Big dumb beasts

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Anyone who’s listened to me go on about movies knows of my disdain for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But there’s another “MCU” that I actually do enjoy — probably more than I should admit — and it’s the “Monster Cinematic Universe,” or “MonsterVerse,” with no less than Godzilla and King Kong at its center.

As a kid, I watched the old rubbery Godzilla as he kicked and stomped his way through various cities while deflecting bullets and tank shells from the hordes of puny humans below. Of course by then the scenes of Kong bursting his chains and batting away biplanes from atop the Empire State Building were well embedded in my cultural DNA.

Courtesy photo.

Though my affection for watching huge monsters lay waste to each other and Earth’s most treasured landmarks never went away, it did go dormant for a few decades until the revitalization of the kaiju genre — a Japanese word meaning “strange creature” — with the 2014 Godzilla directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche and David Strathairn.

That cast alone was worth the price of admission, but what set this new era of Godzilla apart was the sumptuous set pieces, world-spanning scope and actual plotting. Then came Kong: Skull Island in 2017, reimagining the King Kong story through the lens of a mid-20th century government coverup that becomes revealed amid the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War and delves deeper into the shady crypto-zoology agency Monarch. 

That installment featured Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, John C. Reilly and John Goodman — another stellar cast providing an A-list sheen to what are otherwise big dumb popcorn-y movies about big dumb beasts.

What followed were two installments establishing a new present-day timeline and cast of characters, with Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019 and Godzilla vs. Kong in 2021. The former brings Godzilla into earth-shaking battles featuring fellow kaiju Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah, while the latter throws a giant “Mechagodzilla” into the mix with a dust-up (finally) between its titular titans. 

Meanwhile, in Godzilla vs. Kong, the story veers into “the Hollow Earth” — an interior global ecosystem filled with ancient exotic creatures from the dawn of the planet, including evidence of Kong’s ancestry. It ends with Kong relocated to the Hollow Earth and Godzilla stationed on the surface to avoid further run-ins with his mammalian counterpart and serve as a kind of bodyguard for humanity against whatever might decide to crawl up through any of a number of portals between the inner and outer worlds.

That’s where the 2024 film Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire comes in. Though Kong is free to live as the apex species in the Hollow Earth, he’s lonely and seeking fellow ape companionship. Godzilla is a lizard, and so doesn’t give a crap about anything other than messing up other kaiju, and if he happens to decimate the center of Rome (for instance) that’s all the better for his own entertainment. Humanity doesn’t seem to mind too much.

However, Kong’s depressing inner life isn’t the only thing amiss in the inner world — there’s a mysterious energy signal emanating from deep within the deeps and, after some cursory exploration, it’s determined that whatever’s going on down there isn’t good. So not-good that it’s going to take a teamup between two of history’s most reluctant allies to sort it out. In the meantime, the planet’s cities and major cultural sites are in for an ass-whoopin’ too.

Ranked as a whole, Godzilla x Kong is a low-to-middling offering in the MonsterVerse. While you’ll most certainly eat at least one whole container of popcorn and want to crank up the volume on your sound system, you’re not going to come away with any sense of deeper plot development or even connection between the characters. For that, I recommend Kong: Skull Island, followed by Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. 

I don’t pretend to understand what it is about this genre that I find so appealing. Maybe it’s something to do with contemplating our faults in defining the human and animal within us, or ruminating on whether the fantastical can live alongside the mundane or must subsume it. Maybe it’s just the thrill of seeing a titanic struggle.

Stream Godzilla x Kong — and the rest of the MonsterVerse — on Max.