Cool cast gets lost in the noise of monsters
[‘New Empire,’ from E1] thriller “The Guest,” Dan Stevens, who possesses a kind of glowing charisma that’s almost too much to take in. With these three, you truly can’t go wrong and Henry and Stevens, playing, respectively, a podcaster and a wacky wild-animal veterinarian, prove to be the most valuable players of the movie (after the title characters, of course).
To quickly get us up to speed since the events of the last film: Kong now lives in the verdant paradise of Hollow Earth, which is nice but lonely, while Godzilla remains on the surface, very cutely napping in the Colosseum in between bouts of titan fighting. These two need to be kept apart, lest they rip each other to shreds, reducing major cities to rubble in the process. However, when a distress signal emerges from Hollow Earth, Dr. Andrews (Hall), her adopted tribal Iwi daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), her on-call vet Trapper (Stevens) and the fanboy blogger Bernie (Henry), along with a stern Scottish pilot Mikael (Alex Ferns), set out to find the origin of the call, and realize that maybe Godzilla and Kong need to find a way to come together to fight off other nefarious creatures.
When you multiply Godzilla by Kong, what do you get? When Wingard’s doing the math, it’s an earnest, wacky, hectic ride that often feels like being thrashed about in an Imax seat. There’s a decidedly 1980s-inspired vibe to the tone and style, from the hot pinks and greens and synthy score by Tom Holkenborg and Antonio Di Iorio, to the narrative that follows a journey into a fantastical underworld. There’s also a heavy emphasis on crystals as both plot device and aesthetic, offering this film a retro feel.
But about halfway through, one gets the nagging sensation that this entry has jumped the kaiju shark, as Wingard slams the gas and doesn’t let up. There are too many monsters and, as more and more are introduced, character falls away. It makes you long for the restrained elegance of Japan’s recent Oscar winner “Godzilla Minus One,” but this is a different beast entirely.
There’s a harried energy to “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” which is enjoyable until it becomes tiresome and deafening. Perhaps multiplication was too much — here’s hoping subtraction is next in the mathematical equation.