Godzilla vs Kong
Image Credit: 2021 - Warner Bros. Pictures
Simon Dillon,
3rd Jun 2021
Tags:
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Action
Sci-Fi
Thriller
Here’s yet another film I refused to watch on streaming that I’ve just caught up with in the cinema. Let’s face it: If you’re going to watch a Godzilla film, it needs a big, preferably huge screen, with deafening sound. For Godzilla vs Kong, I opted for IMAX. Is it any good? Well, it’s a lot better than the previous instalment Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but it still falls short of the best of the recent “Monster-verse” pictures, the brilliantly bonkers Kong: Skull Island.
Kong looks a little longer in the tooth in this film, but at least he has a nice Truman Show-style enclosure and a young girl who can communicate with him in sign language. Isn’t that a health and safety nightmare? Shouldn’t she be in school? If you can’t swallow such baffling improbability, this probably isn’t the film for you, as we’re not even at the opening credits yet. Suspension of disbelief isn’t enough. You need to expel it entirely, consigning it to everlasting exile at the centre of the Earth.
There are two big fights between Godzilla and Kong.
Speaking of which, the plot concerns not just complicated machinations of exactly how the title smackdown between giant ape and giant lizard comes about, but also a Journey to the Centre of the Earth-style narrative, along with an AI conspiracy. These disparate threads mesh together in an illogical and clumsy way, but when experiencing visual effects as impressive as these, on a huge screen, it hardly matters. There are two big fights between Godzilla and Kong, and director Adam Wingard ensures both deliver to very satisfying effect on the action front. Yes, towards the end it’s all a bit numbing, but you certainly won’t feel short-changed.
Other action scenes and spectacular visuals occur between titan dust-ups, with more monsters, more bizarre undiscovered worlds, and a plethora of overqualified cast members – including Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Lance Reddick, Eliza Gonzalez, Julian Dennison, and Kyle Chandler – wasted on running around avoiding falling debris. The level of destruction in this film is biblical. Again, my suggestion is don’t even try to consider the collateral damage. Just sit back and surrender to the wow factor.
It is a giddy, entertaining, satisfying spectacle deserving of the supersized cinematic treatment.
In short, Godzilla vs Kong isn’t a film to tax the intellect, nor is it what I’d call a genuinely great monster movie. But it is a giddy, entertaining, satisfying spectacle deserving of the supersized cinematic treatment. I for one was perfectly happy to turn off my brain and be clobbered into submission.
