BEFORE: It kind of feels like I JUST watched "Godzilla vs. Kong", but that was THREE years ago. Yeah, it turns out it takes time to do all these special effects and stuff, so from a filmmaking standpoint, that's not a LOT of time, but it is a lot of people-hours working on a movie, like thousands and thousands even. Also, I'm worried about how quickly my life is passing by when it feels like I watched a movie just last year and it turns out to be three years ago. Not a good feeling, especially with another birthday coming up.
Dan Stevens carries over again from "The Sea Beast".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Godzilla vs. Kong" (Movie #3,966)
THE PLOT: Two ancient titans, Godzilla and Kong, clash in an epic battle as humans unravel their intertwined origins and connection to Skull Island's mysteries.
AFTER: Ah, yes, the movie franchise that's chock-full of junk science - the world is hollow, somehow there's air and light down there in the core and a whole lot of space, not magma or molten rock or anything like we've been led to believe. There's a whole country-sized piece of land, actually two, that Kong can jump between, plus all kinds of wild animals for him to fight and eat, and somehow he doesn't get crushed by the massive gravity that one would expect to encounter in the center of a planet. Also, every direction here should be UP, like Kong should be able to stand here in the middle of the world on some kind of round sphere and go UP to reach the surface, but for some reason up is down and down is up and there's a world-within-a-world, and there are vortexes that will take you up to the surface at super-speed, so sure, add teleportation to the mix, why not?
But let's posit for a moment that if down somehow is up (which it's not) and the people and monsters are standing on an interior world within the Earth, with a lot of empty space (again, impossible) and if you think of the world as a hollow tennis ball, then everyone would be standing on the interior surface of that tennis ball, assuming there's some kind of gravity inversion (which, like everything else, is not possible). So their UP would be a direction leading toward the center of the earth - therefore a vortex to the surface world would be in their ground, not their sky. They would then have to go DOWN to go to the surface, not UP, because down is up, remember? So this movie can't even stay consistent with its own impossible science.
I don't know why THIS all bothers me, and not the fact that there are giant monsters roaming the earth and also living inside of it. But really, I should probably start there, because the franchise has set things up this way on this alternate-Earth where ancient monsters walk the Earth and destroy cities at random (or is it?). Those first two "Godzilla" movies of the current franchise had me thinking that since the giant lizard only destroyed liberal cities (Boston and San Francisco) that he was just a giant metaphor for Donald Trump. OK, and if I continue the metaphor than maybe "Godzilla vs. Kong" was a symbolic representation of the 2020 election, with Kong standing in for Biden. Sure, they're both very old, they've maybe lost a bit of the pep in their step, and we have questions about what Kong understands at the end of the day.
But since the two Titans had to work together in "Godzilla vs. Kong" to defeat Mecha-Godzilla, my metaphor really doesn't work any more, because I can't see Trump and Biden working together to do anything, really. And now in the next film they have to work together again to defeat a giant ape called Skar King and an ice dragon named Shimo, which is kind of like a "polar" opposite to Godzilla. (Pun intended.)
But man, it's a LONG build-up to the action here. We watch Kong have a dental appointment, for real, that's how little is going on at first. Meanwhile Godzilla is going around the world taking in energy from other Titans like Tiamat, and also absorbing radiation from a nuclear power plant, he's getting ready for something, we just don't know what. Kong's down in the Hollow Earth zone and Godzilla's up on the surface, and we're told that since these two can't really get along, it's best for humans if they stay separated. So Kong has a separate adventure where he learns that he's not the last of his species after all, there are dozens of other apes held in captivity in Hollow Earth, the Skar King has them all moving rocks from this pile over here to THAT pile over there. Well, I guess it's better to rule in Hell than be subservient in Heaven.
Kong takes on the Skar King and his ice-lizard Shimo and gets a bad case of frost-bite. If only he knew another giant lizard that could help him fight back and free the ape tribe. Oh well, I guess we should stop wishing for things we can't have. Meanwhile a group of humans stranded in Hollow Earth learns that similarly the young Jia is not the last of her tribe either, because a bunch of telepathic Iwi people have been living there for centuries, waiting for the prophesied day when they could send out their distress call and find the lost member of their tribe who could control the new Mothra.
Kong finally gets in touch with the new, energized Godzilla, and, OK, it doesn't go well and there go the Egyptian pyramids (visit them while you can, people!) but finally all three hero Titans get on the same page and head BACK down to Hollow Earth (there's just a LOT of comings and goings here in this film, you can't tell me there wasn't a simpler way to tell this story). Then the good monsters and the bad monsters teleport back up to Rio de Janeiro, because that's a city that none of them have destroyed yet. The two sides are pretty evenly matched, until the good monsters decide to change opponents and the ice dragon decides to change sides. Skar King gets frozen and shattered, Kong becomes the new leader of the giant apes, and Godzilla returns to the Colosseum in Rome for a nap. Not kidding.
What happened to all the other people who were in the previous "Godzilla" and "Godzilla vs. Kong" movies? I'm thinking about the characters played by Alexander Skarsgard, Kyle Chandler, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Eiza Gonzalez, Demian Bichir, Julian Dennison and even Ronny Chieng? Were there massive layoffs at the Monarch Corporation? Did all the investigative reporters who follow the giant monsters suddenly all decide to make career changes? Can you really consider this the next legit film in a franchise when only like three characters carry over from the last one? I guess I really don't have much choice here.
And God damn it, if Kong and Godzilla can put aside their differences and work together to save the planet, why can't our two political parties?
Also starring Rebecca Hall (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Brian Tyree Henry (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Kaylee Hottle (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Alex Ferns (last seen in "The Batman"), Fala Chen (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Rachel House (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Ron Smyck, Chantelle Jamieson, Greg Hatton, Kevin Copeland (last seen in "Muriel's Wedding"), Tess Dobré, Tim Carroll, Anthony Brandon Wong (last seen in "The Invisible Man"), Sophia Emberson-Bain (last seen in "San Andreas"), Chika Ikogwe, Vincent B. Gorce (last seen in "Aquaman"), Yeye Zhou, Jamaliah Othman, Nick Lawler.
RATING: 7 out of 10 flattened buildings (that Christ the Redeemer statue somehow manages to survive, I think)
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