Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

We're Off to See The Lizard, the Marvelized Version of Kong

or

Four-Walling in the Time of Covid

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have been making their own version of superhero movies for the past few years, starting with Godzilla in 2014, followed by Kong:Skull Island, and Godzilla: King of Monsters. The last movie teased a battle between the two movie-title monsters, now in the "Monarch" Monsterverse, referred to as "Titans" who usually hang out in the Hollow Earth, until we do something stupid to bring 'em out in the open. 

Personally, I think what brought out these movies was Guillermo del Toro's 2013 film of Pacific Rim, where he channeled his love of big monsters duking it out in big modern—vulnerable—cities. The filmed from a cell-phone version of Cloverfield (2008) might have had something to that...inspired as it is by Bong Joon Ho's The Host (2006) and Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong (2005). All that chance to use modern computer graphics and psuedo-technology to make a movie about big monsters fighting appeals to the child (and WWF fan) in all of us. If they didn't make money, they'd disappear into the sea with the setting sun— like Godzilla, but without the buzz-headache from hitting electrical lines.

So, here comes Godzilla vs. Kong, the mash-up of the two tent-poles in the "Monarch" Monsterverse, and "The Top of the Ticket" if one were to see this as an evening of boxing. It is a goofy affair, mixing up traditions of the earlier Toho films (with a much larger scale), a little Jules Verne mixed in for exotica, and a little "zhuzh" from the Marvel Universe to add merchandisable personality, and to keep the fights from seeming like endless slugfests. It also leeches any identifiable humanity out of its story, and, for that matter, The Earth, relegating people to "slow natives" status, and "chutes and ladders" to connect the big fights (of which there are four).

The film has four primary locations: Skull Island—home of King Kong—which is now encircled by a force-field enclosing the "King of the Beasts" from wandering into people's neighborhoods and eating their houses; Pensacola, Florida, where the APEX corporation is engineering A.I. technology with advanced robotics; the Antarctic, where a Monarch research station has made a foray into the "Hollow Earth" deep in the Earth (but wouldn't Skull Island be a more logical entryway, since that's where these beasties have come from?); and Hong Kong, where APEX has a vast engineering facility. With me so far? Good, because you'll get lost soon enough.

At Skull Island, Kong is being studied by Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), the so-called "Kong Whisperer" who's a bit like Dian Fossey, except that her studies of The Big Guy are facilitated with the help of a native Iwi girl named Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a deaf-mute who can communicate with Kong. She is (evidently) the last Iwi tribesperson, her parents and everybody else being reduced to Skull-walker fodder or Kong toe-jam. Dr. Andrews has adopted the girl, and, as such, the whole movie would make damning evidence at a Child Welfare hearing.

She is approached by Dr. Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), a former Monarch scientist, and developer of the "Hollow Earth" theory (which conjectures that the Earth doesn't have a core so much as a hollow center, like a chocolate bunny, from whence all the "Titans" have emerged, and evidently has never heard of the term "lava". As we get to witness (sort of) Godzilla has gone "rogue" and attacked the APEX facility in Pensacola, and Lind asks Andrews to use Kong to get a powerful energy source that emanates from the Hollow Earth to use as a weapon against The Lizard, should he ever show up and attack again. "Sounds nuts, Nathan. Even for you," she counters and then agrees to take Kong and Jia, and shackle him to a transport for a trip to Antarctica. "I regret this already," she rehearses for her trial. But, not as much as she's gonna regret it.

What caused Godzilla to attack the APEX plant is unknown to the public, but it might have something to do with a power source that is being developed there under the jurisdiction of its CEO, the laughably hissable Walter Simmons (Demián Bechir), and it is he who has recruited Lind to find and contain the "Hollow Earth" "life force" because A) they can use it against Godzilla unless he wants to exert his "cancel culture" privileges on APEX, and B) he can use it to (dare I say it?) RULE THE WORLD. Elon Musk would have started a travel agency to "Hollow Earth" but, no, Simmons wants all the power he can, and he's not going to stop at voter suppression.

This is all suspected by wackadoodle conspiracy pod-caster (and former APEX employee) Bernie Hayes (Bryan Tyree Henry) who was stealing APEX secrets at the time of Godzilla's attack, and he has a big fan in Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown) who has seen Godzilla up-close (in King of the Monsters) and happens to have a Dad (Kyle Chandler) who's a research scientist—he invented the ORCA device in King of the Monsters—and a Mom who was killed by Godzilla in the same movie. But, she doesn't hold a grudge; she and school-pal Josh Valentine (Julian Dennison) steal his brother's van and seek out Bernie to help him in his investigations, looking for clues in the rubble of APEX. What they find is that APEX has another site in Hong Kong and faster than you can say "convenient plot contrivance" they find a convenient plot conveyance to get them to Hong Kong.

The doctors manage to get Kong to Antarctica, but not before the first of the battles between Kong and Godzilla, this time using Navy ships as both weapons and foot-falls, and to avoid any more meetings—Andrews keeps coming up with these little factoids ("Kong bows to no one," There can't be two Alpha Titans," "They have an ancient rivalry") like she was simultaneously Kong's promoter and ring-announcer, even though, she has as much knowledge (or psychological understanding) as the crazy podcaster does. They helicopter a sleeping Kong to Antarctica—Helicopters aren't all that good at high-altitude, cold mountain rescues, and their flights are under heavy restrictions in Antarctica, but, by this time, I've already thrown away any high expectations as dubious and abandoned my skepticism. It couldn't have come at a better time, as at that point, Kong, the docs and the kid with a bunch of APEX merc's all take a trip down the biggest rabbit-hole in the world and arrive at Hollow Earth...no molten core, no crushing pressure...it's a prehistoric paradise with a rocky ceiling for a sky.

And that's about where my "sense of wonder" died. The "Godzilla" have a rich history of fantasy, quirkiness and camp kitsch, evolving from a fantastical cautionary tale of messing with the ecological balance of Nature into forays of adolescent giddiness. This one is in the latter camp. The monster battles are CGI wonders—if one doesn't wonder about casualties—and even have their own humor imagining these behemoths planting haymakers like pugilists and slamming skulls into buildings like overgrown children doing battle in a room full of furniture. It's semi-amusing, even when one questions why the CGI department hedged on putting an atmospheric haze on distant objects, making the cityscapes look like actual models—of the type the Toho studios used to throw around their guys in rubber suits—and simultaneously paying homage to the past, while compromising their attempts at photorealism.

They're the "draw" of the movie, certainly the uninspired script isn't, with its undeserved aphorisms and its pointless reaction-jolts ("Oh, this doesn't look good!"), its transitions that happen just because they have to (how does Chandler's Dr. Russell get from Florida to Hong Kong so fast?) and techno-schtick without even an attempt at trying to explain what the hell is happening and why (besides "this is a science beyond our understanding"). What would be the point? One more haymaker or body-slam and it concusses right out of your mind.

And they give Kong a big glowing axe. Any reason besides Thor-identification? I couldn't see any. Godzilla can atomic breath a hole through the Earth's crust into Hollow World? News to me. And I'm still trying to wrap my mind around there being sunlight in "Hollow World" in the center of the Earth. But, the biggest question I have is...in the midst of a pandemic, THIS is the movie Warner Brothers decided to "four-wall" on multiple-plex screens? Whoever thought that up has cajones bigger than Kong's!

The actors are brave, saying their lines and keeping straight faces. But, they're completely unnecessary to this enterprise, as worthless as story-logic, and regarded just as less. They're mere grout—no, less than that, spackle to cover up holes in the fight-fest. They might as well be Ring girls holding up "Round" signs, filling up time between bells. The lack of character motivation except the cartoon variety indicates that in our entertainment, the beasts have won. With all the ruckus and rumble, who needs human beings?

Deadpool 2

Mucking Up the Timeline
or
"Too Far? I Went Too Far."

Deadpool 2 begins with a bang. "The Merc with a Mouth" (Ryan Reynolds) is alone in his apartment—in full uniform (does he do that a lot or just special occasions?)—kvetching about Wolverine again and how not only Logan was riding his coattails with an "R" Rating, but how the stupid "snickter" one-upped him by dying in that movie. And so he makes himself a couple of Hot Pockets in the micro-wave, turns on the gas on his oven and lies down on top of a few convenient drums of gasoline, lights a cigarette and blows himself to bits.

Okay. Everybody go home. 

Well, there is a movie after that and it's good in fits and starts with the occasional laugh-out-loud line ("Who came up with that? Probably some guy who can't draw feet"), but if you're discriminating and want to keep the rosy-blood-red glow of the original in your mind, you might want to skip this one. Yes, it has Josh Brolin as Cable, Zazie Beets as Domino, an appearance by Juggernaut and even the formation of an "X-Force". (Big Spoiler: They almost all die. Nyuck-nyuck).

In fact, a lot of people die. Important people in the narrative. 

And then, within the movie, they fix everything and everything turns out all right.* 

Less "nyuck" than "yuck." There are no stakes in Deadpool 2...at all (curiously, you did in the first one, even though it has the same air of larky nihilism). It's what happens when you throw in a time-travel ability into a comedy. Hit the chrono-switch and fix everything that might be risky...and it gives you a chance to repeat some jokes. As Deadpool says at one point "Now that's just lazy writing."

Actually, he says that a couple times. That really IS some lazy writing.

"Derivative? NO, it's satrirical!"

Anyway, after Deadpool blows himself up—without killing his roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams)—well, I'll let the 20th Century Fox Plot Synopsis tell the story:

After surviving a near fatal bovine attack, a disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson) struggles to fulfill his dream of becoming Mayberry's hottest bartender while also learning to cope with his lost sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life, as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas, the Yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines, as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and flavor - finding a new taste for adventure and earning the coveted coffee mug title of World's Best Lover.

No. No, that's not the story at all...

Anyway, in the movie I saw, DP blows himself up after something depressing happens—it's mocked in the Bondian opening credits, which ends with the tag "directed by one of the guys who killed the dog in John Wick—and X-Man Colossus puts DP's parts in a Glad-Bag and drags him to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to try and pull himself together. He even offers him a membership in the X-Man ("trainee" everybody has to add). Deadpool isn't buying it. "I'm not 'X-Men' material: first off, I'm not a virgin." Nor does he want to be (as he puts it later) "a dated metaphor for racism in the 60's." Good points, all.

But, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) drag him to a "Mutant Re-education Center" on the X-jet where one of the students, Russell Collins (Julian Dennison, the kid from Hunt for the Wilderpeople), who calls himself "Firefist" us having a literal melt-down, meaning he wants to melt the orphanage down and kill the administrator and a couple of the orderlies for good measure. The other X-people want to try and corral him, but Wade wants to talk to the kid and try and calm him down that way. How well does that go? The movie's only 30 minutes old, so you tell me.

No, it does not go well and Firefist and Deadpool are sent to the Icebox—a prison for mutants—wearing those Universal Power Dampeners that seem to work on everybody despite them having wildly different powers. There, Cable (Brolin) enters the scene because he's come back in time to kill the kid because he'll cause something devastating in the future and blah blah "killing Hitler as a child" blah. So, it's up to our titular hero to save the kid he barely knows, even if he does become a fiery Hitler, because...plot.

It's here that I kinda checked out except for a few meta-chuckles along the way (sorry, "meta" is DC) because as much as I like nihilism in movies, I don't like my sociopaths to be warm and fuzzy ones (maybe that's why I didn't find John Wick funny or worthy of attention). I prefer Deadpool to be an outlier and an unhinged cannon who's not much of a "joiner" so much as a blaster-aparterer. If the character works, it's because he succeeds despite himself...and because, basically, you can't kill him, you can only kill his box-office. So, the whole "team-up" thing doesn't work for me with him.

Nor does the whole idea that he can do anybody any good except if they need to be perforated. He's a berserker, nothing less and nothing more, and the fact that he's a super-expositionist and meta-commentator makes him even more so. I mean, no fourth wall is safe around him, be it by mayhem or malarkey. It will crumble like the second weekend receipts for a DC movie.

This is a problem. Not, of course, if you're just there to guffaw at the more obvious jokes or the clumps of celebrity cameo's (and, of course, Matt Damon is one of them because he's in everything) if one cares. Truth is Deadpool 2 is full of material that has a very brief shelf-life without shoring it up with anything that might resonate or push the franchise further. It's merely a placeholder where nothing much matters, doesn't expand the Deadpool character or his story-arc. On top of the that, the fights are sloppy—the whole thing's kind of sloppy.

The most repeated line—besides "trainee"—is "Family is an "F" word.

But, so is "Facetious". And "Fragile". And..."Failure".

* Actually, that happens in the "credits" scenes, so stick around for that. You can fix and fore-shadow anything in post-credit scenes.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Shit...Just...Got...Real!
or
"I've Got Me Own Thing: Ricky-Town. Population: Ricky"

New Zealand Child Services pulls up to a house at the edge of a "million hectares of wilderness" and drops off a lump of a kid, Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison)—an incorrigible ("A real bad egg...He's a bit of a handful—and that's just the stuff we know about")—who's been bounced from foster-home to foster-home and lands here in the care of Bella (Rima Te Wiatta), who couldn't be more delighted with the prospect. 

The kid wanders around the humble farm-house, instantly hates it and gets back in the car, while the CS woman, Paula (Rachel House), talks down just how difficult the kid is. She pulls the kid, Ricky Baker, out of the car (which he does reluctantly) and sniffs: "Alright, time for the inspection!" She stays in place, looks around casually and says "Up to our high standards! Looks fine" and heads out in the local squad car (with a joking "...and remember, no returns!", leaving Bella and Ricky to get acquainted.

Ricky may be a bad egg, but Bella is a good one and she is delighted with the prospect of the Maori pre-teen becoming part of the family. She shows him around the farm—such as it is—and they encounter Hec' (Sam Neill): "You can call him 'uncle' if you like" "No, he can't!" is Hec's gruff reply. Heck is a generally disagreeable sort, off set by Bella's force of nature maternal generosity that seems to overflow, admonishing Hec' when he says at dinner "So, have you ever worked on a farm or are you just ornamental?" Bella has an innate ability to figure out what a kid needs, supplying Ricky with a cozy room, a hot water bottle under the sheets and a large knife on the nightstand "to kill monsters in your dreams."

Although Ricky appreciates the hot water bottle, his nature ("I didn't choose the skuxx life, the skuxx life chose me") compels him to grab a torch and run away, traveling all night in the wilderness until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, there's Bella, congratulating him that he made it that far after traveling all night, and telling him breakfast is ready. He's made it 200 metres. Ricky may fancy himself a bad-ass, but he's clearly a bad-ass with no discernible (or broad) goals. But, breakfast sounds good. He follows Bella back to the farm-house.

Life is relatively good. He and Bella have a good relationship—after Bella kills a wild boar with only a knife, he realizes she has far more street cred than he does—and considering that, after a series of bad matches with foster-homes, his next stop would be "juvey," he decides to make the best of it, making friends with the farm-dog "Dag" and grunting acquaintances with Hec', who sees Ricky as a passing phase, not even being impressed that Ricky composes primitive haikus for his anger management. That fringe of a relationship will be tested by circumstance, forcing the two to come to grips with their situation and each other, as they go on the run in that "million hectares of wilderness," living by their wits and, ultimately, becoming outlaws, running from authorities who have no understanding of their situation. What starts out as an odd-fellow relationship comedy turns into a tall-tale of a chase movie, where two vagabonds discover the value of family, however loose that definition may be.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is odd, quirky, and laugh-out-loud funny, a Twain-ian coming-of-age story (based on the book "Wild Pork and Watercress" by beloved Kiwi author Barry Crump—known affectionately as "Crumpie") adapted by filmmaker Taika Waititi, whose last film was the hilarious vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows. Waititi has the innate ability to mine laughs out of the corners of the lives of outsiders, who must deal with the same everyday inconveniences that we all do, that, combined with their own idiosyncrasies, makes them simultaneously curious and relatable. He is helped immeasurably by kid actor Julian Dennison, who has the inscrutable quality of not appearing to be doing much acting while projecting at full volume, and with a razor-sharp sense of timing in his dialog. As so much of Waititi's humor is pacing, Dennison is an able co-conspirator.

And Sam Neill is a revelation. So much of what he's relied on in the past has been star-charm and a twinkle in the eye, but there's none of those old tricks here. This is some of his best work since his very early unsentimental film days. His "Uncle Hec" is crusty and not very likable, but, like the kid, grows on you the more screen-time he has, which is considerable, as Dennison and Neill soon become the sole focus of the film.

It's one of those rare instances where the less said about the film, the better so as to not spoil it, other than to say that I was actually sorry to see the movie end. And movies like that are getting few and far between.