Re-trampling Tokyo

The cliché of any monster movie: unnecessarily destroying an urban city beyond repair. Instead of focusing on writing, most monster movies make the “creative” choice to concentrate their funding towards explosions and fight scenes. Though the action scenes are incredibly enjoyable in the moment, neglecting writing or character development in turn is a detrimental mistake. Creating another balanced and satisfactory movie like “King Kong: Skull Island” is a challenging obstacle, one that “Godzilla vs. Kong” unfortunately did not overcome. 

After two previous movies, “Godzilla vs. Kong” continues the storyline, adding a few new central characters. Kong and his “protectors” undertake a dangerous journey to find the original home of the “titans,” the official name of the giant creatures like Godzilla. An orphaned girl named Jia (Kaylee Hottle) joins the adventure, who has a unique and powerful bond with Kong. Soon, Jia and Kong find themselves in the path of an enraged Godzilla as he spews blue hell-fire across the globe, defeating rival monsters for supremacy. The initial confrontation between the two titans is only the beginning of the mystery that lies deep within the core of the planet.

For a movie whose plot is centered around the fight between Godzilla and Kong, many side stories are entertained, taking away from the main action. All of the destructive fight sequences between the colossal titans were beautifully animated, and highly engaging. After a while, the side stories became irrelevant, and added nothing to the movie by the end. The creator would have been much better off cutting these side stories out, and replacing them with those sweet, sweet fight scenes. 

The movie would be much more enjoyable had the producer cast a better screenwriter, as they had to be extremely unskilled to screw up plotting such an original idea. The main dialogue was hard to follow, and the constant side-tracking became annoying after a while. We are here to see them fight, not to see Maddie (Millie Bobby Brown), the main character of the previous movie, fight with her father for the sixth time.

Where this movie lacked in substance, it made up for in sheer grandeur of action. Though it was not as graphically violent as “King Kong: Skull Island,” the knowledge that Kong rammed into 30, fully-employed businesses does not sit right with the soul violence-wise. Every single one of the fight scenes lived up to expectations, especially when Kong crossed over into the world of monsters. That sequence of events makes up for every fumble in the plot line, making “Godzilla vs. Kong” worth watching despite its horrid attempt at scripting.

 

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