Godzilla vs. Kong is the main event that the MonsterVerse franchise has been leading toward to. A sequel to Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Kong: Skull Island, the film depicts the long-anticipated showdown between the two iconic cinematic titans (for the record, this isn’t actually the first time this happened. There was a King Kong vs. Godzilla Japanese film released back in 1962).
After the events of the two Godzilla films, Godzilla has been seen as somewhat of a hero or a guardian by humanity. However, this changes when, all of a sudden, Godzilla begins rampaging for seemingly no reason at all. To address this, a collaborative expedition between Apex Cybernetics and Monarch sets out to take Kong to the mythical Hollow Earth, where the giant ape can supposedly lead them toward a power source that can be used as a weapon to stop Godzilla. Leading the expedition is geologist, cartographer, and Hollow Earth theorist Dr. Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), who’s accompanied by anthropological linguist and Kong expert Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her mute adoptive daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who’s friends with Kong.
Meanwhile, the heroine of the previous movie Maddison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown), her nerdy friend Josh Valentin (Julian Dennison), and former Apex Cybernetics technician turned conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) proceed to investigate Apex Cybernetics, which they suspect holds the answer to Godzilla’s abrupt and mysterious frenzies.
Of course, these two storylines bring about opportunities where Godzilla and Kong get to have their billed showdown. And, afterward, once they’re done with their obligatory faceoff, they move on to take on (this isn’t really a SPOILER, since a glimpse of him was seen in the trailer) a common enemy – Mechagodzilla.
The plot of Godzilla vs. Kong is utterly dumb and predictable. It has a lot of lazy conveniences, and the human characters are more plot devices than actual characters. In particular, Maddison Russell and her group are pretty much useless as characters, as they simply exist so that information can be fed to the audience through their eyes (though they somewhat contributed something during the third act, which was actually negligible, and looked like it was just something written so that they could be given something to do).
That being said, Godzilla vs. Kong is extremely entertaining. In fact, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed either Godzilla: King of the Monsters or Kong: Skull Island. For I didn’t really need its story to be smart and subversive. I just needed the narrative to organically bring about what I came for this movie for – Godzilla and Kong slugging it out – and in the process, be coherent, unpretentious, and self-aware enough to not be distracting and detrimental to that main purpose. If it did manage to do that, then I was willing to cut it some slack with whatever dumbness and clichés it had. Well, this movie did succeed in telling the story that it needed to have, and it did gratify much with its epic spectacles, so I don’t hold the weaknesses of its writing against it.
Indeed, the Godzilla vs. Kong battles are what make this movie. In every frame, you really feel that these two are proud, stubborn alpha male monsters totally bringing it to each other. On top of that, the intensity of their rivalry is further enunciated by the awesome collateral damage they cause around them. Their teamup against Mechagodzilla is also delightfully hard-hitting and eye-popping, though not as great their own fights against each other.
To sum it up, Godzilla vs. Kong is exactly the colossal fun that you would want from such premise. The script is full of holes, but the gargantuan, balls-to-the-wall action arising from this giant-sized matchup makes them so easy to overlook.
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