Battle of the super-heavyweights results in points decision after interference from meddling humans.
We’re back on Skull Island where Kong is residing in his natural habitat but kept and monitored in a Truman Show-style containment area to keep him from being detected from other “Apex Predators”. When Godzilla shows up in the Gulf of Mexico, a team are sent to Skull Island in an attempt to ‘borrow’ Kong as a deterrent to further Godzilla attacks. It doesn’t take long before a battle between the two behemoths takes place at sea with Kong hopping between aircraft carriers like a “Mega Frogger”.
Meanwhile, Millie Bobby-Brown’s Madison returns from ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ along with her friend Josh, played for
laughs by Hunt for the Wilderpeople’s Julian Dennison. The pair investigate a conspiracy theory about Godzilla’s latest attack linked to the shady Apex Industries flagged up by former employee and podcast host Bernie Hayes (Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry).
This instalment is much improved on the messy Godzilla: King of the Monsters. For a start, you can actually see the monsters when on the screen as director Adam Wingard (Blair Witch, Death Note) ditches the irritating moody blue sheen that was all over the preceding movie in this Monsterverse.
In a film that lasts a reasonable 1 hour 53 minutes, our first battle between the two big titans comes at a palatable 37 minutes. The scenes are meaty, violent and nasty, but at times do look like computer game footage, however considering it’s a fight between a radiation mutated lizard and a giant chimp, realism goes out the window from the start. The human characters and their development take a welcome back seat as this movie sets out to show us the two monsters having a scrap and accelerating the story at a breakneck pace.
The only problem here is that this is a concluding instalment to a 4-part monster story and as mentioned earlier, not all the parts have been well received or are fondly remembered, if remembered at all. The ‘Hollow Earth’ aspect takes centre stage half way through this movie and is a very important part of this story. However a lot this was explained in the film’s predecessor and was first muted in Kong: Skull Island back in 2017.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend anyone goes back and puts themselves through the visual agony of re-watching Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but instead Google search the ‘Hollow Earth theory’ in regards to this 4-movie story and get yourself up to speed with it. Otherwise when you hit that part of this movie, it will feel very confusing and convoluted, but it is integral to understanding everything behind the initial beef between the two monsters.
Verdict
Godzilla V Kong is a fitting and satisfactory conclusion to this monster story and that comes as nothing short of a relief, as I was very sceptical over whether this Monsterverse could be rescued after the horrible Godzilla: King of the Monsters. This sits comfortably joint second best film in this story with Kong: Skull Island and still below the vastly superior Godzilla.
