Godzilla vs Kong: A Review

Today was the day! The big day! Godzilla vs Kong! I have been looking forward to this movie for over a year. I was really concerned that I was going to need to watch it on my own, but one of my boys stepped up and wanted to watch it with me; so with an empty house we got some food - I grabbed a beer (or two) - and we settled our butts on the couch in front of the big tv in the front room to watch an epic Battle of Monsters on HBOMax (thank you, HBOMax, for streaming these news releases).

There are no spoilers in this review

I had watched the previous three movies in the installment and enjoyed them very much. One I watched in the theatre (Skull Island), one I watched in a hotel room (Godzilla) and the other I watched at home. Honestly, I prefer to watch Big Battle movies in the theatre, but watching at home is so much easier.

A person goes into one of these movies with a pre-defined and clear goal in mind: the desire to watch two massive creatures engage in all-out fisticuffs to determine just who is the Baddest of the Bad. Unlike prior movies where the two met to duke it out, the producers of this movie promised an actual victor (non-spoiler alert: they did not lie). Honestly, I would be just as happy if these movies were three hours of Royal Rumble with nothing but various monsters clotheslining each other - that was the thrill I got from watching the Transformers movies, too. But, knowing that most people would not care for such pure and simple carnage, a plot was contrived to add filler into the movie between the showdowns.

The plot is quite simple: Godzilla, after saving humanity, suddenly turns on them (us) and begins seeming random attacks and assaults on various cities. The Apex Corporation - always looking out for the good of humanity, after all, as corporations are wont to do - has taken a vested interest in Doing Something About This.

Simultaneously, on Skull Island, a young girl has befriended Kong and learned to communicate with him. Apex is interested in Kong because they believe that he can lead them to a massive power source inside the earth's crust, so they convince Kong's human handlers to help. They need this power source to be able to build a weapon capable of defeating Godzilla.

Of course, it all goes south from there.

The first half of the movie really seemed to drag. It was a two hour movie that could have been turned into 90 minutes; it wasn't, because a 90 minute movie cannot be a blockbuster, so instead we were subjected to longer than necessary sequences of moving ships and dialogue that just wasn't necessary. Really, let's just get to the monsters fighting, shall we? The contrived plot wasn't necessary.

By the time the final showdown is reached all the pieces have fallen into place; it wasn't hard, because the pieces were not complex, and it was not difficult to identify beforehand who did what and where, why, and with whom. By this point, however, we finally got to what we wanted to see: Kong going to town swinging a mother-******* axe! Yeah baby!

Sure enough, the producers were good to their word and there was a definitive victor. There was also a definitive ending to the movie. A Hollywood ending, no less.

Some thoughts:

1. I inadvertently guessed the outcome of the final movie before it even started. I laughed and gleefully pointed it out to my son when it came to be.
2. We finally get to understand how Kong gets the moniker of King.
3. Kong gets an axe!
4. Humans will be humans.
5. It was never explained why Godzilla knew to attack certain cities. He was previously a hero monster in the other movies; now he's portrayed as a villain with no other explanation than "people and monsters both change." Meh.
6. It's not a King Kong movie unless he's on a skyscraper. Excellent.
7. It's not a Godzilla movie unless Hong Kong or Tokyo is devastated.
8. I am flabbergasted that Hong Kong could be evacuated at all, let alone within about 30 minutes.

My final grading on the movie is a C+ for some great action scenes, awesome CGI, and more fun in the monster battles than a barrel of monkies (hah!); unfortunately, the plot was thin, contrived, and obvious. I know, one does not go to a movie like this for something as mundane as plot, but if there is going to be a plot it should be a good one; otherwise, I'd be happy with the Monsters Wrestling League.

My son gave it a four out of ten, but did admit that it was better than Avengers: Age of Ultron. So there's that.