As if the monsters had poster problems a decade after the beginning of the saga, Godzilla and Kong: the new empire It has the two titans in the title, but the radioactive mutant dinosaur is here relegated to the background before the cuteness of its former rival. Adam Wingard (The Guest and Macabre Hunt) decides to begin the fifth film of the franchise where he himself had left off Godzilla vs Kong: The ape was confined to the Hollow Earth while his then rival dominated the planet’s surface.
Kong shows signs of depression in their daily lives while the constant search for a survivor of their species continues. The monkey already combs gray hair in his beard and, in between confrontations with the monsters that compromise his survival in the center of the Earth, he suffers a traumatic infection in a tusk.
A strange warning signal emitted from the center of the planet launches a diverse pseudoscientific expedition into the interior and also awakens Godzilla, who was sleeping peacefully like a kitten in an improvised crib inside the Roman Colosseum.
The monster detects an important future mission and decides to recharge its energy in a French atomic plant and by defeating a titan that dominates Antarctica, and thus acquires an attractive pink tone in the brightest film of the entire franchise.
Godzilla immediately returns to the bed to continue sleeping while he waits for the ape’s summons, which will only arrive for the third act.
The discovery of Kong
After surfacing for an impromptu root canal, post and crown, Kong discovers to the shock that he is not the last of his kind while the human expedition has a similar revelation with an underground civilization.
Wingard takes advantage of the well-known parallel between man and ape to express himself about the identity and breeding of all primates until, finally, he returns to steaks.
The film has few dialogues and a lot of action, thanks to a scarce homo sapiens presence. The human role here is relegated to the progressive message about the future of the planet, to some short gag to decompress and to the unnecessary mansplaining (that need of man to explain how things are), which here abandons its gender form to expand to the entire human species when each specialist highlights what happens to the titans on screen by putting it into words.
Throughout the history of cinema, a clear sign of early extinction usually appears over time in the monster movie cycle. Their own films usually integrate the initial phase, in this case the two Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island.
Then the crossovers of monsters are used to take advantage of the synergy between them, as in this installment and its predecessor. The last phase of horror, a decadent emblem of the end of a franchise, usually features titles that begin with “the son of…” or “the girlfriend of…”.
Wingard shows the titans still full, but already lays the foundations to take the last step by crossing Kong with a little monkey that will serve as his companion.
After a fight in which Kong eats an underwater titan in two buns and swallows it like a sausage, the macaque introduces his new adoptive father to a civilization of enslaved monkeys, very much in line with Planet of the Apes, who fulfill the orders of the tyrant Skar King, a red-haired orangutan who dominates the rest thanks to the subjugation of a species of ice-spitting female Godzilla called Shimo.
Thus the foundations were laid for the showy final battle, after the return of a titan who intervenes so that the monsters of the title finally make peace. Wingard presents the confrontation as a kind of wrestling match on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro in a film that heralds the near end of the franchisebut manages to hide the signs of exhaustion behind crazy visual ideas resolved with lucidity.
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Godzilla and Kong: the new empire
Action. United States, 2024, 115′. SAM 13. Address: Adam Wingard. With: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry. Rooms: Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Multiplex Belgrano, Cinépolis Recoleta, Showcase Norcenter.
