These are the movies that fill the void between a jam-packed awards season and the great summer blockbusters. A heavy burden for a film to carry, but when you are a Warner Bros-funded franchise on its fifth Monsterverse instalment, any fears of flopping critically and at the box office dissipate. The target audience and diehard fanbase is already locked and loaded, eagerly anticipating the next explosive meeting between its favourite Titans, so let the mindless fun begin.
You know the drill by now. The mighty Godzilla is living on the Earth’s surface, hunting other Titans, while Kong is living in Hollow Earth, barely surviving in his new environment. While monitoring the two beasts, Dr Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her team notice new signals coming from Hollow Earth and take a reconnaissance team, that reunites podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), Trapper (Dan Stevens) and Jia (Kaylee Hottle), to find the source. They soon discover a new colossal threat hidden deep within the planet and one that could endanger the survival of humanity if Kong and Godzilla don’t unite to defeat it.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is world-wrecking as per usual, proving once again to be an action-packed thriller that moves fast through three separate journeys that inevitably come together into an explosive finale. The worlds within worlds concept is once again an exciting one, opening up a door to seemingly endless opportunities and imaginative ideas, something this movie takes full advantage of.
The sound design and visual elements are the standout winners, the soundscape swarming and screen bursting with colour. These elements do a lot of the heavy lifting in a film low on substance, but if you see Godzilla and Kong wrestle it out on an IMAX screen, you certainly will not be disappointed.
Surprisingly, this latest release is a good King Kong movie. We empathise with him far more than ever before and he is chosen to be one of the only dedicated hearts to engage the viewer on an emotional level. The film is very much a similar development of its predecessors; a noisy scrap between enormous monsters with a story that is a bit thin on the ground, but as long as you go in with a suspension of disbelief, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is solid and delivers a load of fun. Yes, you roll your eyes at a few of the lines in the dialogue, but when Dan Stevens is clearly having a blast, you do too.
Guy Lambert
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is released nationwide on 29th March 2024.
Watch the trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire here:
