For those new to this blog I’m a Godzilla fan, there are a few reviews here that’ll attest to that, and like most diehard G-fans it all started in childhood. Back then I loved pretty much anything with Godzilla in it, now that I’m grown I prefer the more serious G-flicks, but I never particularly cared for the original Toho produced, King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962). Two reasons: the main one being the re-design of Godzilla for that film. They made him look more lizard-like, and for me it just never looked right. Still doesn’t. Second reason is how goofy they made King Kong’s visage look. However, I didn’t mind it with the only other movie Toho made with him, King Kong Escapes (1967). I haven’t seen that one since childhood and it still perplexes me why I haven’t picked up Universal’s blu-ray yet. I don’t think I cared much for the story of King Kong Vs. Godzilla either, but since I haven’t seen that one since childhood either I can’t be sure.
Well, we finally have an American remake of the two monster titans tangling with another, and it acts as the capper to America’s second, and more successful attempt to translate Japan’s King Of The Monsters to American audiences, starting with Godzilla in 2014. The second installment deviates from centering on Godzilla to set up a new version of Kong (Kong: Skull Island) in 2017, then comes the actual sequel, Godzilla, King Of The Monsters in 2019. With the deal with Toho over, the American “Monsterverse,” as it’s being called, is still set to go on thanks to Godzilla Vs. Kong being a hit, more than King Of The Monsters, and rumors as of right now has the Monsterverse continuing by centering on the son of Kong, which is kind of strange since Kong didn’t die in this 2021 remake, so, who knows, this might change. With the assumption, at least by me, Toho will begin a new cycle of Godzilla movies over in Japan. Personally, I’m looking more forward to seeing more traditional G flicks from Toho, despite how radically different their final one (Shin Godzilla) was, than more Kong films, but trust me whatever they cook up to continue the Monsterverse I’ll be watching.
Godzilla Vs. Kong takes place five years after the events of King Of The Monsters, and up till now Godzilla hasn’t show his face. When he does, for reasons people can’t fathom, he decides to attack Florida, specifically a high tech company called, Apex Cybernetics, killing a host of people. I didn’t totally feel like Godzilla was defending mankind in his previous two movies, but more like re-establishing his dominance when other Titans surfaced to claim his throne, and to right a “natural imbalance” on Earth, but most of the public feels Big G stood up for us humans to some degree. Well, it looks like he wasn’t doing that in Florida. But, here me out, there was a reason for that out of the blue attack.
Apex is run by billionaire, Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir), the late Monarch scientist Ishirō Serizawa’s son, Ren (Shun Oguri), is the other main character of Apex we get to know. He’s their tech guy, and what pray tell do these two have to do with Godzilla’s Florida attack? They aren’t totally the human bad guys of the movie, because I can kind of understand why they did it, but had they succeeded I can see a whole host of problems they would have instituted that would’ve really fucked society as a whole. There was an after credits scene in King Of The Monsters that revealed either one or two of Monster Zero’s (aka Ghidorah) heads survived. Not as in lived, survived as in they weren’t obliterated by Godzilla. Apex’s aim is to establish human dominance over the Titans, and that’s the part I can understand. I mean, all these monsters are running amok trashing the earth it’s understandable someone somewhere would want to build some kind of machine(s) to combat them, kind of like what was done in the Pacific Rim universe (yes, a crossover would be awesome), and so Apex thought the best way to do this would be to build a mechanical version of Godzilla (aka MechaGodzilla), correction a cybernetic version of Godzilla.
Cybernetic, you say?
Yes, Ghidorah had three separate heads it was deduced used psychic communication to act and react in tandem, MechaGodzilla was built around one of these skulls, while the other was stationed in Apex’s headquarters in Hong Kong and set up to be a hub for a pilot to seat himself in and link up with using a headset helmet to link his mind to the cyborg Godzilla. Problems with that alone aside, Apex’s main problem at the moment is a power source for this massive creation. They don’t have one that can sustain activity for long, but they have an idea where to get it.
Enter “The Hollow Earth Theory,” which is a common myth the earth is hollow and harbors a secret ecosystem. Apex’s tech has detected an energy source from below, and to them it’s not a radical theory, because they know of one dude who believes in it and tried to get down there, but couldn’t due to gravitational forces that killed his brother when he actually tried. Alexander Skarsgård is Dr. Nathan Lind and they want his help in getting to this ecosystem and it’s “power source.”
In this movie we learn Kong is really a descendent of a race of giant primates who lived in the Hollow Earth, and that Skull Island may have been an “upworld” remnant of the place. That power source is part of a lineage of Kong whose race fought Godzillas, so these two species have a long time beef with one another. To make a long story short Kong is used to lead a team into the earth, a piece of that power source is gathered and ends up powering MechaGodzilla. The movie is pinpoint accurate in doing what the title says, showing us two massive battles between Kong and Godzilla, and believe it or not one wins and one loses, unlike the original Toho movie, and shockingly, but maybe not so since Godzilla headlines the movie, he’s the one who wins, and had the humans not intervened to jump start Kong’s heart Kong would have died. Okay, so, good to know, Godzilla is greater than King Kong.
But the movie gives us one more battle, a three way between revived Kong, Godzilla and MechaGodzilla in Hong Kong. The second battle between Kong and Big G takes place at night in that city and, holy shit, do they fuck up that place royally. Now it knows how Japan’s felt for decades with kaiju targeting them over and over. The three-way slugfest, however, takes place in the day and even more real-estate is destroyed. I liked this third battle because Kong gets to get a kind of proxy revenger revenge on Godzilla by trashing MechaGodzilla until he’s dead, but again had the humans not intervened to short circuit the machine from inside Apex Kong would have been killed. So, what we’re learning is Kong may be King, but he just can’t seal the deal when it comes to taking on monsters that look like Godzilla. Godzilla will shockingly even help Kong during a crucial moment, but then when it’s all over decides he needs to reassert his dominance once more, and Kong basically, says, ‘hey, man, I’m good, you’re King and I’m cool with that.’ They part ways.
The final shot is Kong back in Hollow Earth, back home essentially free to be king of another “Skull Island.” The journey into Hollow Earth offered up some tantalizing if brief encounters with the kinds of Titans living down there, and one quick cameo had people on the net wondering if that might be a Godzilla offspring. Have a look below and see what you think. Face looks about right and those ridges on its back albeit not fully formed could be the immature back spikes of Godzilla. Could a rematch of some kind be down the road, if not with Kong, than with whatever descendants come from his re-introduction into this new ecosystem? I mean, there could be another giant ape around, and if they’re going to center the next Monsterverse movie on a song of Kong there has to be.
When it comes to the humans in this there are two groups, Team Kong and Team Godzilla, and interestingly neither one ends up interacting with the other throughout the whole film. Millie Bobby Brown and Kyle Chandler are back from King Of The Monsters as daughter Madison and father Dr. Mark Russell. Chandler’s appearances are slim while Madison is the lead here; allying herself this time out with Deadpool 2’s Julian Dennison as Josh Valentine and ex-Apex technician turned conspiracy theorist podcaster, Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry). These three are the ones who lead us to the Apex revelations and the short circuiting of their creation in time to prevent Kong’s head from being drilled into.
On Team Kong is the aforementioned Dr. Nathan Lind, and two of “Kong’s handlers” so to speak, Monarch anthropologist, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), and Jai (Kaylee Hottle), the only surviving native of Skull Island, she’s a young, deaf girl who’s befriended Kong and they speak to one another with sign language. I’m not sure if Skull Island still exists, they mentioned it was hit by a storm that killed off all the natives, but I still wasn’t sure if the island was wiped off the map or not. It may have been since the movie opens with Kong being kept in a massive Skull Island-ish ecosystem that’s really an insanely massive enclosure.
I’m not sure why people complain about the human subplots between the monster action in these movies, everyone seems to hate them and think they’re a distraction. I’ve never thought that even of the old Toho films, though I will admit the human characters in Godzilla (2014), specifically the soldier they decided to focus on after they stupidly killed off the perceived and rightful lead (aka Bryan Cranston) rubbed me the wrong way when I first saw it. I didn’t feel that way about the characters in King Of The Monsters, or this one. I suspect some of that criticism comes from people who don’t normally watch old Godzilla films, or fans that do and have now grown to simply want nothing but monsters kicking each other’s asses and destroying massive amounts of landscape. I can see a valid argument for that, when it comes right down to it, but you have to have a human component in those flicks to show how utterly useless we are at combating giant monsters, unless you live in the Pacific Rim universe where the odds have been decidedly evened.
Warner Brothers Home Entertainment releases Godzilla Vs. Kong in six different editions on June 15th: solo DVD, 3D Blu-ray/DVD Combo, Blu-ray/DVD Combo, 4K UltraHD/Blu-ray Combo, a 3 movie Blu-ray set with Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla, King Of The Monsters, and a Best Buy exclusive 4K UltraHD/Blu-ray Comb0.
Video/Audio/Subtitles: (4K) 2160p 2.39:1 widescreen ultra high definition/1080p 2.39:1 high definition widescreen—English Dolby Atmos, 7.1 English Dolby TrueHD , 5.1 English Dolby Digital, 5.1 French Dolby Digital, 5.1 Spanish Dolby Digital—English SDH, French, Spanish, Latin, Brazilian, Portuguese, Cantonese, Complex Chinese, Korean, Finnish, Danish, Swedish & Norwegian subs
Extras Included . . .
Disc #1 (4K):
- Commentary By Director Adam Wingard
Disc #2 (1080p Blu-ray):
- Kong Discovers Hollow Earth (7:53)
- Kong Leaves Home (7:56)
- Behold Kong’s Temple (5:52)
- The Evolution of Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World (8:25)
- Godzilla Attacks (6:25)
- The Phenomenon of GŌJIRA, King of the Monsters (9:52)
- Round One: Battle at Sea (5:01)
- Round Two: One Will Fall (5:58)
- Titan Tag Team: The God and the King (7:59)
- The Rise of MechaGodzilla (7:06)
(Note: Basic DVD does not come with the director’s commentary. All other extras are ported over though)
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