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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

I have been a fan of the Monsterverse movies since ‘Godzilla’ in 2014. I thought ‘Kong: Skull Island’ was an enjoyable departure for normal monster movies. ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ was a bit of a mis-step but had some good visuals and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ was a highly enjoyable movie. This is the second time in just a few months that I have seen Godzilla in a cinema and that's a great line to write.

The characters that feature in this film are all from the previous film although there is no Millie Bobby Brown  which is actually a good thing as I didn’t think she worked as a character and did some irritating things in ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’. I wasn't keen on Brian Tyree Henry’s performance in ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ as it felt like a caricature and not a real person. Thankfully the character seems a lot more tolerable and it allows Henry to show him comedy skills which were drowned out by his character. I also thought that Dan Stevens’ Trapper was a good character. He could so easily have been annoying but whilst he did seem like he was going to be irritating he reigns it into just the right level of quirky. I do think that Kaylee Hottle deserves a lot of praise because her character has been central to this and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ and yet she has hogged the story to make herself look good. She has has show empathy with Kong and to have a lovely relationship with what is essentially a CGI character shows that Hottle is far better than she is given credit for and hopefully she has a long career ahead of her. Rebecca Hall i think does her best with what she is given which is fine and serves a purpose for the film but I would be lying if I said that it was spectacular. 


If I had issues then there are really nitpicks. Firstly I think that Godzilla is a side character for large chunks of this movie. I’m more of a Godzilla fan than Kong so this is perhaps not such a surprising nitpick but i would have liked to see more of Godzilla. Also the film suffers from coming just a few months after the brilliant ‘Godzilla Minus One’ which perhaps a lot of people didn’t see which is a shame as its brilliant. 


Godzilla x Kong shows that there is plenty of life left in both monsters and I would be surprised if we didn’t get more in the future but with a bit more Godzilla than Kong.


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