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?

The Midnight Sky

It's Lonely Out in Space...

or 

Our Future...Didn't Quite Turn Out That Way

Barbeau Observatory, located near the Arctic Circle, has been evacuated after a global nuclear catastrophe—everyone wanted to go home for the end. Except for Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney). Someone has to stay at the observatory watching the night skies and maybe contacting the space missions still out there. And he's dying anyway. As one of the departing techs observes, given the situation, he'll probably outlive them all.

There is one ship out there that hasn't been evacuated and is still occupied and functioning—the ship Æther, which went out to the orbit of Jupiter to explore K-23, a moon of the gas-planet that seems to be—as they say on "Trek"—"Class M". It can sustain human life. They're supposedly on their way back, but nobody knows that because they've been out of contact for a long time. Augustine has a personal stake in the mission as it was his theoretical work that inspired it, and he's completing his life's work trying to reach them to tell them that it's no longer a reconnaissance trip and to go back. There's nothing to come home to. 

Onboard ship, the crew—"Captain" David Oyelowo, Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone, and Demian Bichir—have successfully scouted the Jovian moon in question and it hits the "Goldilocks" sweet-spot of conditions: not too cold, not too hot, but "just right." Water is plentiful and vegetation abundant. The orange sky will take some getting used to, but the close proximity to Jupiter has its compensations and abundant landscape photo-ops.

The crew has been out of touch with Earth and that's caused some issues. Astronaut Sully (Jones) thinks there might be a glitch in their system somewhere, but the ship is complicated enough with artificially-generated gravity, supplies, greenhouses, and the like that trying to pin-point a fault would be harder than finding a hospitable planet in the Solar System. Now, on the leg home, they're spending a lot of time being nostalgic for Mother Earth and their families on it. A lot of time being spent in therapeutic holo-suites with family-memories. They don't know that anything is wrong on Earth or that there is nobody on Earth trying to contact them.

Except for Augustine, of course.

Now, the only one at the observatory, Augustine settles into a routine of taking pills, daily hemodialysis, the perfunctory meals (usually taken with scotch). Isolated and alone, he has a lot of time for there to be flash-backs, nightmares and mind-wanderings. So, he can be forgiven if, at breakfast, he finds a half-finished bowl of cereal sitting at the table. Maybe it's the aloneness, maybe it's the drinking, but obviously, the routine has slipped.

But, it's more than he's thinking. Wandering around the station, he finds a little girl (Caoilinn Springall)—curled up, sleeping, hiding. There had been some confusion during the evacuation...and then, this child. Another responsibility, which he is not ready to cope with. At first, he tells the deliberately mute child (whom he finds out is named "Iris") that she's on her own, that he can't handle the work AND take care of her. But, there's nowhere to send her. They are now stuck with each other, and she is now a constant presence ("Don't touch anything!" he frets while he's working "You know, there's no rule that says you have to TOUCH everything."). Eventually, she will be a comfort.

There are complications aboard the Æther: their trajectory from Jupiter is slightly off and they have to weigh whether to do course-correction burn or take a chance going through a route in space that hasn't been properly "mapped-out." Personally, I'd go for the course-correction because any deviancy from "true" will only increase the farther they go, but they vote to do nothing and risk it. How like "Earthlings". Oh, and Sully is pregnant with Captain Adwole's child. Everyone has a suggestion what to name it. Except for that off-kilter trajectory, everything is nominal.

Back on Earth, the atmosphere around Barbeau is becoming increasingly toxic and time is running out, so Augustine decides to travel to a weather station at Lake Hazen with a more powerful antenna in the off-chance that it'll be just enough to reach the Æther. He packs up his supplies, dialysis gear, and does the proper parent-thing of bundling up the girl for a snow-day, and they set off on a snowmobile to reach their destination. 

At the Æther, there is another problem: a hitherto unknown cluster of ice-fragments is hurtling around the solar system in the asteroid belt and the ship runs smack-dab into it, causing a lot of damage to a couple of the ship's systems—radar and communications, mostly. They're going to need the communications, so they decide to "take a stroll around the block" and make repairs. Sully, Adwole, and Maya (Boone) suit up and crawl around the outside of the craft with their spare parts to DIY the broken systems.  

At this point, you begin to realize time is running out on both sides of the solar system, despite there being very few people to do anything and a lot of space to do it in. In all that expanse—of space and snow-scape—the chances of connection, despite wonders of radio communication, are remote given the solitary beings 329 km apart. With all that geography, time becomes a precious commodity while also being a brutal deterrent. Nature, or the destruction of it, will make its course in its own time. It makes an interesting conundrum to ponder while everyone is trying to hurry things up...but can't.

The Midnight Sky is directed by Clooney and, given his access to so much material because of his demand, it's always interesting to ponder why he does the projects that he does. Perhaps his ever-increasing age (he's a "twinkly" 59 years) is making him consider that time is short and its one commodity that his earnings can't buy more of. But, this film—which looks great, and it's a pity that a film of this budget and scope isn't playing theaters (except in a limited Oscar-qualifying engagement), but is stuck in the limited dimensions of Netflix—has an interesting ability to stick in the head and make one consider the shortness of life amid the imponderable extent of cosmic time. 

And, as a director on this one, Clooney is focusing on spectacle rather than letting the performances carry it. The landscapes are artfully presented. The framings are formal, often symmetrical, only to break the rule to go full-tilt Alfonso Cuarón during the space-walk (and even then he has a nice feel for perspective—you're rarely disoriented). There are long stretches without dialog, but the movie doesn't drag and there's a nice sense that there isn't a lot of unnecessary "explaining" that needs to be done for the audience's benefit.

It also takes the time to have little "grace-notes," little touches of a shot or two which speak volumes about the characters without having to talk about it. The performances are uniformly good, but, for me, Demian Bichir and Kyle Chandler get the kudo's for most elegant acting here, with Tiffany Boone providing the most comic touches and the most tragic. A bonus is another of those lovely scores by Alexander Desplat.

It's a good watch, but it's not "whizz-bang." The Midnight Sky is one of those proverbial "good" science fiction films whose brain-shelf-life goes beyond the ephemeral "what happened there?" of its "Twilight Zone" machinations and makes one consider the possibilities mythic, parental, and biological all in one melancholy little package*—a 21st Century version of On the Beach** for the Space Age.

* Melancholy in the same way that George Carlin broke down the hopefulness behind Earth Day: "EARTH day! The EARTH will be FINE. WE'RE the ones who're fucked!"

** At one point in the film, Kyle Chandler's family man on the Æther is watching that Stanley Kramer picture in his room.

Che

Written at the time of the film's release. I saw Soderbergh's "Roadshow" version, before it was split into two parts.

"The Face That Launched a Thousand...Poster Sales"

As I did with W. here are some very brief political comments on the subject of the Ernesto "Che" Guevara bio-pic "Che":* I don't look at the world with red stars in my eyes, and think History has proven that Communism is a flawed political system where human beings are concerned. In the Cuban Chapter of that story, Che was The Revolution's question to George W. Bush's answer: An ideologue who thought nothing of spreading his vision to nations other than his own, whose patriarchal attitude towards foreign peoples blinded him to the hypocrisy of spear-heading "revolutions" that he had no part of. While Castro settled in to enjoy the spoils of his coup, Che felt the need to "spread freedom" throughout the world, a "freedom" that was inherently in his country's best interests (sound familiar?). This, and other ironies are not explored too deeply in Steve Soderbergh's massive 4 1/2 hour epic, which is less a biography of Che, as it is a necessary chapter in the evolution of the "War film."

Blame the American Revolution, I guess. When those up-starts chose to battle the British in extremely non-formal (and un-cinematic) patterns, film-makers have been struggling to bring some sort of cohesion to the chaos of men at war. Face it. Watching patterns of soldiers moving forward in massive lines is great cinema. Crowds of men (you've supposedly come to know as characters) rushing forward pell-mell in a panic is tougher to capture and make sense of (though Welles did well, and Gibson). Better to keep the numbers fewer, or better yet focus on one participant, be he John Rambo or Oliver Stone's Pvt. Taylor. Bush-fighting—that's another story.

Soderbergh starts his two films** with maps: of Cuba in Part 1 (subtitled "The Argentine"); Bolivia (And South America), in Part 2 (subtitled "Guerrilla"). The major cities, territories and geographical locations are pointed out one by one, each with their own color (which made me wonder "Is that the color filter he'll be using in that location?") But it's a great technique—so great I'm surprised it hasn't been done more. The familiarization of the territory means you never have to orient the viewer again about what's happening where. And so, Soderbergh and his screenwriters Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. van der Veen don't have to do major scenes of exposition talking about over-arching plans before battles (especially in an improvised war). Tossed off mentions of cities will suffice. The audience will remember.

This allows Soderbergh to streamline the momentum of both movies; We're allowed to focus on characters, survival tactics and the problems of motivating volunteers on a perpetual camping trip with a dodgy supply of weapons and the opportunity for disaster around every corner (but isn't that any soldier's view of war in the field?). Nor is there the need to stop every few minutes and have a Juan Esposito character come in and talk about "The Big Picture." We've been given the run-down of the territory (and despite these being revolutions, all wars boil down to real estate.

That this revolution was a jungle war of fighters coming down from the mountains as self-employed mercenaries to either win hearts and minds of the native populace (it is stated repeatedly that Che was not Cuban, but Argentinian—it's even in the title of the first film) or to re-supply or target a government stronghold. As with any war, a lot of it depends on luck and a lot of it depends on what the other side does not know but suspects. Both elements helped the rebels defeat the Batista government forces...who were Cuban, and felt a loyalty to their homeland, and an affinity to the rebels as they were countrymen. They also didn't have much fight in them, when push came to...nothing much.

Despite a "to-the-bone" performance by Benicio Del Toro (the film is almost completely in Spanish, although those who would speak English do so), Guevara remains an enigmatic figure. There are attempts to de-mythologize him--his frequent asthma attacks make him a hindrance to the fight, but as a physician he is able to treat it to a certain extent. He starts as being the Chief Medical Officer, and gradually works his way to being a field commander and strategist. By the end of the first film, he is clearly in charge of his small brigade and the film ends with an extended house-to-house battle in Santa Clara that features a surprisingly well-orchestrated train derailment. Soderbergh shoots in an effective hand-held style, as in a news-reel (mostly shot by the director himself) that gives the street-fighting a see-it-now authenticity, rather than a well-orchestrated set-piece (which it had to have been to film).

Taking the myth out of the fight and the romance out of the struggle is a lot of what makes the marrow of Che. We see the day-to-day problems of the guerrillas fighting disease, starvation, infection and the occasional opportunist. Soderbergh and his screenwriters put forth a Che Guevara who is principled to "The Revolutionary Code," with a piece-meal sense of morality. The portrait is a noble one, but the film-makers subtly undercut it, allowing cracks between the lines, details that are not called attention to. Although a supposedly brilliant strategist, Che (and Castro, nicely portrayed by Demian Bichir) are seen frequently smoking cigars in conversation. Unless the jungle's on fire wouldn't that be a tell-tale sign to patrols that there are humans nearby? Not to mention that those Cuban cigars are made through the exploitation of Cuban nationals (and mostly women at that, in sweat-shop conditions). Women are seen fighting with the guerrillas, but that macho attitude doesn't seem to be applied to them. At one point, Che's second flirts obliquely with him, which he deflects by mentioning his wife and child in Mexico City, although by the start of the next film, he is married to her (with three kids). 

Soderbergh is not-so-subtle in one juxtaposition. At the beginning of the second film, Castro reads Che's farewell letter in which he states his intention that should he die, his last image will be the same blue sky seen by his Cuban comrades. When his last moment comes Soderbergh switches (for the first time) to a point-of-view shot to show us the unromantic reality of his last vision. If there is anything marring Soderbergh's scrupulously lived-in presentation, it is in the "star-cameo's" that occasionally crop up to jar you out of the situation, as much as they do in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Franke Potente and Julia Ormond (in a blonde wig so as to be unrecognizable, but really, can one make a serious picture these days without Julia Ormond?) are seen in city surroundings where their movie-star looks blend a bit, but jungle scenes of Matt Damon and Lou Diamond Phillips tug right out of the jungle and back into Hollywood. 

But the arc of the two movies allows you to see the "Che" you want to see: the "Che" triumphing in adversity of Part 1, or "Che" scrabbling into an inevitable defeat in Part 2. There's a lot of history not gone into in-between, but for the polarized, and the polarizing this will do for now.

"Now, watch this drive."The real Che, after la revoluçion.

* Thus, avoiding Godwin's Law: The longer an Internet string, the more inevitable a comparison to Hitler will be made. I've seen too many comment threads on this film devolve into the "Evil Che" harangue (usually by people who haven't seen it). Thank you. That corner exists on the Internet somewhere and I would suggest going there, even though I'm not entirely unsympathetic. But if it shows up in this comments section it will be erased...permanently. Any attempts to add it again will be erased...permanently. Try to add it again, and you should check into a hospital because you're clearly trying to see a different result from the exact same action and that is a sign of insanity. I have no patience with ideologues who've long stopped thinking. I'm here to discuss the film, and I'll discuss it or The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will. Film is controversy--unless it's Marley & Me...and even then...

**After its "Road-Show" performance (which is the one I saw), Che will be released separately (if all goes according to plan) as Che, Part 1: The Argentine and Che, Part 2: Guerrilla. IFC, which is distributing the film, is also making it available as a Pay-per-View Event.

***One more thing, completely tangential:  During his ill-fated campaign in Bolivia (after his never-mentioned ill-fated campaign in the Congo) Guevara lived under a series of code-names, as he was trying to keep his presence in that country a secret. In Part Two, he's known as "Ramon" and then in his last days, as "Fernando." I walked in not soon after the Inauguration whistling "Black Superman-Muhammad Ali,"  but walked out with "Fernando" in my head.  I don't think the writers of the Abba song were making a connection.