2021's Godzilla vs. Kong was a damn good, muscular spectacle with pure intentions. This sequel is more clunky, but returns director Adam Wingard and screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater, who have teamed up since 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It's strange that the last remaining characters have been stripped away. The number of leading Homo sapiens actors was reduced from 10 to 4. Scientist Eileen Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her adopted daughter Gia (Kayley Hottle), conspiracy-mongering podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), and reckless biologist Trapper. (Dan Stevens). Even in such a small company, the two contribute little more than fleeting comic relief. Henry has been posting hilariously apocalyptic information online (although there are enough weird creatures on Earth, so why does this guy harp on about aliens? (I don't understand) Meanwhile, Stevens is wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt and acting out a poetic adventurer's encounter. Ace Ventura type, it would have been funnier if someone hadn't called him Ace Ventura to his face.
Their attention, and ours, is on the monsters, especially the challenge of figuring out what makes Kong and Godzilla roam around and take down other titans. Part of the film's appeal is that humans are often perplexed. They tend to know where the creature is going, but know little about why or what they can do to help. It's a frustration that anyone who has ever taken their pet to the vet and received a stress diagnosis can relate to. Kong may be lonely, have a toothache, or be reacting to electrical anomalies in the air. Godzilla sometimes goes to Rome just to use the Colosseum as a dog bed. In Wingard's hands, neither beast bears the burden of being a metaphor for human sin. they are just animals. And it's a lot of fun to watch them act like animals and run wild without shame, like when Kong kidnaps baby creatures and throws them around like a ninja star.
The film alternates between mischievous humor and visual poetry. Freeze frame half of an image for a progressive rock album cover. The camera spins in a loop, pastel crystals sticking out everywhere, and the mountain range bathed in pinks and purples. All sorts of things fly across the screen, including a flock of prehistoric birds with black and yellow zebra-striped wings that look like they're cosplaying Eddie Van Halen. There's a hilarious sequence where the gang plummets to the center of the Earth, and the editing becomes so choppy you can imagine gravity struggling to pull the reels of film off the sprockets. Even better, in one wonderful wordless interlude, a monkey tells a joke to a cave full of other monkeys. We don't know what his jeers mean, but we understand everything that's going on.
The script stumbles in trying to draw a thematic connection between Kong and Gia as orphaned primates who fear they won't find a home. The similarities are too strong for this movie, and the previous movie hinged on the simple question of whether Kong and Godzilla were willing to admit they were co-Alphas. — Now everyone has to go save the world. Disconcertingly, about halfway through the film, the characters discover a prophecy that reveals everything that will happen in the final act.Why break off the suspense (and that Surprise cameo appearance)?
Wingard is no sentimentalist, and Godzilla x Kong stumbles every time it tries to imbue the film with false emotion to please a general audience. He's a showman and a popcorn guy with great aesthetics. Let James Cameron give his “Avatar” creature biological plausibility. Wingard just wants to dye one monster hot pink, another gold, and another the opalescent glow of a 12-year-old's first nail polish bottle.
The film's biggest hurdle is that Wingard ran out of his best ideas in his last film, particularly in a jaw-dropping scene where Godzilla and Kong face off in a neon-lit Hong Kong. Instead of repetition, many of the film's large-scale battles take place in Egyptian-like natural environments where all colors are earth tones. A more serious movie could do more than just destroy the pyramids of Giza or a few city blocks in Rio de Janeiro. Someone will have to get sour and say: “But what will happen to human culture?” What about human civilians? This kind of farce could be useful in a moralistic superhero movie or (what!) an Oscar-nominated movie. But when it comes to hijinks; this 36 story lizards, please raise your hands and cheer.
PG-13. At area theaters. Violence and action between creatures. 114 minutes.