Jonah Naplan   March 29, 2024

While watching “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” the fifth and newest entry into the Monsterverse franchise and also the second major blockbuster in two weeks to begin with the letter “G,” have the word “Empire” in its title and deal with an antagonist who can freeze things, I couldn’t stop thinking about the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to the city-leveling destruction enacted by Godzilla and Kong in this movie. It is utterly inexplicable. Just how much, exactly, would it cost to rebuild and replace the dozens of buildings toppled over and destroyed amidst the creatures’ battles in various commercial cities, including, but not limited to, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, and Rome? And what would the families of the deceased do in the aftermath? File lawsuits? Sue? What consequences should these monsters face for their slaughter of the innocent? Will Godzilla and Kong ever come to terms with their actions? And if so, how? The movie may leave you with such denigrating questions, but it never cares to answer them. There may be no answers. It’s just a movie anyway. Asking too many questions is a sin.

This is the type of film that doesn’t work if you prod or interrogate it too much. If you were to examine it on a story level, the whole thing would bottom out completely. Anyone who criticizes it for being “too surface level” or “emotionally shallow” is correct. But those aren’t the things that matter in “The New Empire,” a film that exists solely to entertain and, if you surrender yourself over to the exercise, sweep you away to another world in the vein of “Avatar” and “The Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies. The film is a wondrous, exploratory fantasy in a distant realm all hopped up on five-hour energy, with inklings of other franchise entries like “Kong: Skull Island” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” hidden in the margins. Unlike its predecessor “Godzilla vs. Kong,” it takes periodic breaks away from our boring human characters and focuses in on the monsters themselves, completely delivering on all the creature carnage we want to see.

And yet, it’s never once “too much” to handle, or dizzily overwhelming, or obnoxious in the way that so many other blockbusters can be when given a large intellectual property and a big budget. You’ll only get as much out of it as you decide to put in. In turn, the movie very gratefully rewards those who’ve decided to kick back and run with the gimmick unabashedly. It runs just under two hours in length, but flies by in what feels like a whole half hour less, despite sometimes being overcrowded or clogged by prerequisites for future Monsterverse movies that will probably continue the lore and story of this one. But that’s inevitable by this point, I suppose. With that in mind, it’s admirable how “The New Empire” still remains as fun as it is, its best parts seemingly unbothered by those efforts to build upon what already has been and set up for what will be.

Director Adam Wingard ditches about half of the human characters from previous movies and centers instead on Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), rocking a new haircut with highlights, and her surrogate daughter Jia (Kaylie Hottle), the only survivor of an attack on the Iwi tribe. In coalition with Jia’s manic behavior patterns that have her scribbling frenzied drawings of Godzilla’s scales all over school desks and notebooks, Andrews is investigating a pattern of strange energy pulses picked up from Hollow Earth, another universe tucked away inside our own planet’s core. Brought on to help is monster expert and podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry, a standout of the last movie), who confirms that these signals have dual meanings as both a warning and cry for help from down under.

Once the cool kaiju veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens), fitted with a sly Australian accent, enters the picture (in his first scene, he removes a decaying tooth that’s been giving Kong trouble simply by lowering himself down into the ape’s mouth, tying a rope around the problem, and yanking it out with the attached helicopter), the group is set to embark on a treacherous journey into the depths of Hollow Earth, an adventure that reveals uncharted territories, each and every one different from the last. Most importantly, Kong uncovers a secret civilization of apes who live without pleasure, enslaved by their leader, the Scar King, and sort of adopts one of them, a little chimp with sad eyes in need of a father figure. As in the other Monsterverse movies and as in this one too, it’s much easier to connect with the monkeys on an emotional level than it is with Godzilla, partly because apes are pseudo-humanoid and our closest relative species, but also because the past installments, particularly “Godzilla vs. Kong” have positioned Godzilla as being more of an elusive antagonist while Kong has been depicted as the voice of reason, humanized by his emotions and hesitation to inflict harm upon those who are innocent.  

I’d estimate about 70% of “The New Empire” takes place in Hollow Earth and 80% of that time centers specifically on Kong. Godzilla is absent for long chunks of the movie, which is curious considering he’s first billed in the film’s title. The big lizard doesn’t really “show up” in full force until the third act, when Wingard rears his wild side and allows the two beasts to team up (along with a barrage of surprise monster cameos) against the Scar King and his ravenous steed, an ice-breathing Godzilla-antithesis who’s controlled via a serrated whip that has the same function and intellectual power of a voodoo doll.

But even without that third act, “The New Empire” has certainly the most monster-on-monster action out of any of the Monsterverse movies, and each battle is staged in a way that allows the audience to actually keep up with what’s going on. There’s also an enormous amount of guts. Not from human characters per se, but from creatures; ripped in half, dismembered or flambéed by some other, larger beast. Both the humans and monsters seem to be perfectly desensitized to it (Kong and his “son” first bond by chowing down on a decapitated sea creature). The indifference to carnage is unsettling, strange, and also kind of charming, in a way that only a movie this large and dumb could pull off successfully.

Curiously, “The New Empire” is really the first “team-up” movie out of this franchise, given that Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” established the big lizard, “Kong: Skull Island” established the big monkey, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” pitted one monster against Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan, and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” well, look at the title. Neither Godzilla nor Kong speak English (although Kong can communicate with Jia telepathically as translated into English), yet somehow they both instinctively know what the other is thinking when they inevitably rendezvous in the last thirty minutes and can, I guess, communicate just well enough in order to band together to take down a shared threat. It’s up to the viewer’s interpretation to decide what their conversation would have been, despite the truth that, yes, they are just two big monsters who like smashing things and probably weren’t surmised by screenwriters Terry Rossio and Jeremy Slater to be anything more than that. But whether you’re invested in the movie and how much you’re willing to suspend your disbelief may or may not moot such inquiries.

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is exactly what it should be and nothing less. It gives you everything you might want from a film of this caliber along with things you never expected. It leaves plenty of prospective room open for the viewer to ruminate on the specifics if they so choose, but its primary purpose is to entertain, shocking the senses with images of gentle majesty and sound that will rock you to your core. This movie is maximum monster cinema. 

Now playing in theaters.