Godzilla Plus One: 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire'

The greatest film ever made that both includes the word “empire” in its title and was released in late March of 2024.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is surely the greatest film ever made that both includes the word “empire” in its title and was released in late March of 2024. Unlike its competition in that category, it understands that what the audience wants above all other things is to spend time with its most important characters. In this case, that’s Godzilla and King Kong.

The primary complaints of critics who who panned Godzilla x Kong seems to be that it’s absurd, and that its creators clearly consider the human characters a distant second priority to the titular giant monsters and and their equally gargantuan and grumpy allies and nemeses. It seems to me that this is akin to griping about My Dinner with Andre having an abundance of dinner and guys named Andre. Is last year’s Godzilla Minus One their only exposure to this storied franchise? Have they never seen Mothra vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla vs. Gigan, Godzilla vs. Megalon, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. Alien vs. Predator, Godzilla vs. Larry Flynt, or any of the other approximately 57,000 feature films about Godzilla versus some other kaiju? Absurdity and an emphasis on monster-induced destruction is a feature, not a bug.

Maybe critics don’t get this, but director Adam Wingard does. That much was apparent when Wingard helmed 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong. So many of these versus/team-up movies get lost in the high grass of trying to be something they’re not - as though anyone bought a ticket to Freddy vs. Jason to see a serious story about star-crossed teen lovers, or anyone walked into Batman v. Superman thinking, “Man, I really hope this movie includes a lengthy subplot about congressional hearings!” Godzilla vs. Kong gave the title IPs multiple opportunities to fight through its running time, and concluded with the two of them teaming up to take down Godzilla’s technological doppelgänger, Mechagodzilla. To this day, I don’t know what any in-universe governments made of those events, and I’m fine with that.

Because Godzilla vs. Kong was a hit, the powers that be have really let Wingard go to town this time around, and he does not disappoint. Godzilla x Kong includes Kong unleashing his inner Slayer fan and showering in an enemy’s blood; Godzilla repeatedly curling up inside the Colosseum in Rome to take a nap, like the world’s scariest puppy; a despotic ape, Skar King, that wields some poor creature’s skeletal spine as a whip; a subplot about Kong needing dental work; an Inception-style zero-g fight, only with kaiju; and a key story element lifted directly from one of most gloriously-weird happenings in the original 1970s Planet of the Apes sequels.

This is a quality motion picture!

Insofar as the story goes, there isn’t one. Insofar as the plot goes, who gives a shit? Something weird is going on in the Hollow Earth, which is the secret world buried beneath our own; a mercifully-small group of people go down to check it out (ditching 80% of the previous film’s cast is another lesson certain filmmakers could learn from Wingard); big monsters hitting one another ensues. It’s all CGI, of course, and while I think “Well, it’s not as much fun as watching guys in suits” is a valid grievance, I’ve made my peace with those days being long over. If we didn’t invent cinema to watch King Kong ride Godzilla into battle while wearing the Nintendo Power Glove, then, like, why the fuck do even exist as a species?

This is not to suggest that GxK (as the cool kids are surely calling it) is a perfect film. It’s just about two-hours long, which is swell, but it could have been thirty or maybe even forty minutes shorter very easily. I appreciate that they’ve cut way down on the human drama and limited the cast to its least-somber members, including Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry (they also wisely swapped out Alexander Skarsgård’s humorless handsome blonde scientist guy for an Australian version of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character from Twister; this new addition to the team is portrayed by a scenery-chewing Dan Stevens, who also starred in Wingard’s best movie, 2014’s The Guest). But again… no one came here to see a woman and her adopted daughter fight and make-up. Maybe continuing to have people in this movies is a studio mandate, but thinking about what Wingard could accomplish if he didn’t have to bother warms the cockles of my heart. Perhaps, some day, Wingard will be allowed to make that movie.