REVIEW: Back again, back to back monsters stack the m’s

The doo-wop sounds of Johnnie & Joe’s “Over the Mountain, Across the Sea” welcome viewers to “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the latest crossover to come out of Lengendary Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures’ MonsterVerse industrial complex. 

King Kong is waking up from a restful nap before taking his daily walk across Skull Island, a “Hunger Games: Crossing Fire”-esque virtual megadome habitat that secures him from the public and from outside threats. Up to meet him at a turn of the song to the lyric “a girl waits for me” is Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a deaf Indigenous girl whose bond to Kong is unlike any other, and of course, borne of trauma.

Kong is feeling restless, and Jia can sense his discomfort. Alluding to a looming conflict, Kong “expert” and researcher Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) utters those fateful words that seal the deal of the film: “There can’t be two alpha titans.”

Someone else can sense a threat, and we move to meet Bernie Hayes, a janitor at Apex Cybernetics that plays investigator and conspiracy theorist when no one is looking. Brian Tyree Henry does the absolute best that he can with the corny lines given to him about the Illuminati, lizard people and whatever, but even he cannot truly bring us to care about anyone in this film besides Jia. His voice on his podcast opens up an overarching theme of corporate conspiracy, and just as he is about to gather some information, someone shows up.

The U.S. headquarters of Apex is in the lovely Pensacola, Fla., and it makes sense why Godzilla would want to destroy as much in his path in that Godforsaken state. But Bernie doesn’t believe this attack was random, and convinces listeners that something is afoot, because Godzilla only attacks when provoked, like me.

One of those listeners is the daughter of an Apex director, Madison Russell, played rather flatly by Millie Bobby Brown. As her high school class watches the CNN broadcast of Godzilla stomping on some buildings and giving some mighty roars, Russell puts in AirPods to tune into Bernie, ultimately deciding to find him and see what’s truly going on at Apex. It’s some really weird attempt at bringing ’80s adventure humor to modern anecdotes, and almost none of the jokes land.

Apex founder and evil man Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) meanwhile travels to Pennsylvania (there’s maybe one good location chosen in this movie) to connect with professor Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), a nut of a man who pushes the Hollow Earth theory which argues that  the Earth’s core is home to an insurmountable power source that generates some of the monster titans like Kong and Godzilla. Simmons wants that power, but for what?

Skarsgård absolutely cannot play the timid nerd that this film wants him to be, but sends him on a mission anyway to get Kong so that he and Apex can reach Hollow Earth, because Flat Earth was too mainstream. Against Jia’s wishes, Dr. Andrews accepts the idea that Kong could finally be home safe down there, and they venture off for the only opening to the core at Antarctica. Along the way, no matter what water they drag a sedated monster ape across, Godzilla finds them. 

As you can see, there’s a lot of different interests to keep track of in this film, dulling down any commentary on corporate motives, human fallibility, the danger of technology or taking advantage of something that some fans of the MonsterVerse like to project on to these movies. Screenwriters Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein can put whatever little Hail Mary’s to moral ideology they want in “Godzilla vs. Kong” — no one should care about that coming from the abusers of two excellent monster conceptions. 

With incredible visual effects, Apex’s motives once they reach the core are revealed and rather quickly dismantled by Kong’s sense of danger. Simmons’ daughter Maya (Eiza González) is able to harvest a sample of the power source for the company’s newest ambition, a robot monster titan fashioned after Godzilla that uses neural networks to become smarter and more lethal as it learns. 

Not to be replaced, Godzilla travels to Hong Kong where this beast of a machine wakes up. In a stunning sequence, Godzilla starts tearing through the land adjacent to the Pearl River Delta, leaving buildings lit up in rainbow colors that brighten the night. 

When Kong backs through the layers of the Earth to reach Hong Kong and this new threat (apparently you can build an underground tunnel to China), the showdown begins. Godzilla and Kong go at it like never before, crumbling the lights of the city under their bodies like a reverse pinball machine. Not much has changed about these two — Kong still has a mean right hook and Godzilla is not to be underestimated — and that’s perhaps the most comforting part of this entire movie. 

They can’t rest when the robot Mechagodzilla decides to rear its ugly head. While Godzilla is getting his shit rocked against this abomination, the little humans have to figure something out. I’ll let you enjoy that absolute idiotic narrative peak. 

It really is hard to enjoy a film like this when the origins of both Kong and Godzilla are so drawn out and twisted that they are unrecognizable besides that little “Property of Toho Co., Ltd.” note in the opening credits. Their screen partners never live up to their prestige, but there is something magical in seeing them with such great effect and attention to disaster detail. It gives me great joy to think about the next time I’ll be able to see them in theaters again, in whatever iteration or quality I can.