By Michael Hernandez
If you like Old School Monster Movies, you’re going to love Godzilla VS Kong. The two iconic monsters battle it out in a new film that is a sequel to two movies, 2014’s Godzilla King of The Monsters and 2017’s Kong Skull Island. Back in 2010, Legendary Entertainment acquired the rights to both monsters and for nearly 10 years they’ve been developing a movie with the two titans as adversaries. The film was originally to be released in 2019 in theaters but was, of course, delayed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kong gets the majority of the film’s screen time.
When the movie starts, he’s back on Skull Island and being constantly monitored by a company’s team of scientists. Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is the head of the Kong observation team and her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a young deaf girl who develops a special bond with Kong, is communicating with him through sign language. The observation team decides to use Kong to lead them to Hollow Earth, a legendary space that lies at the center of the earth. They face all kinds of creatures inside Hollow Earth and with Kong’s help; they escape to find some type of emergence going on that leads both Kong and Godzilla to Hong Kong for an epic showdown.
Armed with a giant battle ax, found in Hollow Earth, which is made of one of Godzilla’s dorsal fins, the two titanic monsters wage battle in the streets of Hong Kong; doing destruction to the entire city. The fight scenes between the two monsters are epic and made me wish I could have viewed the film on the big screen. All of the movie’s CGI effects and the film’s cinematography are amazing. The movie is well worth the wait. In the end, Godzilla and Kong have to team up to defeat a robotic Godzilla-looking creature with the fate of the world lying in the balance.
The movie ends with the possibility of a sequel in the Monster Universe. It just depends on how the film is received by the movie-going public. (Which has been good so far. It made over $9 million on its opening day in theaters.) The movie will be shown on HBO Max for the entire month of April and is also currently showing in movie theaters. It’s rated PG-13 for some creature violence; which may frighten small children, and has a run time of 113 minutes.
On my “Hollywood Popcorn Scale” I rate Godzilla VS Kong a LARGE.
