GODZILLA VS. KONG (12)
LOCKDOWN has given subtitled dramas, classy indies and powerful documentaries a chance to find new audiences on home streaming.
But after the last 12 months, part of me just wanted to watch two 300ft
CGI monsters knocking lumps out of each other on a giant screen.
The fourth movie in Warner Brothers’ MonsterVerse franchise satisfied that deep-seated need, albeit via the paltry 42in of my living room TV.
If you can’t remember the intricacies of the mythology (I couldn’t), you may find the 38-minute preamble to Round One hard going. Apparently, the hairy one and the scaly one are now the last two “Titans” – ancient big fellas – left on Earth.
Monarch – the shadowy, Titancontrolling agency – is now pretty useless.
And Godzilla, seemingly on a whim, has stamped all over the Florida HQ of tech giant Apex Cybernetics. So, for reasons that are too silly and way too complicated to go into, Walter Simmons (Demian Bichir), Apex’s clearly dodgy CEO (he has a tidy beard), persuades ex-Monarch boffin Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgard) to head a ground-breaking scientific mission.
Kong needs to be shipped from his Skull Island home, chucked into a massive hole, tooled up with a magic axe and sent to batter some sense into the naughty lizard.
A subplot involving Millie Bobby Brown’s teenager, her geeky pal (Julian Dennison) and Brian Tyree’s conspiracy theorist quickly runs out of steam.
But the finale is monstrously entertaining.
The long build-up has made Kong the hero and Godzilla the villain. It’s like Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks again, just with falling skyscrapers, flaming axes and radioactive breath.
■ On Premium VOD rental now