Godzilla vs Kong Review

March 30, 2021 at 6:58pm
By Jason Stettner

It’s been almost sixty years since these two massive titans of monster cinema went at it, with this most recent release being an event I’ve been anticipating for years. Monster films can be fun, and while the recent Godzilla ones haven’t been, King Kong has been.

I’m one that cheers for Team Kong, and that added a layer of excitement in preparing to watch these two juggernauts fight it out on the big screen. Things have obviously changed globally, so instead I watched it at home and it was still just as epic in terms of the conflict.

It was just the execution of this story that ultimately flat lined, leading to what I considered to be an ultra lame ending. It was just so lackluster, and I immediately thought back to Batman v Superman as being almost the exact same setup. I try to keep things spoiler free, but I rolled my eyes fairly hard when vodka being spilled on something was a contributing downfall factor in this narrative. I hope that’s vague enough.

That aside, this was a very predictable film that you could have guessed without even watching it, and to me that’s disappointing. With that, there was one area that was ever so wondrous and not a spot I had predicted seeing at all. That area was really cool, whereas the ending just left me wanting something more.

There was no level of danger, or real threat which is a shame considering the fact they did a great job in making these two seem evened up for conflict. Kong was smart, agile. Godzilla was tough, direct and used atomic breath. They didn’t fight for very long, and as expected much of this is human driven.

I actually didn’t mind the human portions this time around, being a colossal step up from the efforts of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (which was terrible). What’s funny upon quickly looking up that review, I’m scoring them similar so I suppose both were let downs but in different ways. I still think this is quite a step up, but entirely underwhelming as it reaches its conclusion. With what’s basically a whimper, the MonsterVerse ends.

As mentioned, the human element actually was fairly solid here. I found the story following Jia (Kaylee Hottle) whom had a connection to Kong to have a rather touching, heartfelt story and journey throughout the film. Her mother Ilene (Rebecca Hall) was also great in this, both handling Kong quite well along the way.

I didn’t find Madison’s (Millie Bobby Brown) inclusion in this to really be necessary, it seemed tacked on whereas her father Mark (Kyle Chandler) was criminally underutilized considering he was the only good part of that last film, at least the only one I can recall. I will give props to the way the cinematography was handled here, it looked quite lovely with visuals that popped in some locations.

The fight choreography was fantastic with some camera angles I would say were incredibly dramatic and taken from boxing films, but they were worked beautifully here. The CGI was also top notch throughout, everything looked fantastic and it’s the best quality of the entire MonsterVerse thus far so that was a treat to behold for sure.

The Conclusion

Godzilla vs Kong was rather disappointing, I wasn’t necessarily looking for the most profound of battles but I most certainly expected something more precise and earning of a versus titling. There’s also no post credit sequence so I imagine this is indeed the end of the MonsterVerse which is a bit disheartening as I always thought there was more potential for large scale titans facing off against one another.

Maybe if the films could have found a better balance between humans and monsters, but that just never was the case. I did enjoy, and was onboard for a lot of this movie. The starting portion of it is really interesting, and I adored the story between the girl and Kong.

It’s just that it eventually leads nowhere, feeling as though this was a massive cop-out. I get that there may have been some balancing act at play, but it felt like a legendary build up that offered nothing of value to me. The previous films leading up to a bland conclusion.

Godzilla vs Kong Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening Provided by Warner Brothers

Rating Overall: 5.2