Godzilla VS Kong - Game Infinite Review

Godzilla vs Kong Review

Godzilla vs Kong is finally here and I struggle to piece together my review of it. While I gave the film an 8, for films like these it is hard to quantify into a unified number. This is because this movie feels like it is two films merged into one. One film is very good, and the other is not. One film is about two Kaiju monsters who meet, fight, and ultimately face an obstacle. The other film is about a variety of humans following these two monsters on a journey.

This is a problem that Legendary’s “Monsterverse” has struggled with since the 2014 Godzilla film. They have made steps in improving this since, but it is not enough. I think the real problem is they are afraid to commit to focusing on the characters who are actually the main characters of the Monsterverse: Godzilla and Kong. They are the heroes of this world, and yet we keep getting lengthy, and largely boring human stories. Imagine if the MCU gave us films told by the bystanders while Ironman seemed like a distant guest on the film, flying off in the distance. I’m just tired of Godzilla still feeling like a guest in his own film.

While there have been a few stand out human characters, oddly they keep getting killed off. One thing that I think fans would love, but would be so incredibly bold of Legendary pictures to do, too crazy that I don’t think they have the gall to do it, is to give us a monster verse film… without any humans. Literally fans keep saying over and over the “human stories are boring - give us more monster fights”. What would happen if Legendary actually gave us what we really want. Film the next Godzilla movie like an animal documentary. I know that may sound crazy, but that is really what the fans keep asking for. If this had been three hours of Godzilla and King Kong wondering the world and fighting a few times, I think I would have enjoyed it more. The best parts of this film is the monster on monster action and the worst parts are the countless human subplots. There is a #teamgodzilla and #teamkong following their stories along and both are just really weak.

I realize that the humans played a role in driving this plot, not the least of which is the worst kept secret of who shows up at the end. However, I have this mental image of a Monsterverse film that plays like an animal centric story. They could even have a narrator. They could try to have some kind of in-universe explanation for the human absence such as drones being sent to “Monster Island” and have them following them around.

This film is very much divided into two parts. The monster sections are 10/10 if not too short. This definitely has some of the best fights in the franchise so far. The third act finale fight is lengthy and absolutely incredible. The phenomenal monster action in the film is seriously what this 8/10 experience stands on. The human stories are just meh, 5/10, with bad acting and so much extraneous information that will make you wonder over and over “why do I know this?” Why do we know that this random human had a poorly sold book and was the brother of some other character. Why do we know that this random new character is sad from his dead wife’s death and why he carries whiskey everywhere in a gun holster. Like, it is hard to explain how much weird pointless exposition is in this film. There’s a scene where a character knows a podcaster uses a lot of bleach and they go from store to store to “look for someone who buys a lot of bleach”. If the films need to have humans, whenever they are on screen it should be talking about Godzilla and Kong. I want to learn more about Godzilla’s powers. I want to learn more about Kong. Instead, we learn about a random podcaster’s fear of tap water.

I also wanted more than two seconds of confusion as to Godzilla’s actions. In this film, Godzilla is very much to villain again in this film, and no one seems to question it except this random girl. Godzilla has saved the Earth twice at this point, and now he attacks this obvious “evilcorp” looking technology HQ and suddenly the world just buys that Godzilla is a “bad guy that we need Kong to stop”? I just hated how many characters don’t question the Corp with the question I was asking the whole time. “So…why did the protector of the world who has saved us twice find you a threat to attack? What are you hiding?” Like no one questions it and we just have the Navy fighting Godzilla for half the movie.

There’s so much suspension of disbelief. You will be asked to accept that Godzilla can burn a hole through to the center of the Earth but then do seemingly cosmetic damage to a Kaiju 5 minutes later; or that we possess anti-gravity technology to even travel to the earth via a portal...a portal that is no longer needed again 5 minutes later.

At the end of the day, you have to just ignore this ludicrous plot fill with pointless bloated human subplots and enjoy what we came to see, Godzilla fight Kong. If you can enjoy this film in the same way you can enjoy a Transformers movie, then you will have as good a time as I did. This is a popcorn action flick 100%. However, on my second watch through, I might just skip through to each fight and pop a handful of popcorn.