Blockbusters are back, but you have to wonder why
Godzilla vs. Kong (M, 113 mins) Directed by Adam Wingard Reviewed by James Croot ★1⁄2
Cinematic showdowns have a rather chequered history. For every Monsters vs. Aliens and Kramer vs. Kramer, there’s been a Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator or Ecks vs. Sever that left high expectations shattered.
Similarly, the MonsterVerse trilogy leading up to this battle royale has delivered mixed results. While 2014’s Godzilla was a solid reintroduction to Toho’s famous creation and Kong: Skull Island delivered a surprising amount of 1970s-era fun, 2019’s King of the Monsters focused too much on special effects instead of story.
So, it was with a fair amount of trepidation that I headed to the multiplex for one of the biggest blockbusters since Robert Downey Jr talked to the animals in Dolittle around 14 months ago.
Near two hours later, I emerged fearing for the future of tentpole Hollywood moviemaking after witnessing a lamentable unrelenting assault on the audience, consisting of endless CGI fight scenes, one-dimensional human characters, strange narrative leaps and an overcaffeinated soundtrack.
Talents like Alexander Skarsgard, Rebecca Hall, Millie
Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison (who appeared to be apeing Taika Waititi’s Green Lantern character, albeit a teenage version) are hopelessly wasted, their rare moments to establish character and drive the paucity of plot feeling like cut scenes from an action video game.
It took five writers to come up with the conceit which brings these two titans (this is Kong’s 12th outing, compared to Godzilla’s 36th) of global monster moviemaking together. And it’s not their first dance either.
In 1962, the duo shared the screen in a Japanese ‘‘comedy’’ which saw the latter reawakened from an iceberg prison by a United States sub and the former brought to Japan by a pharmaceutical company boss who wanted a new gimmick.
It was a satire of Japanese television of the time, something that was lost in translation when the Americans retooled it for their market a year later, and it culminated in a slugfest on Mt Fuji.
Fast-forward 50 years and what do we have? A soulless, joyless slog involving a ‘‘Hollow Earth’’, an untapped, underground power source and a typical global cybernetics company looking to exploit it.
Put another way, it cobbles together pieces of The Core, Alien vs. Predator, Pacific Rim ,a selection of the more recent Marvel tales and Ice Age 3 and targets
Pensacola, Florida and Hong Kong as battlegrounds.
As usual in these situations, viewers are clearly expected to side with one of the combatants over the other, with Gojira (to give the dinosaur-esque ‘‘gorilla-whale’’ his original Japanese name) getting a rather raw deal here.
At least, that’s a scenario actually recognised here by Brown’s character.
That’s a rare subtlety in a movie that makes the much-maligned Michael Bay’s Transformers flicks look comparatively restrained.
There will be fans of director Adam Wingard’s – who made the excellent, understated chiller The Guest and a middling Blair Witch remake – all-action, total-carnage approach, but I certainly wasn’t one of them.
The best Kong and Godzilla movies have mixed mayhem with a message.
This just reminded me of a famous Shakespearean part-quote from that Scottish play he wrote. This indeed is a tale ‘‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’’, except maybe the end of this particular MonsterVerse.