clearly wasn’t Edwards’ intention, given how he has insisted, in pre-publicity interviews, that Hollywood hasn’t delivered enough “serious takes on giant-monster movies.” Hate to tell you, Gareth, but you’ve not improved that situation.

So, maybe he’s so clumsy that he didn’t realize he was trying for camp. That still doesn’t work, because the aforementioned mayhem includes multitudes of civilian fatalities, with some folks perishing quite horribly. Edwards goes for the same death-by-apocalyptic spectacle that made previous doomsday popcorn flicks such as 2012 and last summer’s Man of Steel so unsettling.

Some films of this nature have begun to display a level of gleeful, kid-like callousness that evokes images of little boys pulling the wings off flies. Just as hard-core torture porn flicks such as Saw have turned complex evisceration into a spectator sport, these mainstream action flicks have upped the ante so much that (for example) the stomping of innocent bystanders becomes a pinball-style laugh line.

Which is ironic, because — for the most part — we care more about these innocent bystanders, than the tight-lipped blank slates who pose as this story’s protagonists. Not one of these so-called stars plays anything approximating a real character; they’re all one-dimensional archetypes ... and quite stupid ones, at that.