"Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire" Film Review

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

Rating: 1/5

By: Nathaniel Simpson

    Godzilla and King Kong have been huge staples in film for almost 100 years now, terrorizing numerous huge towns all over the world. While there have certainly been some fantastic, groundbreaking films revolving around these two monsters, there have also been incredible disappoints that begs the question of why these characters are so popular. Unfortunately (and probably unsurprisingly), 2024's Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire falls into the latter category; director Adam Wingard presents a boring, uninspired, and unnecessary follow-up to the 2021 film that is a total misfire on every level. 

    The film follows Rebecca Hall's Dr. Ilene Andrews, who is concerned after her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who is the last known survivor of the Iwi tribe on Skull Island, starts experiencing hallucinations and visions. When a wormhole opens up to take them to Skull Island, she recruits conspiracy podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) and Trapper (Dan Stevens), who knows his way around the Island, to help her go there to find out what is going on. 

    What they find is that there is a tribe of Kong's species living there, ruled by tyrannical leader Skar King. He is detrimental to the species and Skull Island as a whole, forcing Kong to take action to defeat the evil ruler. He can't do it alone however, and must recruit Godzilla's powers as well to help him defeat their big foe before it is too late. 

    I mean, they could have a good story here. They could have badass action sequences, great CGI characters, and human characters that have character development as they progress through the movie. Sure, the plot is a little bland and redundant, but they could have made this film, at least, enjoyable for the audience to watch for almost two-hours. But, spoiler alert, they don't. I think this film is not only absolutely boring, but a slap in the face to the fans of these characters and this franchise. Nothing here is entertaining or even interesting, and they sort of just painstakingly muddle their way through the story that was written. 

    The actors here definitely try their best to make the film somewhat enjoyable, but even they can't save this film from what it is. Their character are simply cookie-cutters of what we have seen in past films, and they don't really change from the beginning of this film to the end. While I do applaud them for including a deaf character using a deaf actress, that is the best compliment I could give the characters here. It's rather unfortunate because I am a fan of most of the people involved with this. I think these performers do great work in other projects, but they simply don't work here, unfortunately. 

    Even the antagonist, which was hyped up as being this really scary, badass money creature that should prove to be a major force to stop Kong, he simply doesn't live up to what they were trying to market him to be. Sure, he looks cool, but he is simply not a huge threat to the main protagonists here. They practically do nothing leading up to the climax fight, and when we get to the epic showdown, it is over shortly after it even begins. There's simply nothing satisfying or climatic about the final battle, and it just proves how this film is just a waste of everyone's time when they could be seeing something much better. 

    While I simply didn't like most of what this movie did, I will admit they had pretty good CGI and effects here. I think Kong and Godzilla look incredible throughout the movie, as well as the fictional foes both of them fight. The land of Skull Island is just as great, creating an incredibly immersive environment for our characters to be in. At the same time, the character of Suko, who is the baby version of King Kong, is absolutely adorable and provides a little enjoyment in a film that is so damn dull. 

    Godzilla X Kong is simply another example of a studio making an abysmal film to hopefully profit on these massive IPs. I honestly had no high expectations for this film, and I wasn't very excited about seeing this one as it didn't appeal to me much in the trailers. But even then, they still managed to disappoint me with how bad this film really is. If I was the creators of these characters, I would be rolling in my grave right about now.