Review of Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) by Gilberto — 16 Apr 2021

Its been a while since I wrote a review about a movie, yet I felt compelled to write one about this one, because I think there has been a general misconception or I don't know, some sort bad realization that the more a movie embraces its bizarreness or in my point of view, its stupidity, then the better.

Such is the case for Godzilla vs. Kong a movie that throws all logic out the window, and looses all of its levity for it, but somehow is praised heavily all around by critics because this is what a movie like this is supposed to be.

And I would like to differ. One could argue that having a movie about a giant lizard or a giant monkey terrorizing earth and now fighting each other is already a concept that throws all reasoning down a precipice, but that is the thing, a filmmaker's job, or at least a good filmmaker's objective should be to make us actually care and better yet, to make us question "what if".

A good example of this is Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park which also plays with an idea that as far as we know is impossible, yet makes it in such a way that made us scared- I am willing to bet that more than one person asked while watching that movie "would you imagine if that happened?" to whoever they went to see it with- and that is because he created a story with conditions and human characters that grounded such idea.

Yet this movie tries its best to make the simplest of characters with such straightforward but absolutely illogical ideas that make them ultimately look just, incredibly stupid. The villain here could easily fit in any cartoon movie, so is the lab doctor guy who goes a long with Kong.

And the plot and the whole objective to go to the center of the Earth....its just...too much. The writing here is embarrassing, and it made it frustratingly difficult to finish the movie. A shame really, because the actual spectacle, the fighting, is actually pretty cool and plays well with scale, showing off how immense both of this monsters are and here is where the praise is coming from, really- Every outlet talking good on this film talks how amazing the fights are, but how dumb and boring the human parts are, yet because we paid to go see them fight and that delivers, then the movie is worthwhile- but such is not the case, at least not in my opinion.

Considering the fighting is only a quarter of the whole movie, its simply not worth it, and worst yet, it just feels like a lost opportunity to truly make something special and memorable. All of this comes as a result of the blatantly flat and fatal idea, that the less human plot we have on this type of films the better because people just want to see what they want to see, the spectacle, but with movies like this where I saw how bored and uninterested my family was while watching it (FYI: They love this kind of monster/disaster type of movies), and how disappointed I was myself, it just made it abundantly clear how important good characters and good plot are, even with this type of movies.

Tell you what, no one liked this one, but we all loved Godzilla from 2014 and that movie didn't even have the best characters, but at least a logical arc was there of a family trying to reunite with each other in the mids of huge monsters attacking the world, something we could relate to, something that grounded the experience, something that made us cared and best of all, made us wonder "what if something like Godzilla ever came into existence".