Superhero Meida: Gozdilla Vs Kong

If this had come out in any other year, I may be a bit more down on Godzilla Vs Kong than I am. It's honestly a let-down after King of the Monsters, you can see the cracks the pandemic made and I was really hoping for a stinger or spoiler for an unexpected Kaiju at some stage, but it does hold together well enough. Living through two years of rolling pandemic lock-downs, however, the fact that I got to see this film in a cinema had me grinning my face off underneath my mask most of the run-time. Following on from the defeat of Gidorah in King of the Monsters, Godzilla hasn't been spotted all that much for a few years, but suddenly starts attacking factories of a giant tech corporation. Meanwhile, Kong is being kept in an artificial environment so that another major Kaiju fight doesn't break out between him and Godzilla. Although not as good as King of the Monsters, Godzilla Vs Kong is the most "Kaiju" of all the films in the series thus far, embracing the crazy concepts, central children characters and balls-out science fiction that characterise the genre in Japan.

I think the success of the MCU has gone a long way to prime audiences for the kind of gonzo that Kaiju films thrive on. In Godzilla Vs Kong there is the hollow Earth, a lost race of giant intelligent apes, psychic computers and a network of anti-gravity trains under the ocean, but somehow, none of that really matters. What Godzilla Vs Kong has over all the gonzo is quality, and that sells it. I may be more of a rubber suit guy than a CGI fan, but the Kaiju fights in the film are some of the best I've seen, especially the first one on the ocean, which is something I've never seen before in the genre. When Kong punches Godzilla and his head rolls back like a boxer, it almost looks real, or at least as real as it can for two giant monsters fighting, there is a real sense of mass happening in just that one shot. The human characters don't have a great deal of personality, sadly, but the interplay between Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison is amazing and I want them to team up for more films; maybe the Enola Holmes sequels? That'd be fun.

I'm not really sold on Mechagodzilla's look in Godzilla Vs Kong, but having it be the final antagonist is fun, though I'm not sure the whole psychic skull of Gidorah thing was the best way to get the idea in there. The final fight is exactly what I expected whilst still blowing my mind with how awesome it was, with Godzilla and Kong having to put aside their differences to take down the bigger threat and even getting a few "team-up moves" in there that can be called back when we get to this series' equivalent of Destroy All Monsters or Final War. There are cracks in Godzilla Vs Kong, some parts just aren't very polished and the ending just kind of happens mid-scene, both of which can be attributed to the limitations on filming during the COVID-19 pandemic and don't spoil the film, but do make me wonder what could have been. The good news is, it seems people actually watched this film, unlike King of the Monsters, so more may be an actual possibility of getting more of these. Whilst I hope against hope that Legendary finally give me the Godzilla/Gamera crossover Toho can't, I would like to see the Pollution Monster, Battra and Space Godzilla at some stage.