Wait now.. hold on now, I know what you are thinking. “Oh no not another review if the Godzilla vs Kong movie again” but wait just here me out alright. Cause you even though you might have read ten thousand reviews about this movie on the hive blog I can bet that you haven’t read mine… until now at least… except you are coming back again to read this… well if that’s the case then, if you’re reading this it’s too late (I’m sorry I just had to put that there I just couldn’t resist the urge… yea yea bite me).
[image source] (https://tenor.com/view/hello-welcome-dr-evil-come-gif-17033528)
Yes folks welcome back. Today the 6th of April 2021, and the time this is been composed is 10:00 am. Its a day like no idea, a day that will never repeat it’s self in history, a day were you take out precious seconds of your time to go through my crappy, poorly edited, failed attempt at humour excuse of a movie review and a day that is most special to me because it is my Dad’s birthday.. Happy Birthday Pops, I genuinely love you. I might not be able to get you something special today cause I’m broke as shit living in a third world country but you just hold on Pops, we gon ball soon, das on God represses the tears and the inner black American in me trying to find daylight
Yes right where were we Godzilla vs Kong right or as I like to call it giant Japanese fire spitting mutant dragon lizard god vs the one true O.G gorilla rockstar, before that imposter ape from rampage came to the scene (yeah yeah I know that sounds a bit racist bear with me for a sec). This movie is the latest movie entry in Legendary and Warner Bros’ monsterverse and boy oh boy does it pack quite a punch.
Massive massive spoilers ahead so if you haven’t seen this movie and you don’t want it spoiled for you then do not read past this point
Story summary and all the other great stuff
As is the case with the movies in this “cinematic universe” our two apex titan predators take center stage as they are set to do battle with one another, fighting for who will emerge as conqueror and king over the titans. Now I got to give it them, they definitely delivered what was promised, big crispy clean CGI action monster fight? Check. People to guide us through story were the main characters are giant monsters? Check. Having beautiful, mesmerizing sound and visual effects to look at and to listen too? Check. Revealing information by showing us instead of telling us?? That would be a half check. Why? We’ll get to that soon, I mean the list goes on, and there is a lot of things this movie did actually do right. It appears this movie took a stylistic approach similar to the one used in the two pacific rim movies. the colour scheme the effects seems like they
The story followed Kong and Godzilla separately though I personally saw it as more of a Kong main game, Godzilla side quest kind of situation and too be fair it was that way in a sense, say what you want but you cannot invalidate that. The Godzilla story had eleven from stranger things (Millie Bobby Brown), teaming up with the rude emo fire blasting kiwi (nickname for a New Zealander) teen from deadpool 2 (Julian Dennison) and that rapper guy with a terrible name from the series Atlanta (Brian Tyree Henry) In the movie, she is more vibrant and motivated, the kiwi’s really just the nerdy side character and Brian is this crazy conspiracy theorist who they both follow because he’s got a lead on why spoiler ahead Godzilla is all of a sudden attacking industries in certain cities. Basically there adventures were all just a set up for Mechagodzilla there I said it.. tadaaa big reveal mechagodzilla is actually in the movie (even though fans were able to spot him from the very first trailer). Kong however in had a better story in my opinion, as we were shown his backstory in this movie although there was this one narration that kind of screwed the story up which we will get to in the next paragraph. It’s the reason why I believe this movie was more of a Kong story than a Godzilla story and just like I said earlier, a large portion of it was shown to us rather than told to us and that people is a good thing. In terms of all the good things I noticed in this movie, that’s about all I can say
The meat and potatoes aka the not so great stuff
Now on to the meat and potatoes of this movie (as youtuber Nux Taxu would say). There were some issues I had with the story. For example, no single cast member of the Kong skull island movie reprised their roles in this movie. All of the characters from whose perspective we saw Kong’s story were essentially new and because of this, I found it quite difficult following them. It felt like his story was been told afresh and everything that happened in Skull island was wiped away from people’s minds. One movie you are discovering Skull island and Kong for the first time, the next, there is a lot of things that happened off screen which we didn’t get to see, it was only narrated to us in a five second dialogue, Kong is confined in skull island, and he has ward he is responsible for, like it is supposed to answer all our questions. And yeah apparently he can communicate with her… in sign language yeah folks Kong can talk. All these information being dumped on us and there is not enough time given to really process what is really going on, probably because of some executive decision from the board. We did get to see Kong’s relationship with Jia (Kaylee Hootle) that’s her name by the way, develop and grow to the point where Kong trusts her to talk to only her and so, this relationship doesn’t have as much impact on us as it should have. Maybe if they had just made a Kong movie preceding this one, were they actually show us what truly happened between Kong, Jia, the Iwi people and Skull island, that made them develop such a bond? It would increase the stakes of things to be lost in the Kong vs Godzilla movie. It wouldn’t just be them fighting because of their ancient rivalry and the need for there to be only one king but this time it would be more than that. If Kong lost, Jia would lose her guardian and if Godzilla lost, Madison would lose the memory of her mom’s sacrifice, the one good thing she did to redeem herself of what she did to her family and to Godzilla. We would understand why they had to fight; we would understand the stakes involved, we would appreciate Mechagodzilla coming the more because it would mean our two heros wouldn’t have to kill themselves. It would all be more meaningful, if they had just showed us that story instead of narrating for us (I’m beginning to sound more like youtuber Filmento) and all this was lost due to this error.
This leads me to what I believe was the second problem with the film that is the fact that, a lot of things in the first half happened so quickly making it really difficult to keep track of what was going on. It was quite difficult watching “the three musketeers” zoom from one scene to the next trying to find answers for us viewers and trying moving the story forward for the big mechagodzilla reveal, even though there had been pictures and speculations about this all over the internet and that for me kind of ruined the reveal for me.
I think that the solution to these two problems is very simple. Have the movie split into two parts, have the first part show development of the relationship between Kong and Jia, have it show madison and her father go through the process of grieving her mother’s death, have Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) the villain in Godzilla king of monsters return as the person controlling Apex from behind the shadows but don’t reveal him until the last scene of part one while Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) and Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) who work for him, build him a giant mecha to take down Godzilla. Show him getting information on hollow earth and the history behind the great titan war that came before, the untapped raw energy source found in hollow earth and make it the cause the great war and that brought Ghidorah to earth to fight for it too, all this gotten from the severed head of King Ghidorah. Show him sending Walter Simmons fetching Dr Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) who has extensive knowledge on hollow earth because he lost his brother while they were both trying to discover it. Show them using Kong to lead them to this place. Show Serizawa pitching Kong against Godzilla using his resources at apex. Have the final battle be Kong against Godzilla facing off in an epic titanic clash that almost kills them both and leaves them half dead only then to reveal that it was Alan all along running the show and show that his mind has been partly taken over by ghidorah due to all that meddling with its brain and finally, show him gaining the power to fully control his new mechagodzilla as well as controlling all the other titans in hollow earth, him getting this ability from the severed head of King Ghidorah, end of part one.
Part two would be both sides trying to recover from the near death experience of their champions and fully understanding who and what the threat is whilst coming together to figure out a plan to take down Jonah and his new found powers and have that final showdown take place in hollow earth where in the end, only one would be king or at least both Kong and Godzilla would settle for a truce and part ways.. Doing this would eliminate a lot of problems. The story would be broader, more meaningful and more understandable. Fans would be eager to see what Jonah/ghidorah would do next, they would be eager to follow the story. The fate of the whole world would be at stake as now ghidorah’s mind has a hold on Jonah and wants to destroy everything and they have the power and resources to do so. The relationship between Jia and Kong, Maddison and Godzilla would be established, Dr Nathan’s sacrifice to save Kong’s life would have more impact. There eazy peazy, problem fixed (Well the story would need some more editing here and there but you get what I’m trying to say)
All in all, I wouldn’t say I really enjoyed watching this movie but like I said it did some things right even though it could have been so much better and it could have given the Marvel cinematic universe a run for their money but heyy… what do I know? I’m just some kid writing and ranting about what could have been, unable to change what already is. So tell me your thoughts in the comments below what did you think about the movie and what do you think about my review of the movie, leave a comment down below