Movie Review: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire [2024] – Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry

Godzilla x Kong is running the franchise on fumes. I did enjoy this sequel in fits and starts, but at no point did I particularly respect it or care for it.

Some background here. I was never really a fan of Warner’s kaiju universe until I watched Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. That show did a lot of heavy lifting to connect the movies and make sense of what’s going on. It put Monarch, with all its pros and cons, at the center of the franchise as a connecting tissue.

Sadly, The New Empire undoes all that work. Will Kong and Godzilla fight each other or team up against a new threat? Honestly, halfway into the movie, you won’t care.

I really wanted to like this movie, I love action and grew to love the monsters thanks to Godzilla Minus One. Compare the two movies, and it’s clear that the character’s Japanese originators still have a better handle on what makes Godzilla fearsome and tragic — and more than the sum of its computer-generated parts.

The New Empire just doens’t feel like a Godzilla or a Kong movie. If anything, it’s more suitable as a Transformers sequel: It’s noisy, punishing, soulless, needlessly convoluted, populated by nitwits and dullards, and choked with increasingly impersonal CGI.

Should You Watch It?

at best, it is a boring and tiring sequel that gets lost in a void of bulky fights between lizards and gorillas in CGI.

Where Can I Watch It?

You can stream Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire on Max in USA and Crave in Canada.