Godzilla vs. Kong 2021 Full Movie Reviews And Information

 "Godzilla vs. Kong" is a crowd-pleasing, smash-'em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in "The Tree of Life" had been subcontracted to the makers of "Yellow Submarine." It has rainstorms and explosions and into-the-wormhole light shows, giant mammals and reptiles and amphibians and insects and beasts that might be hybrids of one or more of the animal kingdoms, with some zombie, robot, or demon thrown in. It dares to dream big and be goofy and sincere as it does it. And yet, for an over-scaled and incident-packed tentpole flick, "Godzilla vs. Kong" stays light on its feet, like its co-leading man, a skyscraper-sized primate who bounds through jungles, tropical and concrete, like an astronaut skipping on the moon. It might be the best studio film so far this year. If it isn't, it's for damn sure the most fun. 

Spoilers from here—even though, as I will argue, the tale is told in a way that renders such warnings unnecessary.

Directed by Adam Wingard ("The Guest"), and written by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein (who wrote the first film in the series), "Godzilla vs. Kong" continues this series' tradition of moving the master narrative about the Monarch project forward while letting each successive team of filmmakers do their own thing. The first entry in the series, "Godzilla," was "Close Encounters of the Kaiju Kind," unveiling its creatures in Steven Spielberg magic-and-wonder mode, and introducing the franchise's unifying premise: giant creatures older than the dinosaurs once lived on the earth's surface, feeding on residual radiation from the Big Bang, then moved inside as that energy ebbed, hibernating in the "Hollow Earth" until humans disturbed their slumber with nuclear testing, strip mining, and the like.

The last two months of rabid meme-spawning ridicule aimed at the absurdity of Godzilla vs Kong’s very existence had prepped us all for a punchline rather than an actual movie, something to poke fun at rather than have fun with. It wasn’t just because of its inherent, Happy Meal tie-in silliness but also an awareness of what had come before, a young Warner Brothers cinematic universe precariously built on shoddy foundations. Gareth Edwards’s 2014 Godzilla might have boasted a couple of visually audacious sequences but it was mostly a rather unacceptably dull and bafflingly serious reboot. It was at least coherent, something that Michael Dougherty’s noisy 2018 sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters couldn’t even manage, an unwieldy mess of a thing that was embarrassingly outdone by a canny marketing campaign.

In-between the two, there was more to recommend in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s Kong: Skull Island in 2017, which was uneven but mostly rather entertaining and surprisingly nasty, bolstered by a keener awareness of what tone a b-movie such as this needs to at least somewhat work. The films had attempted to lay the groundwork for an interconnected world of city-crushing monsters controlled by Monarch, a shadowy scientific organisation, but the convoluted cork board dot-connecting pushed us further away from the good stuff: watching giant creatures destroy things. The commercial failure of Godzilla: King of the Monsters – a film that barely covered its budget and marketing costs worldwide – was surely enough to make Warners second guess their expensive and extravagant MonsterVerse especially after a bullish decision to shoot Godzilla vs Kong before its predecessor had even been released.

The tea leaves weren’t offering up much hope, dampened even further by the pandemic, a film designed for the biggest screen possible modestly unfurling for many of us at home instead (in the US it will be available on HBO Max and in cinemas and in the UK it’s a premium rental). But perhaps this unlikely underdog positioning has ultimately come to Godzilla vs Kong’s rescue because what was initially seen as a bloated and unwanted piece of boardroom product has now become a scrappy little contender, fighting its way from far beneath sea level up to the surface, triumphantly landing on both feet, the striking spring surprise none of us had expected.

Legends collide in "Godzilla vs. Kong" as these mythic adversaries meet in a spectacular battle for the ages, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Kong and his protectors undertake a perilous journey to find his true home, and with them is Jia, a young orphaned girl with whom he has formed a unique and powerful bond. But they unexpectedly find themselves in the path of an enraged Godzilla, cutting a swath of destruction across the globe. The epic clash between the two titans--instigated by unseen forces--is only the beginning of the mystery that lies deep within the core of the Earth.