Some genius over at Legendary cracked the code to the MonsterVerse after audiences were sharply divided on Gareth Edwards' Godzilla a decade ago. Their philosophy is a simple one: What if we made movies that were centered around the monsters instead of the humans? What a perfect, elegant solution to the biggest problem with Edwards' film (to be fair, the Michael Doughetry-helmed 2019 sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters was also too human-centric). Since this philosophy was employed, these movies (save for King of the Monsters) have gotten bigger, sillier and extremely fun. The latest MonsterVerse entry Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire extends the franchise's winning streak since leaning into the singular entertainment power that its titular character possess.
What's really awesome about nearly every creative choice that director Adam Wingard-who returns to the series after helming Godzilla vs. Kong-makes here is that's in service of making the biggest, most absurd movie possible. Dan Stevens gets introduced as an eccentric, Hawiian-shirt wearing Titan veterinarian who quickly becomes embedded with the returning team of humans from the previous film (Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Kaylee Hottle) There's the use of an expansive, often vibrant color palette that changes dramatically depending on the specifics of the environment depicted. All of the fight scenes are filled with wild shit like Kong using a smaller monkey as an improvised melee weapon, Godzilla suplexing Kong into one of the Giza Pyramids and an entire sequence set in a zero-gravity environment where an entire swarm of monsters are beating the snot out of each other in mid-air. To some people, this dedication to all things flashy and over-the-top will be unappealing, if not nauseating. For others, it'll usher in a parade of smiles, cheers and audible sounds of euphoric glee that reminds them of why they fell in love with these characters or possibly even the entire artform of movies in the first place (take a wild guess which camp I reside in). Wingard has found a way to direct blockbusters with the same degree of giddiness and playfulness that he brought to the microbudgeted genre movie that he started out his career making (You're Next, The Guest) and in an era where filmmaking on this scale has become so largely devoid of personality, it's a joy to witness somebody behind the camera that has such an infectious love for the craft.
Really the only thing stopping The New Empire from being the most fun movie to come out in like 6 months is a relatively slow second act that favors exposition dumps over spectacle. And in terms of things that can go wrong with a movie, that's a pretty damn mild flaw that will do nothing to dissuade from me wanting to see at least a half dozen more adventures of Godzilla and Kong slamming the shit out of each other and the hostile monsters that seek to destroy them. Let's keep these good kaiju times rolling Legendary and Warner Brothers. We need them now possibly more than ever before.
Grade: B+
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