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?

Kong: Skull Island

Gorilla My Fever-Dreams
or
Monkey-See, Monkey-Poo

It's hard to know whether Kong: Skull Island is a monster movie or a comedy. The team that put together the new film version of Godzilla (minus Gareth Edwards, who moved on to the Star Wars franchise) have whipped together a reboot of King Kong—I have no idea how many Kongs this is now, but it rivals the number of kongs my dog went through in his life.

That confusion might be due to the influence of writer Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawlers, The Bourne Legacy—the non-Damon one), who might have taken on this assignment to fund one of his own more personal projects...and didn't quite have the wherewithal to take it too seriously. Peter Jackson, who was obsessed with the original, did his own elephantine version of King Kong some years back (he suggested Guillermo del Toro direct the new one), but this version has little to nothing to do with that one. For one thing, the Kong in this one is monstrously huge, freakishly taller than Jackson's. And, as any re-boot will do, they start afresh, as if nothing before it had happened.

Everything, that is, except Apocalypse Now.

After a prelude which sets up a character's back-story and feels a bit like John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific, we cut to the story's main time-line. It is 1973 and President Nixon has announced the end of the Vietnam war. Troops are headed home. But Nature apparently abhors a military vacuum. Driving into Washington D.C. is Bill Randa (John Goodman) and geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) who are in town for a terse and not-too-welcome meeting with Senator Willis (Richard Jenkins) seeking a grant to explore a hither-to unknown piece of landscape, Skull Island. Randa badgers the Senator into getting the funds, but, before he leaves, one more thing...he'd like a military escort.

Cut to the Sky Devils Squadron, in the process of rotating stateside when a phone-call comes to Col. Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) with a new assignment—chopper Randa and his crew to Skull Island. Randa and Brooks, meanwhile, are recruiting: they hire James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston)—Conrad (nyuk, nyuk*)—a former Captain of the British Air Services as a tracker; photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson); and Landsat employees, geologist San Lin (Tian Jing), Victor Nieves (John Ortiz) and Steve (Marc Evan Jackson)—you know that when a character doesn't have a last name, they're not going to have a lot of screen-time.

The odd mix of scientists and Air-Cav take a ship to Skull Island and launch a reccy with Huey's over the seemingly deserted island. But, sometimes, all it takes is one...."I-is that a monkey?" says one of the pilots. And then, all Hell breaks loose.

Usually, in a "King Kong" movie, they save the air-vehicle swatting for the finale, but, here, it's the opening act as Kong dispatches the Huey's like so many annoying mosquitoes. Machines get knocked out of the sky with extreme prejudice, or, in a phrase that will come up later, "no conscience." The surviving parties are scattered across the terrain, enough to create two sides: the military and the scientific. The scientific respond with an alarmed "what the Hell was that?" The military respond with an alarmed "whatever the Hell that was, let's kill it." Col. Packard is pissed that too many of his guys have bought it from the monkey-menace and he confronts Randa about what they're doing there.

"Monsters exist." says Randa.

"No shit," says the unimpressed Packard.

Randa tells him that he has a history with a monster, but the world has considered him a crack-pot despite his being the only survivor of an encounter. This little sortie has had a purpose beyond geology—to provide proof for his group MONARCH, in the business of finding Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms, or MUTO's. Where have we heard that term before? Godzilla. "This planet doesn't belong to us." says Randa. "Ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind, and if we keep our heads buried in the sand they will take it back."

Sounds like Packard is on the same page, but a few chapters behind. Randa thinks the Earth is hollow with all manner of unmannerly critters hidden inside and that we need a coordinated plan to deal with it all. Packard is not so forward-thinking. He's got men dead who should have been with their families instead of dealing with these monkey-shines, and he's going to take the primate down with whatever weaponry he can salvage from the downed choppers. But, as the movie has a ways to go, the Monarchs and the Sky Devils split up for a rendezvous point downriver where the scheduled pick-up is going to occur, giving the Monarch team to get into a bunch of mis-adventures and set-pieces.

The best of these takes place in a smokey boneyard, where there is evidence of the carcasses of other Kong's and creatures littered across the landscape. The air is shrouded with a thick sickly-green mist...all the better for beasties to come lurching forward into sudden view in 3-D to make patrons jump out of their seats...as both are wont to do. 

Skull Island has a bunch of weird creatures, odd enough you might see a Del Toro influence...either that, or the design staff kinda gave up. Sure, there's a skyscraper-tall spider (that's rather interesting), but there's also a thing called a Skull Crawler ("I never said that name out loud before, it sounds stupid now that I think about it. You call them whatever you want.") that's basically a big lizard that wears its bones on the outside. Then there's a monster that just appears nameless that resembles a walking tree-trunk. Okay, they saved some design-money there.

The puny humans do their best to hold things off, and then Kong stomps in and whups on them—that's the pattern for all the Kong movies since Merian C. Cooper directed the first one in 1933. But, again, the Del Toro influence is evident because a lot of the battle moves are straight out of Pacific Rim.

The director is one Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who has been mostly directing TV, but has one feature in his resume, 2013's The Kings of Summer, which is as far away from this as one could get. Vogt-Roberts has a rather straight-forward style, more dependent on art direction than direction, encourages comedy in the performance of the actors (except for his leads) and he has one odd quirk: he seems to be a techno-fetishist. No one can turn on a piece of equipment or flip a switch on anything electronic without it getting its own cutaway shot, a move that tends to halt the momentum of the story, and, after awhile, gets annoying. One wonders what the motivation for this is—it certainly isn't to enhance the story-telling.

"Ack!"

Entertaining, it is, if kinda dumb, and the Apocalypse connection is, simultaneously, inspired and derivative, exchanging Marlon Brando for a gorilla (at least the gorilla isn't babbling pretentiously). But, one quibbles at one's own risk when you face the fact that it's a movie about a flippin' giant monkey. One can't get too high-brow about this as the bar is so low. Instead, one should just be glad there's a spark of life in the thing—something you can't say about John Guillermin's 1976 version...or, most of them, for that matter. Previously, Kong movies were merely a showcase for technical FX advancements in the art of illusion. Now, in the CGI-verse, everything is on the same level pixelated playing field. We want more from our King. It will be interesting to see what they do with these things—a post-credit sequence promises a Godzilla/Kong mash-up (with hints of Mothra, Ghidrah (the three-headed monster), and Rodan). 

Thank God(zilla) they're not taking these things too seriously. That means I don't, either. Pass the banana-flavored popcorn.

"This is the end...."

* "Conrad" refers back to author Joseph Conrad, who wrote "Heart of Darkness" on which Apocalypse Now is based. Another character is named "Marlow" after the story's protagonist.

The producers promise a sequel of King Kong v. Godzilla. 

Godzilla (2014)

Meet the New Lizard.  Same as the Old Lizard.
or
Feeling Pacific Rimmed

Oh, I had such high hopes. After ignoring it for so long (probably because my eyes were rolling back in my head at its mention), a glimpse of a preview of the new Godzilla movie looked terrific, was moody and atmospheric, and gave you just a glimpse of the new "Gojira" (the name of the creature in the Japanese original), giving it an air of a Ray Harryhausen beastie—fake, sure, but with a look you could respect. There was a "buzz" about it, that this one (the 30th) might actually be a good one...for a change. Time Magazine threw it in as the lead for its large article on upcoming "Cli-fi" movies.*  Certainly it had a cast that was respectable: Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston, Juliet Binoche, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Elizabeth Olsen, and I genuinely admired director Gareth Edwards' documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.

But, let's face the music, kids: it's a "Godzilla" movie. It's not even a "Gojira" movie. It's a "Godzilla" movie with a stern American militaristic seriousness. That's all well and good if you want to take that parade stance, but all the verisimilitude in the world can't make you resist giggling when the creatures begin crashing into each other like sumo wrestlers, as they did in the old films. At least Pacific Rim went right for the funny-bone by having its "Gigantor" robots delivering hay-makers to the threatening kaiju.

But it does try and make a point—just as the original Japanese film used a monster movie to talk about the dangers inherent in setting off nuclear weapons—about making this old ancient Earth cranky and unstable, in this case with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and with a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster in Japan that leads to the unleashing of even more cranky creatures (labeled M.U.T.O.'s "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms" and the only humor to be found in the film is the straight-faced way in which military commander David Strathairn—another terrific actor—delivers this information as if he were throwing out anagrams of a coalition of the willing), who have no regard for the ant-like bi-peds in its path.

"My name isn't above the title—it IS the title—and I don't
show up until the last third of the movie.
Do I have a great agent or what?"

Speaking of which, one of the nice things about this Godzilla is how it maintains a certain visual connection to the Japanese series; certainly, anyone who's seen those movies remembers the visual scheme where Godzilla is in the background stomping around, while in the foreground blue-screened Japanese citizens are fleeing towards the camera (even if you haven't seen one of the films, it's been parodied so often, you may be familiar with it).

Edwards' direction is very bystander-centric, you usually see the monsters from the perspective of the citizenry being threatened (and in a neat touch for 3-D, through windshields and office windows that puts just enough barrier between creature and "creatured" to lend perspective and communicate vulnerability). It gives the film a slight sense of nostalgia, even while it's trying to create its own crater in the series.  And one has to say that it has moments of beauty to it—it never doesn't look terrific—but scenes like an eerie night-time HALO jump (set to Ligeti's "Requiem") and a brief eye-to-eye moment between the big "G" and the movie's hero (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) before the creature is enveloped by the dust of San Francisco's destruction stay with you, and even haunt.

The cast (other than Taylor-Johnson and Olsen) are largely extended cameos (and one is advised to not get too attached to any of the characters, if that's possible), but one comes away from this evolution of the beast feeling like one's only seen a better-made version of the old hokey movies of the past, like a better wrapped tie for Father's Day. What makes this film special is what made the ideas behind the original special, told with a portentousness far exceeding its worth. Maybe in their efforts to make everything believable, they decided to make it less fun.

Why, the giant lizard doesn't even do his "happy dance" that he'd do after defeating Robot-Kong or whatever.  Certainly, I didn't while exiting.

* The subsequent review by Time's Richard Corliss was very disparaging.  Reading the earlier article, I got the distinct feeling the writer never saw Godzilla versus the Smog-Monster.