Godzilla vs. Kong - SPOILER film re-cap and review (LONG)

(WARNING: This is long. Really long. REALLY LONG. Remember that time I wrote a re-cap / review of a half-hour sitcom, and that write-up was like 12 pages long? Yeah, like that. I'm not kidding.)

I'm definitely a Godzilla fan. I should say that I'm a fan of original Godzilla, the Toho version, not the weirdo movie that Matthew Broderick was in that came out in 1998, though I did very much like their marketing campaign. In the recent series of films, I liked the second film more than the first film, and I liked aspects of the new King Kong movie, so I was looking forward to the clash between the two.

I thought the augmented Warner Bros. and Legendary logos were pretty cool.

So we get re-introduced to Kong as he's doing things that we're familiar with - waking up, scratching an itch, taking a shower. He's just like us. And he clearly has some kind of rapport with the little girl.

And then Kong makes a spear out of a tree that he tore up, and he throws it at the sky, which breaks, revealing that it's some kind of electronic dome. 3 minutes and 19 seconds into the film, Kong turns out to be Katniss Everdeen. And that is a precursor for much of what happens throughout the rest of the film.

The graphics tell us that Kong is in a containment dome on Skull Island. Why? Why did they feel the need to build a "containment dome"? Was he going to leave? Skull Island seems pretty secluded from the rest of the world. Is he going to swim somewhere? Build himself a canoe? Catch the next JetBlue flight? He showed no indication that he was going to leave the island in his last film. In dialogue, we're told that if Kong leaves Skull Island, Godzilla will come for him. Godzilla didn't seem to care much about him before. It's not like either of them just popped into existence. They seemed to have co-existed on the same planet perfectly fine before. Godzilla only cares if Kong leaves the island? Why?  They also set up the relationship that they need to protect Kong from Godzilla. Kong is the sympathetic one who needs protection. Godzilla is the menace that they need to protect someone else from. Already, Kong is set up as the good guy, and Godzilla is set up as the bad guy. I did like the hieroglyphics of them, though.

We're introduced to Apex Cybernetics, owned by Walt Simmons, who seemed like a reminder of John Hammond, who opened Jurassic Park. Apex has some facility in Pensacola, Florida that Godzilla attacks for "no reason". People are so shocked and angry that after 3 years of peace, Godzilla attacks unprovoked, which he's never done before. Yeah, maybe think about that. He's never done it before. Don't you think that something has provoked him into attacking? Maybe look into that? So, Godzilla has been set up not only as a menace to Kong but also to humans.

Simmons goes to recruit some dude (I like the line about him having 30 boxes of his non-selling book in his apartment.) who had posited the concept of Hollow Earth. (His name is Nathan, but I like referring to him as Book Dude instead.) Simmons says there's something in Hollow Earth that will help them create a weapon against Godzilla. Because we've already been told repeatedly that Godzilla is a menace.

The scientist lady (Ilene) who's been studying Kong on Skull Island has evidently sort of adopted an indigenous child (Jia) whose entire people were killed in some major storm, and Kong only saved her. When Ilene tells Jia that they need to take Kong away from Skull Island, Jia protests that it's home, for both her and Kong. It just did not sit well with me that the white lady was taking the indigenous kid away from home and telling her that her "home" doesn't matter as long as the two of them are together. Umm, lady, evidently, Jia doesn't feel that way. I mean, I get that she's a complete orphan now, having lost not just her parents, but her entire civilization, but taking her away from Skull Island seems a bit much to add on to her already overwhelming loss, don't you think, and you're of the opinion that only the relationship between the two of you should matter to her?

So they drag Kong, and Jia, away from their home so that he can help find Hollow Earth, because they think that he has some genetic Google maps connection to it. Simmons' daughter Maia comes along on the mission to supervise, and she's immediately telegraphed as being an annoying bitch because she emphasizes that her father will get what he wants, and all the money he has and is spending on this mission, and she keeps referring to Kong as a monkey. Yeah, bitch.

And then they discover that Kong knows sign language and that he's been talking to Jia, who is mostly deaf and doesn't speak and communicates with Ilene through sign language. Jia tells Ilene that Kong is sad, and Kong forlornly signs "home". Awwww.  In case you haven't figured it out yet, we're meant to empathize and root for Kong.

We get glimpses of Madison, who we know from the Godzilla movies, and she recruits her friend Josh to help. I just kept thinking that Josh was the British accent version of Ned, Peter Parker's "guy in a chair" best friend in the Spiderman films. Then I come to find out that the actor was in "Deadpool 2", and I thought he was terrific in that. He's kind of wasted in this film, but I guess when they ask you to be in Godzilla vs. Kong with significant screen time, you don't really turn that down.

There's a whole bunch of stuff with Brian Tyree Henry as Bernie, who's the Titan conspiracy theory guy. I think he was my favorite human in the whole movie, and I really enjoyed his scenes.

So they rip Kong away from his home because he will save the world by leading them to a power source in Hollow Earth that will save them from Godzilla. Kong the hero vs. Godzilla the menace, again.

As they predicted, Godzilla has some kind of GPS device that tells him when Kong leaves Skull Island and Godzilla is now coming for Kong, but Kong is shackled to the aircraft carrier ship. When Maia hears that Godzilla is coming for Kong, she wants to dump "the monkey" overboard. Yeah, just abandon him. Bitch. As Godzilla approaches, and Simmons' forces move to intercept, Godzilla destroys ships and kills people, living up to being the menace that he's been painted as. Kong's ship flips over, but Book Dude manages to release the shackles so that Kong can at least fight.

So, in the first head-to-head fight between Godzilla and Kong, we see that they are pretty much the same size. That is so wrong. They should be nowhere near the same size. One article I read said that if you pause the film at certain points, it gives you the dimensions of both creatures. Godzilla is almost 400 feet tall, and Kong is something like 150 feet tall. Godzilla should be more than twice the size of Kong, which sounds about right. And yet, they can just about look each other in the eyes while fighting. So they had to make Godzilla so much smaller just to give Kong a fighting chance?

After they've been fighting for a bit, Kong ends up in the water again, and Godzilla tries to drown Kong. He would have succeeded too, except that Simmons' forces intervene by blowing depth charges to try to disorient Godzilla, which works as Kong is able to surface and climb back on the ship, half dead. They then cut the power to everything and play dead so that Godzilla will think he's won and leave, which he does. So Kong would have been a goner if not for the intervention by humans. Godzilla is the definite winner of round 1.

During that entire battle sequence, I noticed that Godzilla was often filmed and shown in the water like they did with the great white shark in "Jaws". His spikes stuck out of the water like a shark's fin, and when he approached Kong's ship, he submerged, just like the shark in "Jaws". The great white shark was the mindless killing machine menace in "Jaws". Godzilla is repeatedly portrayed as that in this film.

Madison and Josh and Bernie get tubed to Hong Kong like one of those old time containers that they used to use in banks to send documents from one part of the bank to another. That sequence was odd. I guess they just needed to get them all to Hong Kong.

After the encounter with Godzilla, the Apex folks decide the better way for Kong to travel is to get airlifted to Antarctica, where the entrance to Hollow Earth is. But once there, Kong doesn't want to go into the entrance. He's in an unfamiliar place, he's cold, and he just wants to go home. Book Dude gets Ilene to convince Jia to tell Kong that his family might be inside that entrance, and that works to get him to go in. Oh, great, manipulate Jia into lying to Kong for your own purposes.

And we get to visit Hollow Earth, which has pre-historic creatures like snakes with wings so they can fly. Yeah, that was fun. One of them coils itself around Kong and covers him with a wing like it's going to suffocate him. The Apex folk have to fire on the creature so that Kong can fight back and kill it. So again, the humans have to come to Kong's rescue.

At one point in their journey in Hollow Earth, gravity has reached an equilibrium so rocks float. That was pretty cool. Kong pushes off a rock so that he floats up to another giant rock formation.

So when Madison, Josh and Bernie arrive in Hong Kong, they end up wandering into what Bernie refers to as a nice corporate version of a sacrifice pit. And then, out comes the creature that Bernie refers to as Robot Godzilla and which Josh more accurately calls Mechagodzilla. I'll admit that I've never seen those movies, so I don't know how they were operated, but this version reminded me of a cross between how the metal defenders were controlled in "Pacific Rim" and the device that Professor X from the X-Men uses. And as Mecha unfurls, they then notice that another creature is being unleashed - a skull crawler. Why are Madison, Josh and Bernie still standing in the middle of the death pit during all this and don't start to run until the skull crawler comes after them? As soon as Bernie identified it as a sacrifice pit, maybe they should have thought, hey, instead of going out and standing RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE, maybe go back towards the sides where they're not so obviously a target and at least might have somewhere to hide or at least be more inconspicuous? At the very least, they should have done that when Mecha made his appearance. Nope, let's just stand here until the other deadly things are unleashed. So, they're trying to run away from the skull crawler, and just as the skull crawler is about to pounce on them, it's snagged by the Mecha. Oh, yeah, just like when the T-Rex in Jurassic Park snagged the attacking raptor.

After the fight where Mecha defeats the skull crawler, we discover that their current power can't sustain Mecha. After that exertion of energy, Mecha has to power down. What they're looking for in Hollow Earth is a source that will power Mecha with no problem. And we find out that whatever is in one of Mecha's eyes is what got Godzilla's attention when it was at the Apex location in Pensacola. That's what Godzilla was after there. And with the eye triggered again, it again gets Godzilla's attention, and he heads towards Hong Kong.

At the upper rock formation, Kong finds a throne room and an axe, and as he takes his place on the throne, majestic music plays and swells. Yes, we know, he's the star. The king has returned to his throne. We don't know if his magic axe has a name like Thor's does. I'm still trying to figure out why Kong has a magic axe. Have we ever seen him use an implement before? I mean, that doesn't preclude him from using one, but it was unexpected and a little weird to me.

While wandering around the Apex location in Hong Kong, Madison, Josh and Bernie make the ultimate discovery - Apex has the Ghidorah head that we saw being retrieved at the end of the last Godzilla movie. One of the Apex guys is using Ghidorah's weird bluetooth capabilities to control Mecha. No, I didn't entirely understand the "how" of that part.

So Godzilla arrives in Hong Kong and stomps around. Well, at least he's not destroying Japan this time. Change of scenery, I guess.

Back in Hollow Earth, Kong somehow figures out that the magic glowing axe needs to be put in the nicely indented magic axe slot because that's like some kind of magic axe recharger, drawing radiation from the core to charge. I don't really understand why it needs to be charged because he really just uses it like a regular axe later, but I guess it's like Thor's hammer that can be charged with lightning? I don't know.

Godzilla somehow figures out that Kong is in Hollow Earth and uses his atomic fire breath to make a hole to Hollow Earth. That seemed a much easier route than the one Kong et al took.

While Hollow Earth is glowing with the charging of the magic glowing axe, Maia extracts part of the glowing rock and sends that information back to her father. Once they analyze it, they can replicate the properties of the glowing rock and use it to power Mecha. So they have all the materials necessary on regular Earth to replicate the magic glowing properties in Hollow Earth?

Giant bird creatures come to attack, and Maia thinks it's time to get out of town. As they're trying to escape, her vehicle is intercepted by Kong, who stares inside it and then crushes it. Yay! We knew she was going to die at some point. It seems fitting that it was literally at the hand of Kong, since she was so uncaring about his life and kept calling him a monkey. I'm not a huge Kong fan but hey, don't be dismissive and insulting to him.

Kong then comes back up to the top using Godzilla's handy new route, and Kong and Godzilla have another massive fight, this time on solid ground. (I need an interlude here. At the beginning of their fight, I think Godzilla throws Kong against a building, and we see what appears to be people running away in terror. They were still sitting at dinner in a restaurant? Godzilla has been stomping around outside, and there was some dialogue around that time that they were evacuating the city. These people decided they'd stay and finish their dinner, maybe have some dessert and coffee first before evacuating? It's not until TWO titans are fighting that they think it's a good idea to leave? What the hell?)

So during Godzilla's and Kong's fight this time, we learn that the magic glowing axe absorbs Godzilla's atomic fire breath. I started to wonder if it was like Wakandan vibranium in that it would absorb the energy and then you could release it and use it against other people. Nope, that didn't seem to happen.

During the course of the fight, Kong climbs and hangs on multiple tall buildings because Kong.

Massive fight, massive fight, massive destruction (Godzilla and Kong have nothing on the Avengers as far as the scale of destruction left behind), and at the end, Godzilla has Kong pinned. Godzilla screams at Kong but lets him live. Godzilla decidedly wins round 2. After Godzilla walks away, Kong tries to get up but falls back down.

And then something goes terribly wrong. Because we knew it would. The pilot who is attached to Ghidorah's head and controlling Mecha gets disconnected and ultimately fried so no more human controller. I figured Mecha was just operating on his own now, but the husband explained to me that it meant Ghidorah was actually controlling Mecha. That kind of made sense, given how destructive Mecha then becomes, so I can go with that. I did like when Simmons was talking, and Madison, Josh and Bernie notice Mecha coming for Simmons. That was pretty funny when Simmons starts to realize something is wrong and then turns around.

Mecha makes his way out of the installation, and Godzilla engages him. Godzilla isn't doing all that well because Mecha has a definite unfair advantage, but Godzilla continues to fight.

Book Dude, Ilene and Jia make it back to the surface as well, and they go to Kong, but Jia can feel that his heart is slowing down, and Ilene tells Book Dude that he's dying. If only there was a way to shock his heart, cause, I guess that will bring him back to life? Book Dude figures out that he can use the ship to restart Kong's heart. It works, and Kong jumps back to life. Except that he seems to have a dislocated shoulder. Which he puts back in place by slamming it into a nearby building. Hey, why not make Kong even more likable by having him imitate Mel Gibson in "Lethal Weapon"?

Kong's resurrection comes just in time as Mecha is about to stuff his own brand of atomic fire breath down Godzilla's throat, but Kong redirects the atomic fire breath just in time to save Godzilla. One point for Kong. Godzilla and Kong then work together (Kong was convinced to help Godzilla by Jia, who told him that Godzilla wasn't the enemy, that the other thing was.) to fight Mecha, and Kong eventually retrieves his axe to use in the fight.

Meanwhile, "guy in a chair" Josh has been trying to figure out how to disconnect Ghidorah's head from Mecha but is having no luck guessing the password. (No, I don't know if he tried "pencil" or "Joshua".) He has a moment of inspiration when Bernie pulls out his flask of alcohol, and Josh grabs the flask and pours the liquid into the computer, causing it to short circuit a bit. That disruption causes Mecha to falter, and the titans take advantage of the situation as Godzilla uses his atomic fire breath to charge the magic glowing axe, which Kong then uses to kill / destroy / de-spine Mecha, thus cementing Kong as the hero who defeats the villain.

There is one last confrontation between Godzilla and Kong, but after the staredown, Godzilla leaves Kong be.

The final scene reveals that Kong lives in and rules Hollow Earth, which he now considers his home.

So Kong is regarded as the hero who saves the day since he is technically the one who kills Mecha, but there is zero acknowledgement of everything that Godzilla did and that Godzilla was right. He attacked the Apex location in Pensacola to get to the thing that was then put in Mecha's eye, and if he'd been allowed to destroy it there, Mecha's terror would have never been unleashed. Kong actually led Apex to Hollow Earth so that they were able to obtain the means to power Mecha. If Kong had not done that, Mecha wouldn't have had the sustaining power they were able to replicate, so Kong is actually partly responsible for Mecha's reign of terror.

I've seen a number of comments from people that plot doesn't matter in films like this, that's it's just monsters fighting each other. OK, then why fabricate such a convoluted plot? Just make up a flimsy reason why Godzilla and Kong end up in the same places and then let them fight and destroy everything in their vicinity. I'm all for that. That's essentially what they did in the third Jurassic Park movie. They made up a reason to go back to the island so that we could see the dinosaurs again and also so we could finally see pterodactyls. Great, I love a good popcorn movie.

But instead, they created a plot and a movie that made Godzilla a secondary character in his own film, and it was character assassination of him to boot as he seemingly turns violent for no reason after three years of peace. We learned nothing about him or his reasons or motivations, even when he was trying to destroy the bad things. He was just thought to be causing destruction and killing for no reason. If you're a Godzilla fan, this is a terrible use of him in this movie. If you're a Kong fan, you're likely loving his movie because he is set up as the underdog who becomes the hero, the one you're supposed to root for. I mean, heck, he's friends with an adorable little girl who's deaf and sticks up for him - how could you not love him? All along, he's humanized - because after all, if you don't give him human qualities, how are we supposed to relate to him and empathize with him and root for him? Godzilla was never given those qualities and remained "the other", the monster, the entire time. At the end of this film, he is still going to be hated and feared, until the next time something terrible happens because of some creature, and they're going to need Godzilla to save their sorry asses.

The other thing that irritated the heck out of me is that this was billed as a clash of the titans, the battle for supremacy between Godzilla and Kong, and into this epic battle, you introduce a third party? The promise of the two of them in battle isn't enough, that you have to bring Mecha into this NOW? They couldn't figure out another way to have Godzilla and Kong interact with each other without bringing in another creature? When I realized it was Mecha, my reaction was "are you kidding me?" It's a party to ostensibly celebrate Godzilla and Kong, and they invite an interloper to crash the party.

One of the things I've really been disappointed in with this series is that they seem to have done so much to disrespect Godzilla. In the first film, we never got a good look at Godzilla. Every time he was fighting something, our view was obscured, even to the point of shutting the doors during what looked like the start of a major fight between Godzilla and another creature. Why would you not let us see him? I can learn to live with the redesign of Godzilla's head. But what happened to Godzilla's signature roar? Everyone knows what he sounds like. Everyone recognizes who he is from his roar without needing to see him. There are momentary hints of it at times, but that's it. Did Toho not license them to use his actual roar? Or did they choose not to use it? I really, really don't understand how Toho can allow Godzilla to be treated the way he's been in this series. Even though there were too many new characters that they focused on in the last Godzilla movie, at least in the end, they rightly bowed to their leader. But otherwise, Godzilla has not been treated very well in the course of this series.