Realistic expectations 2.0
Jackson’s review of Godzilla vs. Kong
(Includes spoilers)
Going into the theater, I was hoping for a definite winner, ideally one of the beasts would kill the other. However, in retrospect that’s not a realistic expectation. Between the last two Godzilla movies and the one last King Kong movie, Warner Bros. vacuumed $1,479,028,796 into their pockets. Obviously they wouldn’t kill off their two lead actors in the franchise, mind you, the two actors who didn’t collect a dime in wages. Aren’t there labor laws to prevent these kinds of inequities? Godzilla and Kong should both get a lawyer. Clearly they’re being taken advantage of.
Given the limitation of potential profit - can’t kill off either of the titans - I thought screenwriters Max and Eric pointed the movie in the next best direction. They delivered on their movie poster promise of “One Will Fall”, while framing the battle like a boxing match. One of my favorite lines of dialogue was, “Looks like Kong took round two.” The opening scene showed a survive-or-die bracket with the mugshots of fallen monsterverse contenders, upstaged by the profiles of the final two players - Godzilla and Kong. My inner boy was clapping and cheering, and since I was the only audience member at the matinee showing, there wasn’t a deterrent to externally clap or cheer so I did.
What the movie did well
In storytelling, there (arguably) exist four types of conflict: man vs. man, man vs. self, man vs. society, and man vs. nature. This story fell into the man vs. nature bucket. Godzilla, a hurricane force metaphor for nature at its most ferocious, terrorizes coastal cities and the human race must respond. The logical decision is building a bomb, but the movie correct decision is recruiting King Kong to fight humanity’s battle for us. Man (represented by our champion Kong) bout versus nature (Godzilla) in two epic fight scenes. As soon as the conflict is resolved, the movie ceases to be interesting. It’s unfair criticism to say the titans didn’t fight enough. Any additional fights would dilute the significance of the two already great fisticuffs. Kong (i.e., man) lost the first fight, raising the stakes for the second fight - can we overcome nature, we’ve already been beaten once. In the interim, we crush a snake-bat monster and find our magic ax; we’re more prepared and more powerful. But ultimately no, man can’t overcome nature. In the final fight, Godzilla shreds Kong, knocking him out almost to the point of death.
All that to say, the movie paced the conflict well.
What the movie did poorly
The best stories are economical. They only include scenes that need to be there or that push the story forward. This movie framed the story from three points of view, three groups of humans. The point of view with the two kids and paranoid podcaster didn’t need to be there. Granted it provided comic relief and emotional pull for some of the cooler scenes, but I’d say the plot pieces were redundant to the evil corporation's point of view. One of these points of views could be cut without detracting from the overall plot. For the first group of humans, the ones buzzing around Kong, I thought the sub-plot of venturing to middle earth to snatch a battery for the evil corporation (man vs. society, maybe) was illogical. It felt clunky and out of place.
The middle of the movie dragged.
Final thoughts
Godzilla vs. Kong has been the most successful pandemic blockbuster movie, deservedly so. The runtime clocks in under two hours, which I thought was a respectful length of time, especially considering the boring middle of the movie. Like all the other reviews, I’ll echo the amazingly choreographed fight scenes and impressive CGI, props there. Overall, it’s the kind of movie that’s better on a huge TV, but could also be watched on an airplane; it’s the kind of movie where you could take a long bathroom break in the middle and not miss anything, but miss everything if you leave before then end. Three stars.
