Review: Godzilla vs. Kong
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A promotional poster for Godzilla vs. Kong
On March 31, two notorious characters from different franchises battled it out on the big screen. “Godzilla vs Kong” was one of the most anticipated movies of 2021, and it is still being viewed globally.
As of May 15, it had already made $422.6 million internationally, and that’s more than the Godzilla movie and the Kong movie cumulatively. That makes it the highest grossing film from the monsterverse of all time. One of the reasons for this may be because of the actors and actresses in the movie. The film starred many well-known actors such as Millie Bobby Brown, Alexander Skarsgard, Kyle Chandler, and more.
If you don’t know what this movie is about, it’s basically a big fight between two “monsters” from the iconic monsterverse. The two monsters fighting are… you guessed it: Godzilla and King Kong. That’s basically the entirety of the movie’s plot, and there really isn’t much to be explained. The release of this makes it the fourth movie to be released of the series, coming after Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The release of this movie has shown that Godzilla and King Kong are both part of the same universe, and that their storylines are actually connected. In my opinion, the series has gotten a lot better since it was revamped in 2014.
The movie itself was OK, not amazing, but was definitely better than I expected. The acting in the movie was superb, and the actors made it look as if they were truly reacting to a giant ape and lizard. Not only was the acting really good, but most of the fight scenes were immaculate. The way the monsters moved was really well done, and made the fights look more realistic. Watching these two characters fight was a lot more entertaining than I expected it to be, due to the amount of destruction caused, and the fact that the Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) was amazing. There were some corny moments in the fights here and there (basically every time Kong used a sword) but in a fight between two oversized animals,I expected some of those corny moments.
While the acting was good and the graphics well done, I feel like the plot was predictable. Godzilla and Kong are two very loved movie franchise characters, with equally large fanbases, so it was easy to predict neither would truly win the fight. The only way for there to be no winner is to have them work together, and that was easily expected. The final battle where they worked together to defeat a “mecha-godzilla” that could potentially destroy the world was too quick, and seemed too easy as well. The final fight between Kong, Godzilla, and mecha-Godzilla took up seven minutes of screentime, making it the shortest fight scene in the movie. This could be because the movie might have been getting too long, but the last fight just ended up feeling rushed to me. Another small problem I had with the movie was that Kong was too human. Somehow he knew every word in sign language and was able to communicate with the young girl, something he wasn’t able to do in the last Kong movie. At one point in the movie, she used the sign language word for “Godzilla,” and Kong was able to understand her. This is a minor plothole, as Kong and the girl didn’t even know of Godzilla before the movie.
If you’re going to watch the movie solely because you like Millie Bobby Brown (like most people I know who watched), you’re wasting your time, as she rarely shows up in the movie. I had expected her to have a relationship with Godzilla similar to the one that the little girl had with Kong, but that wasn’t the case. Her character seemed more like a follower, and didn’t contribute much to the film. All in all, I rate the acting at a 9/10, the CGI and fight scenes at a 9/10, but the plot as a 3/10. As for the entirety of the film, I’ll give it a 7/10, and I only recommend watching this movie if you don’t care too much about the plot. I do believe, however, that without the pandemic the movie would’ve turned out better. Due to the pandemic there was probably less time for everybody to come together and develop a plot together. In my opinion, more time would’ve made this movie the movie of the year.
