Godzilla vs. Kong

Godzilla vs. Kong is a crowd-pleasing, smash-'em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in "The Tree of Life" had been subcontracted to the makers of "Yellow Submarine."

Godzilla vs. Kong competently, efficiently does its job, which is really all you can ask of the fourth movie in a rickety franchise.

Judged purely on the promises made by the title, it’s hard to see Godzilla vs. Kong as anything but a success. As a film, on the other hand, Wingard’s G v. K often still feels like it’s held together with copious amounts of cinematic duct tape.

If it’s vibes (and destruction) you seek, Godzilla vs. Kong delivers.

A decidedly dumb entry in the titan saga that’s still kind of fun.

It’s essential to have characters and a good story around a ‘GvK’ movie because, without it, all your left with is an empty trailer of fight scenes. The irony is this overly involved story detracts from one’s engagement in the movie. Legends may finally collide in this installment, and it’s mildly entertaining in spots, but the whole endeavor is ultimately almost as hollow as the earth’s empty core.

Godzilla and Kong’s brawls have the ennui-inducing feel of a child arbitrarily smashing action figures together.

One of my favourite movies ever. The acting and voice acting is spot on, and the CGI… is just pure amazement. It is well paced and rich in story, which makes it an amazing movie to watch.

The film isn’t one that aims for much depth; you watch it to see two giants clash, and that part isn’t bad. The action scenes are visually strong, but the story is both scattered and overly shallow. The human characters once again take up unnecessary screen time, and none of them add anything meaningful to the narrative. While Godzilla and Kong’s scenes are fun, the film overall stands on a very weak **** short, if you just want to watch some kaiju fighting, it’s passable; but don’t expect anything more.

A bit of a bummer that they let Kong get defeated by Godzilla in "round 3" so easily. Movie would've been better if that hadn't happened. Beyond that, it's an okay movie.

One more chapter in Legendary Entertainment's big, loud, computer-generated monster movie blowout, finally pitting cinema's two best-known behemoths in a rematch of their 1962 rubber suit showdown. The long and short of it is this: Godzilla vs. Kong is exactly what you think it is, but also not quite what the three preceding installments might have led you to hope for. Those films contained several unique, essential pieces **** monster movie, but couldn’t quite bring them all together in the same place. This effort may have scattered them to the ends of the Earth. While Godzilla '14 suffered from too much dusty orange, brown and grey, sacrificing spectacle for aura, that also gave it a unique air of mystery and a personal, street-level point of view. The big guy was a force of nature, neither good nor evil, often experienced as little more than a distant rumble through the clouds and clutter of so many toppled ****. Skull Island and King of the Monsters moved in pop-friendlier directions, granting a better view of the action, while also leaning on pure entertainment value and top-notch creative direction. This new model represents a continuation of that slide into crowd-pleasing razzle dazzle, delivering two hours of curious neon lights, spit-flinging alpha roars, **** concussions and flashy pin-up moments, but it's increasingly limited in most other respects. We get the title fight, all right, and kudos for having the resolve to actually depict a winner after two rounds, but the big visuals aren't half as epic as the full-blown elemental fury seen in KotM, nor as ferociously intense as Kong's last solo flick. Both headliners move with a surprising lack of magnitude, swinging ten-story haymakers that land like stiff jabs, not earthquakes. We see so much casual collateral damage that forty-floor buildings become a mere inconvenience, minor hazards that spray black soot as they're toppled over. They might as well be made of cardboard, just like the old days. The nonsensical story elements fare no better. Not that this is a particular strength for previous chapters, or even for a vast majority of similar films. Godzilla vs. Kong is a bad example of storytelling amidst a genre that's renowned for bad storytelling. It's stuffed with cryptic lore, clichéd character archetypes, bone-headed decisions, mindless pseudo-science, telegraphed plot developments... a full bucket of hogwash that made me feel like a moron for paying attention. Kong's ancestral homeland is the worst such offense, a landscape so fundamentally stupid and conceptually flawed that I couldn't stop shaking my head, puzzling over its many gaping, mind-numbing inconsistencies. Godzilla is painted as villain right from the start, which takes all the fun out of picking sides and rooting for your favorite among friends. Listen, I'm not trying to be hard-to-please here. I don't need any sort of spiritual or philosophical revelation in the midst of my giant ape vs. lizard skirmishes, but I also expect a little bit more respect. I'll suspend my disbelief as long as you don't insult my intelligence. And, despite the visceral thrills of those fleeting headline bouts, this fails the litmus test.

Did I just watch Batman v Superman again? Because it felt like I just watched Batman v Superman again. Any time a giant monster isn't punching another giant monster in the face in Godzilla vs. Kong it is a dreadful movie with a shockingly abysmal script. Somehow it feels both overstuffed and underwritten at the same time, with too many characters (half of which serve no purpose to the story) and a bizarre plot that feels ripped right from a rejected Syfy Network script. If I didn't know any better, I'd have assumed this screenplay was written by a kindergartener.