This monster mash is a thunderous mess

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

12A cert, 115 min

★★☆☆☆

Dir Adam Wingard

Starring Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, Alex Ferns, Kaylee Hottle

The big mystery around the latest entry in the Legendary MonsterVerse franchise isn’t whether it’s any good or not – it isn’t – but what on earth its title is supposed to sound like. “Godzilla Ex Kong”? “Godzilla by Kong”? “Godzilla Multiplied by Kong”? Personally, I like to think it’s intended affectionately, and we’re meant to make a little kissy noise between the monsters’ names. Godzilla, mwah! Kong!

Anyway, the point is it’s no longer versus: after the events of 2021’s enjoyable Godzilla vs Kong, the two giant beasts are now no longer at one another’s gas-holder-sized throats. Godzilla patrols the Earth’s surface, battling various off-brand monsters, while Kong searches for his long lost family in Hollow Earth, a sprawling subterranean valley. Then at ground level, top monsterologist Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is keeping tabs on the lumbering pair – so when Godzilla suddenly goes loopy, inhaling pure nuclear power from a French reactor, she scrambles a task force to help.

This unlikely team consists of a conspiracy blogger (Brian Tyree Henry), an eccentric naturalist (Dan Stevens), an angry Scotsman (Alex Ferns) and Ilene’s adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the last surviving member of the Skull Island tribe. And rather than trying to save the world, they just sort of stand around while shouting the plot at each other as Godzilla and Kong stomp off on their respective adventures.

Unfortunately, these turn out to be thunderously boring. Godzilla does some underwater wrestling, while Kong discovers a tribe of giant angry apes led by a whipcracking galoot called Scar King, after befriending a (comparatively) small sidekick you might call Scrappy Kong, and who is every bit as annoying as he sounds. Up on the surface, the globe-trotting city locations are selected so arbitrarily, the dateline stamps become a sort of unintentional running joke while the battles themselves are flailing messes.

“Dan Stevens looks like he’s having the time of his life!” apologists may argue. In fairness he sometimes does, though I can’t say the mood proves infectious. There’s some trippiness towards the end, but for the most part “Godzilla Smooch Kong” is all too ready to fall back on delivering the bare minimum. It’s giant monsters fighting, the thing constantly shrugs: what else do you want? Ideally a bit more than this.

In cinemas now

On the rampage: Godzilla and Kong stomp around and fight for most of the film