By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Adam Wingard
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård | Brian Tyree Henry | Demián Bichir | Eiza González | Julian Dennison | Kyle Chandler | Lance Reddick | Millie Bobby Brown | Rebecca Hall | Shun Oguri
Country: australia, canada, india, united_states
Year: 2021
Running time: 113
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/reference
Michael says: “**SPOILERS if you care about who wins.**
“What I learned form watching GODZILLA VS. KONG was that I am either a) further from the mainstream than I had already thought, or b) Mothra’s appearance in a monster movie might be the defining measure for me. Probably both. Those of you who know me, know that I was super-excited for the release of GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS a couple of years ago. The movie featured not only Godzilla, but his pals and sparring partners, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. I was riding my wave of Mothra-love for months before the film premiered and a good long time afterwards. The movie wasn’t perfect, by any means, but it was nearly perfect for me. (More Mothra would have definitely been appreciated). It certainly struck a nice balance between monster brawls and the required human scenes. I thought the human characters were fine enough for a kaiju film, and all-in-all it was a fun, exciting film for me. Critics and a lot of audiences hated it. It didn’t perform as well as hoped and it got a pretty unimpressive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Still, it wasn’t the death knell of the kanji franchise, as it led directly into GODZILLA VS. KONG, which I caught on its opening night premiere on HBO Max. I wasn’t nearly as excited (no Mothra, after all) and I’ve never been a fan of Kong (I hadn’t seen either of his previous two modern-day films) but I do love a good monster brawl, so I was somewhat excited, if a little apprehensive (the battle seemed a bit one-sided and a Kong defeat of Godzilla wasn’t going to sit well with me.) What a dreadful movie. It was all I could do to get through the entire thing. Now, the special effects were great, and the Godzilla/Kong battles were fun. Everything else about it was either boring, incredibly cliched, or just bad. But what stung most of all? While GODZILLA KOTM thrilled me, yet fared poorly with many viewers, and nearly all critics, GODZILLA VS. KONG was getting positive reviews! While not a raving success, it’s Rotten Tomatoes percentage is a respectable 75% compared to KOTM’s 42%. I was flummoxed. Fine, I wasn’t expecting critics to enjoy KOTM, after all, it’s not high art, but their embracing of GVK was so perplexing that I just don’t get it. Everything the criticized KOTM for, GVK did even WORSE! The human characters in GVK were such absolute dreck, poorly written, poorly acted, annoying as hell, yet they were in it just as much if not more as the humans intruded upon KOTM. GVK was praised for its monster battles, but KOTM had them too… and they were plentiful and much more exciting, if you ask me. And even if you thought the human storylines in KOTM didn’t make sense were annoying, they actually tried to imbue a storyline into them, and include some drama and emotion. They didn’t even try with GVK, yet gave them just as much screen time.
“Okay, no one really cares here right? And I’m sorry if you love Kong, and take issue with my dissing his film. And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that it is being seen as the potential savior of the kanji franchise, giving Godzilla and crew another chance at a sequel… I need more Mothra, after all, but I really didn’t need to subscribe to HBO Max for that. Still, if you’re wondering why my rating isn’t lower, I did love seeing Godzilla rightfully rule over Kong. 2 cats“