Godzilla vs. Kong

A review from the perspective of a sweaty intellectual who has never left the house, after the 10th Mank and Nomadland without any knowledge of Kaiju, convinced that it is another artistic black and white romantic drama full of emotions, erotica, long shots, lyricism, allegories, and character development, and is ultimately horrified by the result. Oh well. I was hoping that we would watch Godzilla as a housewife drinking wine and constantly taking pills, taking care of four little Godzilla-cubs, and soon a man would come into her life and change it. Yes, King Kong in a tailor-made Armani suit. He is respected lawyer currently dealing with a dark case in the King Skull Tribunal, travels across the country and sees emotionally exhausted Godzilla in a picturesque cafe. Love at first sight, deep romance, emotions to the bone, she doesn't mind at all that King Kong is black because she is not racist, but on the other hand, she is strongly pious and has a dark, drug-filled past. They both experience the most beautiful moments of their lives, but soon there is a crisis that culminates like in The War of the Roses, and, in a plot twist, Godzilla learns that King Kong is actually gay and a spineless scum. Unfortunately, the drama does not unfold with intense atmosphere and an emphatic portrayal the characters, sighed the intellectual sadly. Once every two years, a proper monster movie comes out and it's a problem, but the fact that 400 dramas and soap operas are released annually for a few euros, that's fine. Finally, a movie where I don't have to watch the clock, I don't look around in boredom, thinking that a spider is crawling on the wall, and I won't fall asleep until I finish the last bite of popcorn. The action is properly grand, epic, the fights have verve, the journey to the center of the Earth is more original than another movie about a man with Alzheimer's. The clash of the two titans is definitely more interesting than another dull story, of which there are plenty, and whoever doesn't like it can go watch Malcolm & Marie. 8/10. (04/01/2021)

Whereas Disney had to put Winnie the Pooh in the vault in order not to irritate the great Xi Jinping, Warner Brothers found a way to not only milk one of its main bits of IP, but also to please China mightily. Kong and Godzilla thus head to Hong Kong to measure their strengths against each other. On the one hand, that means a lot of visually rewarding neon, but, mainly, this time it involves more than just the monsters slightly dishevelling some iconic landmark, as was previously the case. Rather, they literally raze the whole problematic and rebellious Hong Kong to the ground. With, of course, the exception of the Bank of China Tower, which is the dominant feature of their night-time battle, but the monsters don’t dare even to touch it – although this iconic building absolutely asked for some sort of interaction, the filmmakers used their potential on the Central Government Complex and Hopewell Centre. The studio tries to flatter the domestic audience of post-Trump America by nodding to the supposed populist subversives of the Illuminati conspiracies and canonising alternative facts around the Hollow Earth theory in order to ingratiate both groups of their contradictory interpreters (according to some, there is a habitable cavity inside the Earth, while others, based on the example of Kong’s habitat, claim that we live in the cavity and the view of the sky is an illusion). But perhaps it’s actually a well-thought-out and coherent dramaturgical concept that at the moment when the monsters aren’t beating the shit out of each other, the rest of the film is completely out of hand. As with the previous instalments of the new international kaiju franchise, I see parallels with the old films, but that doesn’t make the new one any smarter or more satisfying for viewers. Godzilla movies always somehow reflected the phenomena and social issues of the time in order to be relevant to their viewers, but at the same time, it was all much more entertaining and guileless back then. Today, clearly in parallel with our own time, everything is frantically elaborate, overloaded with absolutely useless information and über-complicated lore. Why don’t they just simply make a monster flick instead of all of those idiotic scenes with human characters who watch the kaiju even when they’re not fighting. I'd rather watch Godzilla just swimming, sleeping or knitting a pair of socks than any of those moronic scenes with human characters. But perhaps we have to be worthy of those scenes with the titans and, when it comes down to it, the fact is that it’s really worth it. (04/03/2021)

I'm almost monstrously satisfied. After the previous film, let alone after the trailer for this one, I didn't expect the atmosphere of Edwards' Godzilla to return (although it's too bad), and I was mainly looking forward to the fun with special effects, which I also got to see. Perhaps the only bad thing is the full-speed-ahead rush from the very beginning, because I could easily wait for a while for the first duel between Godzilla and Kong on ships, or even give it up, and I would like to stay longer in hollow earth. I appreciate that the title monsters have become regular characters, and for example, when Kong triumphantly raises an ancient ax or sits on the throne, you get exactly the feeling you should get. A giant plus is the well-arranged action (the finale in Hong Kong, and that's why I'm glad I waited to see it in the movie theater) supported by Holkenborg's music. (06/10/2021)

The Avengers with a mutated monitor lizard and an oversized monkey. I understand that for a voyage to the Hollow Earth, you need to prepare an empty head, but the entertainment requirements shouldn’t be reduced to Kong scratching his backside during his morning routine and showering under a waterfall. It’s clear that they’re just waiting for the two of them to throw down, just as much as the act of burying the war hatchet due to a common enemy, and the rest is just interchangeable filler that Adam Wingard could hardly do anything with. (04/13/2021)

Let's face it, Godzilla films across more than half a century have never been the pinnacle of intellectualism, but whether they were the work of Ishiro Honda, Jun Fukuda, or Takao Okawara, they were entertaining fairy tales, just overwrought and teetering on the edge of an awkwardness below which they never fell. But here the stupidity of the mythology is literally bursting through the door, everything revolving around those teenagers and that black guy who played it absolutely horrible (oops, didn't I just write something politically unacceptable?) was a torture to watch, so all that's left are the fights, which are surprisingly scarce, and all the highlights are revealed in the trailers. But to be fair, the fights between the ape, the lizard and the Mechagodzilla are excellent, lush, clearly delivered and hats off to Wingard for the way he directed them. Just a shame about the script, which was probably written by fanboys with wet teenage dreams. (04/04/2021)