Godzilla X Kong invites you to leave your brain at the door

The history of cinema has seen many iconic duos, from Abbott and Costello to Bogart and Bacall to Thelma and Louise, but in recent years Hollywood has had the bright idea of combining East and West by bringing Godzilla and King Kong together.

Combining two massive forces of nature is a tricky balancing act and has to keep fans of both franchises happy.

Godzilla X Kong gets a passing fail grade.

2021’s Godzilla Vs. Kong was seen at home by the vast majority of Irish viewers and at the time the common refrain among fans was “what a shame I’m not seeing this on a massive cinema screen.”

Watching the two movie icons go toe-to-toe from the comfort of your living room didn’t quite have the same desired impact as seeing it happen on a massive IMAX screen with bombastic sound design.

Godzilla X Kong repeats the same mistakes as Godzilla Vs. Kong; it takes way too long to get to the main event.

If you went to a boxing match, you’d expect the undercard to be entertaining at the very least; no such joy here.

Some films are designed to win Oscars and some are designed to be enjoyed with a big bag of popcorn in their lap; there are no prizes for guessing what camp this movie falls into.

When the film finally hits the road, it is worth the price of admission.

These movies are designed to appeal to the 10-year-old inside us all and provide an answer to the question that has eluded people for decades: what would happen if Godzilla and King Kong had a boxing match in front of the pyramids?

Over 25 years after Godzilla’s first American outing, the American studio system just cannot get Godzilla right.

Back home in his native Japan, last year’s Godzilla Minus One (which delighted fans by scooping a shock Oscar win for visual effects along with a brilliant, human-driven story) showed you can put a new spin on an old character.

The American cowboy version gives him short shrift in a movie that has him the title.

The balance of the film is incredibly lopsided; by our estimation, the film is 40% Kong stuff, 40% human stuff and 20% Godzilla stuff.

Despite the film being under 2 hours, it feels like an entire season of television crammed into a movie, which is typical of modern studio filmmaking.

The film has four credited screenwriters and apparently having four people on payroll was absolutely crucial in crafting a script that was presumably written over the course of a lunch break or put through so many rounds of revision the soul has been sucked out of it.

2021’s Godzilla Vs. Kong had the same issue; either make the human characters interesting or get them out of the way so we can see the monsters throw buildings at each other.

People pay the price of a ticket to see Godzilla fight King Kong, they are not there to hear or see about the internal politics of some company or get a 20-minute lore dump in the middle of the second act.

Toho Godzilla films also have long stretches where not much happens and we have a lot of scenes of scientists or politicians discussing what Godzilla is going to do next, but at least we have an interest in what these characters are doing.

The Hollywood versions have nothing to contribute to the plot.

Seeing great actors like Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Dan Stevens trying hard to inject personality into a meat-and-potatoes script is tough to stomach.

Stevens does an awful lot to bring some life and energy into proceedings, and considering the film is a reunion between Stevens and director Adam Wingard after their hit 2014 film The Guest, the reunion is one of the highlights of the film.

Stevens’ odd leading man energy calls to mind Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park where you wouldn’t cast this guy in a leading role on paper, but it somehow works really well.

If the film matched the energy of what Stevens brings, you would have something worthwhile.

Tonally, the film is all over the place, which implies the film went through 12 different script revisions before they settled on what was in the final film.

One minute, the film is trying to ape Guardians Of The Galaxy with the flashy pink and purple colours and classic rock needle drops and the next the film is a dialogue-free, almost contemplative look at Kong forming a strong bond with a young ape.

We have to invoke Godzilla Minus One because that is the high watermark of how Godzilla can be shown on screen; the main man doesn’t have a lot of screen time in that film either, but at least that film had the decency to make us care about the characters.

When you’re sitting there stone-faced waiting for the humans to shut up so we can get back to the big monkey fighting the giant lizard, something has gone wrong somewhere. 

If you are looking for pure escapism and just want to shut your brain off for two hours, this is exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you want something with a bit more substance and intelligence, stay far away.