National theater chains can start letting out that 14-month-long sigh of relief. Movies are back—but more importantly, box office returns are back. The film responsible is the cinematic equivalent of smashing your toys together. A movie titled Godzilla vs. Kong shouldn’t need much explaining; it’s a brazen, confident, large-scale monster mash. It’s hard to say what financial success it might have had in any other year, but in the two weeks since it’s release, Godzilla vs. Kong has pulled in approximately $340 million worldwide. To be clear, these are not quite pre-pandemic numbers, but this is a test-run for the upcoming summer blockbuster season, and it’s a good sign for all the movies waiting in the wings. (Godzilla vs. Kong also had a simultaneous release on HBO Max, meaning that box office number should be higher if you factor in all those who decided to watch it at home instead.) You can chalk it up to audiences wanting to return to cineplexes no matter the movie, but I’ll offer an alternative: sometimes it’s just entertaining to watch a giant monkey land a right hook on a giant lizard.
This is the fourth film in the self-proclaimed MosterVerse (yep), but you don’t need to know that. Shotgunning the preceding movies won’t enhance your enjoyment of the movie, and any returning characters (besides the titular massive brawlers) are as forgettable as they were in previous appearances. Viewers are paying for the title bout, and they won’t be disappointed. The film largely avoids most of the problems with other CGI disasterthons, especially the action itself. A good action sequence should thrill you—it should be its own mini-story, with a narrative arc, revealing something about the characters involved. Otherwise, it’s just noise. For all the emphasis modern blockbusters place on their action set pieces, it’s amazing how few of them are well-shot, well-lit, and coherently staged. (Want a crash course in how to do all of the above? Watch the John Wick series.) For all its blunders, Godzilla vs. Kong’s enormous sequences are surprisingly engaging and easy to follow, allowing the viewer a sense of spatial awareness that is key in not getting lost (or worse, bored) in the action. The carnage should be an incomprehensible mess, but it never is. Godzilla vs. Kong also sidesteps a serious flaw that dooms so many of its brethren: these city-leveling blockbusters can be a lengthy slog, challenging bladders with their bloated near-three hour runtimes. Godzilla vs. Kong clocks in under two hours, and the movie is all the better for it. The longer an action sequence, the more likely it will become rote or repetitive; a compact runtime forces the film’s action to be more concise and creative.
Another problem inherent in smashbusters like this is that the destruction is literally too big. When you’re destroying cities on a whim, that scale of destruction is difficult to emotionally engage in any way. On top of this, the human characters intended to act as audience avatars to invest you in the chaos are often underdeveloped and uninteresting. Their inclusion in the action risks being convoluted and distracting, especially if they easily and conveniently survive city-shattering events. Thousands of extras die, but these three characters are OK because their names are on the poster. It’s a lose-lose, and Godzilla vs. Kong makes the best out of this unfortunate conundrum: the characters have some justification for being where they are, and their involvement is mercifully brief (and sometimes genuinely funny and human).
Credits goes to director Adam Wingard for understanding the setbacks of this genre and carefully avoiding them. Wingard cut his teeth on stylized genre movies like You’re Next and The Guest, where he took basic horror premises and infused them with style and wit. He’s not embarrassed by genre tropes, but embraces them. From specific music cues and his directorial flair, Wingard finds the humor inherent in a movie called Godzilla vs. Kong. A similar oversized blockbuster franchise, The Fast and the Furious, is the most successful example of leaning directly into your outrageous premise. That series is almost unrecognizable compared to its first installment (which released twenty years ago, by the way), which plays more like a poor attempt as a serious crime thriller. The recent installments are in on the joke, embracing the over-the-top sequences and soap opera-level twists (and you know what, they’re great). Godzilla vs. Kong smartly does the same, departing from the self-serious movies preceding it. It pays lip service to some larger themes (anti-capitalist maybe? It’s hard to say), but it’s far removed from Ishirō Honda’s 1954 Godzilla, where the beast in question was an impactful metaphor for Japan’s tragic history with nuclear weapons, and the global tension and anxiety of a nuclear holocaust. Instead, in 2021, we get to hear Rebecca Hall say with a straight face: “Kong bows to no one.” And that’s OK.
(Hall’s line may be my second favorite reading of ridiculous dialogue by a respected, dramatic actress. The top spot is four-time Academy-Award nominee Michelle William’s earnest attempt to comfort Academy-Award nominee Tom Hardy over seemingly being separated from an alien goo-turned-friend: “I’m sorry about Venom.”)
If it seems like Godzilla vs. Kong is only good in comparison to other worse movies, that’s not entirely true. It’s fun, dumb moments are underscored by pockets of genuine creativity and beauty. One particular sequence taps into that childlike imagination of endless possibilities that left me awestruck (I’m serious). This is a movie to be experienced on the largest screen possible, even if it’s just to let Tom Holkenborg’s 80s-inspired synth score boom through IMAX speakers. The film isn’t weighed down by hollow attempts at highbrow self-importance. Godzilla vs. Kong knows it’s ultimately just about big monsters punching on. And that’s a good thing.
Godzilla vs. Kong is currently playing in theaters and available to stream on HBO Max. It runs 113 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of creature violence/destruction and brief language.
