GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024)

A Tribute To Toybox Tokusatsu

I meticulously assemble Lego blocks to shape the city skyline. Over three decades have passed since then and now but I can still feel those devastatingly hard plastic interlocking cuboids between my thumb and forefinger. After that it’s time to develop the downtown area utilizing every Construx, Erector Set, and Lincoln Log piece I can muster. Add my fleet of Matchbox cars and a platoon of green plastic army men for added depth and realism. Then I take a bunch of my mom’s houseplants and snake the brown Afghan in between the terracotta pots to construct a jungle terrain for King Kong. The mighty Kong isn’t really up to my rigorous casting tastes being a stuffed animal and all but I won him from a UFO Catcher game and he scaled well with the star of the whole production, my 20” Mattel Shogun Warrior Godzilla figure. Just when our beloved King Of The Monsters is supposed to rise from the ocean (the blue comforter with satin trim) my dad swings open my bedroom door, knocking over half of downtown and stepping on a die-cast toy car. Following close behind him is our cat Bruno who immediately starts knocking over army men and trashing my toy tokusatsu tableau. We all let the expletives fly. Dad says it’s dinner time and I’ve got to put away my toys. Damn it. I guess I can try and set it all up again later. It was almost perfect if you squinted.

French fashionista Coco Chanel famously said "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” A maximalist would say, “Fuck that, Coco! Put another hat on that hat!” GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE is a perfect exercise in maximalist monster moviemaking with director Adam Wingard emptying the entire tokusatsu toy box and throwing all the pieces at the big screen. Even the name itself is a mouthful and reads like calculus. Was GODZILLA VS. KONG 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO already taken?

I kid, I kid! My jests come from a place of love. I really enjoy Wingard’s work and delight in seeing him given the keys to the kingdom of a big budget movie franchise. I’ve immensely enjoyed his work on V/H/S, YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST, and GODZILLA VS. KONG was a peak motion picture experience of 2021 for me. Coming out right on the heels of a global pandemic and being a flagship stream for a fledgling HBO Max featuring two of my all-time favorite characters in film was an absolute benediction of battling behemoths. It looks fantastic, the sound design/score is spectacular, and the humungous hootenanny in a neon slathered Hong Kong is a genuine thing of beauty. GODZILLA VS. KONG was exactly what I needed, at the very moment I needed it.

If this is the point where you expect me to say THE NEW EMPIRE pales in comparison then *record scratch* sorry to let you down, because I had a ball with this movie! As I monologued magniloquently, this movie maintains a maximalist aesthetic that miraculously works! During the 115 minute runtime we get at least ten named kaiju, eight full-fledged kaiju battles, a bunch of big ape on big ape violence, two adoptive parent arcs, one giant gorilla dentist visit, a child of destiny subplot, Dan Stevens (look kids, it’s Legion!) dressed as Ace Ventura, and if all this sounds as dizzying as emerging from a portal into Hollow Earth, well yeah, it is, but it’s also fun as hell. Let’s delve into these monster picture points of interest further to put a finer point on it.

First, we break down the killer cast of kaiju we get in this flick. Aside from the titular Titans we also get Scylla the spider, Tiamat the super sharp solar serpent, Drownviper the father/son sushi platter, Skar King the subterranean ape slaver, biblically accurate Mothra, Suko (who’s called Mini-Kong in the film, Diddy Kong by me), Shimo (whom I loving refer to as ‘Zilla Ice), a pack of Wart Dogs, a gaggle of giant great apes working in a coal mine, and you best believe they all brawl it out! The fight choreography is creative and varied catering to each character's unique physiology and designs. Speaking of design, Jared Krichevsky helming the art department crafted a slew of spectacular colossal critters that really came to life onscreen especially when they were tearing each other apart.

However, the film isn’t strictly about fantastical beast fisticuffs. THE NEW EMPIRE also isn’t afraid to tug at the feels with two fully formed surrogate parent storylines. One carries over from GODZILLA VS. KONG, with our resident Kong expert Ilene Andrews taking in orphaned Iwi native Jai. The other is Kong himself acting not as stepdad but as the dad who stepped up for Suko. Neither portion of pathos feel out of place and the pair provide plot propulsion to pleasurable payoffs.

This is not the greatest tokusatsu in the world, no, this is just a tribute. Alas, you can’t typify this theater as tokusatsu since it’s not done with practical effects. Guys in rubber suits are a must for the medium. That being said, you can see the love and respect for the subgenre with every frame as Adam Wingard seems to be one of the few American auteurs who actually gets kaiju cinema. There’s an inherently charming cheese to the discipline that other genres would eschew. In fact, the Legendary Pictures Monsterverse offerings prior to Wingard played things a bit too straight for my tastes. Embracing an ‘80s toyline motif with Titan-sized dental rigs, portal-hopping Hollow Earth vehicles, piloted by Dan Stevens’ Trapper character with his pet detective joins G.I. Joe aesthetic actually fits like a glove. So when Godzilla changes colors and Kong gets a robot arm, the audience just nods knowingly at the kitsch commonplace in kaiju.

If I have one complaint for this film is that while dumping the entire toy box out and playing with all these creatively crafted creatures is a genuine hoot, it does feel like they jammed a bit too much into the runtime. A few fights feel rushed like Signora Scylla not getting a web in edgewise with Godzilla. He, our titular King Of The Monsters, only gets eight minutes of screen time! Really, it’s more of a King Kong movie with a Godzilla subplot that probably could have benefitted from being split into two full-length feature films and fleshed out a little more fully. It's still fun to play with all those Titans in one sitting but that’s how Wingard chose to play with his toys. If you want something different, get your own toys and set them up how you like. For me, it was almost perfect if you squinted.