One of the great things about monster films like Godzilla is that they can vary greatly in genre and tone. In many films, the monster is portrayed as a force of nature that attacks humans with no remorse, and in others, he is portrayed as a hero who does gymnastic moves to fight other monsters to save the human race. This new film goes more along the lines of the latter type by having Godzilla team up with King Kong to fight evil monsters. That is when Godzilla is actually in it.
In many ways, it is clear that this film is not trying to be anything more than it needs to be. The advertisements show a large monster-fight and popcorn kind of movie, and that is what the audience gets. However, despite having such cool monsters, the filmmakers do not care about introducing interesting human characters. It does not have to be the harrowing experience in “Godzilla Minus One,” but it has to be enough that the audience does not immediately want to get back to the monsters as soon as the humans pop back up on the screen.
The reason this is mentioned is that this film’s predecessor, while not having characters that are any more interesting than the ones displayed here, was good enough to know how to properly balance out monsters and humans when humans do not have much to offer. This film still delivers on the monsters, but it emphasizes the humans much more, and unfortunately, it is painful to sit through old and tired cliches and exposition that have no reason to exist.
In the end, though, most people do not care about how bad the humans are as long as the monster fights are cool enough. While the villains are not the most unique, they are good enough to give monster fights that end in a high body count. Kids will likely enjoy “Godzilla x Kong” very much, and it is a decently fun waste of time. But much like the Transformer and Jurassic World sequels, it just feeds the same old eye candy to the audience without having much else to offer.
