“Godzilla and Kong: The New Empire”: A semi-crazy mix of “Planet of the Apes,” “Dune” and “Avatar”

There is clearly a crisis of ideas in the series regarding the adventures of Kong and Godzilla. Therefore, we end up with a crazy mix of everything with everything – all genres and all blockbusters: Planet of the Apes, Dune, Avatar and even the latest Ghostbusters are mixed here. The new “Godzilla vs. Kong” is a crudely designed take where different parts fit together without much transition. There’s plenty of scale and scope, but plot ideas are nil, if not in negative territory.

The film is the thirteenth film in the King Kong series, the thirty-eighth film about Godzilla (more than thirty films about the radioactive lizard have been released in Japan alone), and the fifth film in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse media series. If the previous creation – March 2021 – was a successful combination of crime, science fiction and monster movies, then here we have a complete monster crisis.

The new blockbuster takes place a few years after the 2021 film. The warring monsters then united against the robot Megagodzilla. They were taken to different corners of the planet so as not to bother each other anymore. Kong lives in the Hollow Land, opened in the last chapter (entrance through the portal near Skull Island).

And Godzilla sleeps peacefully in the Roman Colosseum, right in the center of Italy’s capital, which is pretty weird. But there are so many oddities in this movie that it doesn’t matter if there is more or less of one.

Everyone is worried about Kong’s loneliness, but one fine day Kong comes across a gathering of giant primates. There’s a cute, huge baby in the trailer (obviously a mold of an orangutan, not a gorilla like in Kong). However, the little one and his relatives did not show much friendship towards our main character. On the contrary, morality in this mass of great apes turned out to be in a zone where the main boss is a certain King Scar. Here, the arrangement of the stick (without the carrot) wrapped around Scar’s red body and representing the spine of a dinosaur dominates. In general, this entire part of the tape is very reminiscent of the Planet of the Apes branch.

At the same time, signals come from underground, awakening Godzilla, who destroys half of Rome, reaches the sea and disappears among the blue waves. In this tape, such a “temporary” mass destruction of human homes and probably huge losses among the population is not even mentioned. The usual thing.

Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), who adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Huttle) from the iwi tribe on Skull Island in the previous episode, is concerned about her stepdaughter’s antics: She draws triangles everywhere.

But it soon turns out that the triangles repeat the shape of the signals that woke up the radioactive lizard. And they come from somewhere underground around Skull Island. Godzilla, Kong and Dr. of Monarch, the secret organization that deals with monsters. An expedition led by Andrews rushes there. The doctor takes with him eccentric scientist Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) and his brother, monster veterinarian Trepper (Dan Stevens).

We won’t spoil the already weak story, but we do note that the expedition will encounter all kinds of monsters in the Hollow Land, as well as a tribe similar to the iwi. They have millions of religious rituals, making the picture immediately similar to both Dune and Avatar.

Without giving details, let’s just say that one of the monsters froze everyone, just like the monster in the last “Ghostbusters”. There was even an expression regarding the “freezer” in “Godzilla and Kong”: “Ice Age is his creation”, but the monster does not even have hands.

Among his acting achievements, we can only mention the monster veterinarian Stevens: his hero is reckless, witty and resembles people from Jurassic Park with his Hawaiian style. All of the other characters in the new movie look more like mask characters. Except for Kong, his thoughtful computer-generated facial expression is the most expressive facial expression in this movie. There was also an adorable giant baby orangutan.

The texts are also on the verge of foul play. Like these kinds of dialogues.

– How’s Godzilla?

– He sleeps like a baby. Big angry baby.

The film has grainy editing more typical of music videos than two-hour blockbusters. It’s not a movie, it’s a series of slides. A collection of sections placed on top of each other without any connection.

Visual nonsense accompanied by pathetic symphonic music. But sometimes 1970s rock songs sound impressive. The heroes’ spaceship flies to Kiss’s I Was Made for Lovin’ You (1979), and a pink-idyllic moment is accompanied by Badfinger’s Day After Day (1971). These nostalgic passages are reminiscent of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, but that’s the only thing that ties Kong to quality fantasy.

Moreover, the director is the same – Adam Wingard. And the writing team is almost the same. What happened? The fact is that the authors did not turn everything into a whole, even borrowed ideas. The same “Megalodon-2” (2023) is just a series of brilliant attractions, but here the authors still claim some kind of damn philosophy, so the final result is just monstrous nonsense.

So if you’re going to the movies, know that mega stupidity awaits you under the highly diluted sauce of messianic fantasy. A beautiful orangutan is not enough. I remember the sci-fi action movie “John Carter” (2012) with the cutest mutant jet dog. But unfortunately, he couldn’t pull the blockbuster from the financial cliff. You cannot neglect the script, otherwise the audience will neglect you.