‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Review: Adam Wingard Fully Embraces a Royal Rumble with the Titans of the MonsterVerse

With the MonsterVerse seemingly coming to an “end” with Godzilla vs. Kong, Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures were saddled with the same creative challenge that Toho has dealt with for decades — where do we go from here? With no more buildup or anticipation for anything, the MonsterVerse has nowhere to go but to introduce new world-building elements, hoping to string together a plot coherent enough to see our favorite monsters duke it out again. The result is Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, a film that represents the cheesiest and most dismissible entries from each era of Godzilla (Shōwa, Heisei, and Millennium).

Taking place a few years after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong, the film sees Godzilla comfortably ruling the land above, fighting off any other giant monsters that appear, while Kong has made Hollow Earth his new home. When a mysterious signal begins to emit from an unknown region, Kong and a few returning human characters venture deeper into the most hidden parts of Hollow Earth, which leads them to an emerging threat that Kong won’t be able to fend off alone.

The struggle to keep the plot engaging can be felt immediately. A significant amount of time is spent on discovering new parts of Hollow Earth, with little to no end goal in sight or a sense of urgency to give the narrative a brisk pace. Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle return as Dr. Ilene Andrews and her adopted daughter Jia, whose deafness provided some of the most intimate and emotional moments with Kong in the previous film, as they communicate with sign language. It provided a unique spin on the “human female relationship with Kong,” and once again demonstrated the impressive achievement of having us believe a real-life actress could interact with a non-existent CGI creature. Though Hottle still gets to share some thoughtful moments with Kong here, her character has significantly less to do. The two of them spend most of the film separated on their own journeys, with Kong meeting a baby Kong and Jia having strange visions that lead her to discover hidden secrets about her extinct Iwi tribe. Hall is also saddled with less than before in this installment. Though the film flirts with familiar story beats like found family and parenthood, the script doesn’t have enough dramatic moments between Hall and Hottle for the emotion to land fully. In the meantime, Hall is burdened with explaining every single bit of exposition in the film, which doesn’t help when much of the exposition sounds like the fantasy equivalent of technobabble.

Equally as uninteresting is Brian Tyree Henry returning as Bernie, the conspiracy podcaster who still does not have much to do aside from being the film’s comic relief. Even newcomer Dan Stevens as Trapper, a Titan veterinarian who takes care of Kong alongside Ilene and Jia, doesn’t get to do much outside of playing with a wonky British accent and dropping ‘80s tunes because that’s his thing. Needless to say, the human characters in The New Empire are a disappointment, even by MonsterVerse standards. The script could at least connect the human characters’ roles with the plot itself. Alexander Skarsgård was a geologist who wrote about and officially discovered Hollow Earth in Godzilla vs. Kong. Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga were survivors of Godzilla (2014) and invented the device responsible for awakening all the Titans in King of the Monsters (2019). At least past human characters in the MonsterVerse had a role to play that is somewhat correlated with the monsters. Here, too much of The New Empire exists in a strange limbo state where our characters go from one area to another, with little to no urgency or sense of time limit. It would be like if humans trekked across Skull Island in the original King Kong, but there’s no Ann Darrow to save. On a writing level, it’s as if the film is making itself up as it goes along.

The monsters, however, are a completely different story. One of Adam Wingard’s best sensibilities from Godzilla vs. Kong was how much he infused personality into the monsters. When Kong challenges Godzilla to a fight, or when Godzilla defeats Kong and tells him to stand down, you can see just from their body language and glances what they are communicating. Tiny details in visual effects can do wonders for your CGI characters — they help make them feel alive. The New Empire puts its monsters front and center, so much so that the scenes with them are now entirely uninterrupted by the humans. Wingard took a huge step in this direction with his first film, but he completely takes the leap here, treating the giant monsters as characters we can follow on their own journeys and stories. Every sequence with Kong and the baby Kong character is fantastic, each moment carrying that fun father/son dynamic that references movies like Son of Kong. Naturally, over time, you will start to see the humanity and personality behind each monster, that you might begin to care about them. By the time the film approaches its third act, something simple like Kong asking Godzilla for help will put a smile on your face. Kong will look somewhat annoyed as we see how reluctant he is to approach his rival. Meanwhile, Godzilla sees Kong, and his eyes scream, “YOU AGAIN.” It gets to a point where you might start thinking there are speech bubbles appearing (I’m looking at you, Godzilla vs. Gigan).

It is incredible to see Wingard commit in this direction, because unlike all the previous entries in the MonsterVerse, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is unable to depend on pre-existing monsters and thus cannot play off of audience anticipation. King of the Monsters had King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan. Godzilla vs. Kong had MechaGodzilla. These are four of Godzilla’s most iconic adversaries that he has faced time and time again over the course of 70 years. Most of The New Empire feels like “we’re on our own here,” so it is refreshing to see Wingard take the best parts of his previous movie and dial them up. With the popular criticism of the film losing the sense of scale with its monsters, it’s good to see that it is at least in service of humanizing them more than ever before. But no need to worry, there is still plenty of cityscape to remind us all that we live in fear of the Titans.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a loud movie. Once the fighting starts, it never lets up, as things get weirder and weirder. We got robot arms, zero gravity, and magical portals. For dedicated fans of the Toho films, from the Shōwa Era to the Heisei Era to the Millennium Era, there is much to enjoy here, maybe even a dream come true. The film may be winging it on a writing level, but Wingard thankfully keeps the tone extremely light and the colors as vibrant as they can be. If you’re here to see monsters, Wingard makes sure you get a good look at them all, and there are plenty of delightful surprises along the way.

For a franchise with 38 movies total, there is inevitably something to be enjoyed for any kind of moviegoer out there. There are serious films like the original 1954 Godzilla, Shin Godzilla, and Godzilla Minus One. But there are also guilty pleasures like Godzilla vs. Megalon, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, and Godzilla Final Wars. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire proudly falls in the latter category. It belongs in the same bucket as black hole generators, time-traveling mechas, and dropkicks that defy the laws of physics. The only thing that’s left for the MonsterVerse to cover now is alien invaders, a plot point that — believe it or not — at least 9 Godzilla movies have used.

But it’s important to remember that the King of the Monsters has gone through quite a journey through pop culture history. He went from being a metaphor for nuclear holocaust to Planet Earth’s savior from pollution to stressed out single father, back to metaphor for post-war trauma, then back around again. With Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Adam Wingard is enthusiastically reminding us that for 70 years, Godzilla is and always has been a spectrum. He is as somber as he is silly, as grim as he is intergalactically stupid, and everyone’s favorite fire-breathing lizard chonk is here to stay.

Grade: C+

Warner Bros will release Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire only in theaters on March 29.