Godzilla vs. Kong

Year 13, Day 304 - 10/31/21 - Movie #3,966 - VIEWED ON 4/19/21.          

BEFORE: Halloween is here - actually, the night before, I just got home from working a shift at the movie theater, and the subway ride was full of people in all kinds of costumes, some VERY revealing - and then there were the women. I kid. I don't tend to go out and party for Halloween, or the Saturday night before, like the youngs do, I just want to do my hours, get home safe and then sack out. I don't HAVE to watch this movie tonight, I watched it back in April when it was on HBO Max, because it seemed like it linked to a lot of other movies in my October chain, and I wasn't sure exactly when it would run on HBO, would that be in time for Halloween?  

It turned out that it was, they've been running this on HBO for a couple months now, so I just saved it to my DVR, giving me the option of re-watching it on the big night, or just deleting it, since I can't burn a film from HBO to DVD. I think I'll watch it again, even though it's very stupid, just so it will be fresh in my mind and I can more accurately describe tomorrow just how stupid it is, at least from a scientific point of view.        

Eiza Gonzalez carries over from "Paradise Hills". About that linking, though, originally Jessica Henwick was listed in the cast, and she's also in a couple films on my list, but after I learned her part had been cut from this film, I had to come up with another way to get here - thus "Paradise Hills" moved back into October, after considering a move to August to link up with "Hellboy" and "Monster Hunter".  At some point, the horror films just need to find their way back to October. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Kong; Skull Island", (Movie #3,066), "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" (Movie #3,381)

THE PLOT: The epic next chapter in the cinematic Monsterverse pits the fearsome Godzilla against the mighty Kong, with humanity caught in the balance. 

AFTER: OK, last horror (?) film for this year - except I may have some serial killer stuff coming up in November.  I made great strides this October, knocked off a few prominent franchises, but mostly, except for a couple vampire films, the focus this year was on slashers, stalkers and people taking away women's rights.  So it's largely been about man's inhumanity to man (and, umm, woman) but not that much about MONSTERS' inhumanity to man.  Partially this is because I've seen (almost) every vampire, zombie or demon film that I've been interested in.  (Next year's going to be another mixed bag, perhaps, with the "Purge" films, one film about witches, the remake of "The Invisible Man" and maybe Lizzie Borden, we'll see.)

But I'm determined to go out with a bang this year, with the two big heavyweight Titans facing off against each other - who takes it, the Chunky Monkey or the Thunder from Down Under (the ocean)?  The King of Kong or the King of All Monsters?  The Eighth Wonder of the World or the Beast from the (Far) East?  Yeah, sure, like they'd let one of these monsters have a clear victory over the other - they're probably just setting us up for a rematch/sequel, right?  

I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here - the film starts with an acknowledgement that these two beasts are the LAST two Titans on Earth. Umm, maybe.  Kong's being kept on Skull Island, but in a contained fake environment that's meant to simulate the conditions on...Skull Island.  Hmm, it seems to me they could have saved a step here, why not just block off the WHOLE island, instead of a tiny part of it?  Kong couldn't escape from the island before, so why figure that he could again?  But I guess the reasoning here is that they're trying to keep him safe from Godzilla, who would attack him as soon as he leaves the island, because reasons. And that would be bad because...why, exactly?  

OK, so the film's a little lacking in the details.  But they do set up the conflict between these two as some kind of ancient rivalry (and they know this...how?) and by the way, how old is King Kong?  Didn't he die in the 2005 movie, and then he was somehow alive again in "Kong: Skull Island" which was set in the Vietnam era?  Did they ever bother to explain that one, have we been dealing with "Son of Kong" since the 2017 movie, or what?  It's another thing that's very unclear, better get used to that because this movie doesn't tend to, you know, explain a lot.  The big evil company in the last "Godzilla" film was Monarch, and this time we're dealing with another big evil company, Apex.  Umm, what happened to Monarch?  

So the big evil company Apex discovers some big power source at the center of the world, which they believe is hollow, thanks to the theories of scientist Nathan Lind, whose brother died trying to prove this.  I believe this is junk science, because haven't we been told for years that the Earth has a molten core?  Wait, or was it nougat?  I forget... Anyway, the "hollow earth" theory is believed by absolutely nobody IRL, it's just junk movie science, and there's plenty more where that came from.  There's a thing here called a "gravity inversion" which posits that if you go too far down into the Earth, then down becomes up, and vice versa.  Which is crazy, right?  Down is always down, and nobody can survive in the center of the planet, they'd be crushed in an instant because of gravity, which DOES NOT CHANGE.  Geez, you'd think that the death of this guy's brother FROM GRAVITY would be enough to convince him, but for some reason it's not. 

In order to test this theory, they need a monster tough enough to explore the Hollow Earth, plus a bunch of flying vehicles tough enough to withstand the gravity inversion.  But I'm not sure why they need BOTH, why do they have to drag Kong into this mess?  After saying that it was very dangerous to take Kong out of the containment center on Skull Island, that's EXACTLY the next thing that they do, and what do you know, Godzilla attacks.  Telegraphing of the highest order.  How many naval officers got killed in Godzilla's attack, just because they went and did the thing that they said they should never do?  To establish the rivalry, of course, but COME ON.

They manage to get King Kong to Antarctica by another method, because that's where the hole is?  WTF?  Somehow going to the bottom of the planet is the quickest way to the center?  You know the planet is round, right?  Well, mostly, anyway - it's an oblate spheroid and you might save a couple miles by going in through the bottom, but you could really have started from anywhere, unless the passage was already there?  What's that, the hollow earth's vent, or something?  Is that why Antarctica is so freakin' cold?  Just wondering.

SCIENCE FUN FACT - the radius of the Earth is about 3,963 miles.  And what do you know, I'm right, the radius at the poles is only 3,950 miles - so they DO save some time by entering at the South Pole, but not that much.  Also, why is that hole sideways and not DOWN?  Because no matter where you are on the surface, you have to go DOWN to reach the center. Gotta call a big ol' NITPICK POINT here. 

When Kong gets to the center (?) he experiences that "gravity inversion", which is depicted by one piece of land on the bottom, and another one up above it, like a mirror reflection.  But this is more junk science, why isn't it one piece of land all the way around, you know, like a small sphere inside a giant sphere?  Wouldn't THAT make more sense, or has all rational sense gone out the window by this point?  Kong's able to leap between the two pieces of land, because one's somehow above (?) the other, but I'm going to hold to my belief that if there WERE a space inside the Earth where creatures could live (which there isn't) it would be round, all around, however gravity would STILL pull you to the center, so you wouldn't be standing on this land that doesn't exist, but instead you'd be floating above it.  Then, you'd be crushed by gravity. Prove me wrong, but you must show your work. 

Later, when Godzilla realizes that Kong is in the Earth's crunchy center, he gets very angry, and then uses his radioactive breath to drill ANOTHER hole from the surface to the center, which, again, is a distance of 3,950 miles.  So, not likely.  Godzilla and Kong then have a "conversation" in monster language, even though they're 3,950 miles apart at that point.  Even less likely, that they could hear each other and communicate in real time, being that far apary.  I'm just not buying it - am I the only person bothered by these scientific impossibilities?  

I remember that in the last two "Godzilla" movies, I felt like I'd cracked the code - he only seemed to attack liberal coastal elite cities, like Boston and San Francisco. Admittedly, this may be because he travels by water, but work with me here, because I was able to draw a half-decent "Godzilla = Trump" analogy out of that.  And if the big, loud, nasty monster with terrible breath is the conservative Republican candidate, then his opponent, Kong, represents the liberal Democratic one, right?  Is this all really "Trump vs. Biden" in disguise?  Ah, but then what does MechaGodzilla represent?  Climate change?  America's crumbling infrastructure?  

I don't know, maybe I've got to let go of this metaphor and just take this one at face value, at the end of the day maybe it's just two big monsters beating the heck out of each other.  But there's just a tiny bit of hope here because they do have to work together to defeat their common enemy, once that enemy is revealed.  It seems neither monster wants to lose their job to a robot, and I think maybe both political parties can find some common ground there.  Sorry, I did it again, I've got to get off politics and just enjoy the monsters battling in...what skyline is that?  Hong Kong?  OK, if you say so.  

That power source in the Hollow Earth turns out to be an axe made from one of Godzilla's old back-plates, but how exactly does that give off energy?  Doesn't Godzilla's energy come from within his body, not from one scale that fell off years ago?  And then when the company finds the power source, for some reason they don't need the source itself, just one energy reading?  That doesn't make any sense, just because I know what type of energy that coal or wind or the sun gives off, that doesn't mean I can reproduce it.  Having an "energy reading" is no subsitute for having the ENERGY ITSELF.  It's just more junk science here, don't fall for it. 

What's fun here, though, is the bunch of conspiracy theories that the podcaster character's been tracking down - they're all true, of course, but only in this fictional universe.  And he's an early adopter of hand sanitizer, this must have been filmed before the start of the pandemic.  But he also showers with bleach, which of course is not recommended. So yeah, take everything here with a grain of salt, I know none of it's meant to be taken seriously, but as we all know now, there are a LOT of impressionable people out there who believe everything. 

Also starring Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "Long Shot"), Millie Bobby Brown (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Kyle Chandler (ditto), Rebecca Hall (last seen in "Lay the Favorite"), Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Shun Oguri, Julian Dennison (last seen in "Hunt for the Wilderpeople"), Lance Reddick (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Demian Bichir (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Kaylee Hottle, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Ronnie Chieng (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), John Pirruccello (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Chris Chalk (last seen in "Rent"), Benjamin Rigby (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Daniel Nelson, Van Marten, Drew Walton. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 toppled skyscrapers