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Let's be honest. Historically, Godzilla movies are pretty awful cheesefests that are mostly beloved by people that grew up on them. I get it. Me? I prefer my Godzilla to be ominous which is why I've always leaned on the original, the 1985 "remake", and, recently, Shin Godzilla. They took the material seriously and still provided monstrous antics.
That being said, the Monsterverse that started with the American 2014 version of Godzilla (then followed through with Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of Monsters) was a series that provided a nice balance between the serious and the over the top monster madness of old. I dug them all, though at diminishing levels, respectively. Nevertheless, any that enjoyed them (or didn't) knew that it was all coming to a head as the two iconic titans would clash in this year's Godzilla vs Kong.
The movie has a group of humans tapping Kong to lead them to a source of energy in the Hollow Earth that will assist in the fight against a rampaging Godzilla.
Was it worth the wait? Did they strike gold?
This series was never perfect. The response toward Godzilla (2014) was divided by those that bemoaned the focus on the humans and the small amount of time spent on the monster. Personally, it still stands as my favorite of the bunch. The divisiveness continued with Kong: Skull Island (which I greatly enjoyed) and Godzilla: King of Monsters (which I found fun, albeit with some issues). It seemed that for many the humans were always going to be a problematic angle in these movies.
Fair enough. For the most part, Godzilla movies have been loaded with horrid character work even before the Monsterverse started. "Let them fight!" the audience demanded and this movie promised to do just that. Well...
For all the crying people did about uninteresting characters in the other Monsterverse movies, this one really takes the cake by making them not only thin and uninteresting but by also making them terribly annoying and then having them hog up a massive amount of screen time. Worse, they're feel disposable.
The fighting they promised? You'll get a few battles (two between Godzilla and Kong) and I'm sorry to say that they struck me as vastly unimpressive, even ugly to look at. The effects, though top notch, are inundated in other effects which just become this brew of numbing visuals because, you don't really care about the world these creatures inhabit. The camera work tries to liven things up but it all proves an exercise in futility.
There are so many moments of deus ex machina in this movie and they all point toward getting the monsters to battle. You'd think that would expedite the affair but instead it bogs it down with heaps of incredulous nonsense SO far-fetched that it makes you question things in a movie about a damn lizard and an ape fighting.
The crap they expect you to believe without proper development is uncanny. The questions that arise from the things you see or are "revealed" are so mind-bogglingly stupid. You think it was cool that Kong had an axe in the trailer? Sure, me too but I didn't expect that they'd have me go from believing monster apes could build rudimentary weapons to insinuating that their race built large structures and archaic technology that tapped into the earth. The whole damn movie just reads like Alex Jones and David Icke co-wrote a novel as teenagers.
The series flirted with a lot of these elements before but it didn't torpedo you with a constant barrage of mounting stupidity to the point where you just lose hope in anything being remotely credible, fun, or engaging. The series had paid homage to the sillier aspects of old Godzilla movies a number of times without ever becoming dimwitted farce. Well, any of that restraint is gone here. They just went head first into the most ridiculous aspects and the results are stupefying.
In short, this movie is stupid, meaningless, uninteresting, and boring, even. I found myself in a daze while watching the bulk of it. There were actual moments where I rolled my eyes and yelled at my TV as they laid another slab of idiocy before me.
Though I liked the other Monsterverse movies I found each a step or two below the previous one. This movie? It certainly doesn't rise above what came before it. No, this is no step down in quality, this is a plunge off the cliff of quality. I give this movie 3/10
