GODZILLA VS KONG review – MONSTER SMASH!

I know it has been mentioned many times before on our site by yours truly but reader…I miss movie theatres. As much as I love my 4k TV at home, there is nothing like the cinema experience for particular movies that require not only a giant wide screen and a bombastic sound system to not only get you out of the house but into a shared experience. There’s nothing like it. Seeing GODZILLA VS KONG reignites my passion for big-screen studio pictures, and boy how I want to see this on a 65’ foot wide screen instead of as a screener on a 65” inch 4k TV. But hey, this movie is awesome and you should check it out either way. 

I have greatly enjoyed the GODZILLA and KONG series so far, kicking off in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’ dark and moody installment that slowly but surely introduced us to the modern big guy, then the big and entertaining KONG: SKULL ISLAND in 2017 from Jordan Vogt-Roberts and GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS in 2019 by Michael Dougherty. I love the idea of a new director each time and here we are shown a colorful and crazy new vision by director Adam Wingard and this might be the best one yet. 

Long story short, Godzilla is back after defeating Ghidorah years later, and he’s angry for some strange reason while Kong is kept on Skull Island under watch and connecting with a young girl named Jia. A series of events of our always-on-the-move Godzilla have led to more world chaos through many human circumstances, and through a series of multiple characters and storylines,  the two of them have to duke it…for many reasons that I seriously don’t want to explain, as I could spend several paragraphs breaking down all of the interconnecting storylines. 

Filmmaker Adam Wingard may have just hit the high note of the series; a fan of his all the way back when YOU’RE NEXT, meeting him after the screening and loving his movie-geek personality, he has since followed with a terrific filmography with THE GUEST (it’s on Netflix right now…seriously hit that play button and don’t look back), A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE and the V/H/S series. He also did the BLAIR WITCH remake which didn’t sit as well with me, but I gave him a pass. He has his indie roots down big time and very easily moved over to a major studio production where he knows not only the words but the music too. 

In particular, he balances the characters and the storylines really well JUST to give us enough character and definition that it makes the action more appealing. There are a few storylines that all connect with each other and are all entertaining; one of note is the sign-language relationship between Kong and young Jia, a girl who is deaf, not only is the most emotionally strong but it represents hard-of-hearing in movies, something that I really want to see more of. 

And once the action revs up, we are invested. We care. It’s like Wingard opened my pleasure-centers and went “You know, I know you like the image of Godzilla and King Kong. And I know you like big battleships moving quickly in the middle of the ocean. What if we strapped King Kong to a ship and Godzilla came by just to get in a big fight in open water? We know you like these things, so here you go!” AND THOSE COLORS! I seriously wanted to bathe in the gorgeous primary colors assisted by Ben Seresin’s powerful cinematography. Even a pivotal battle sequence is bathed in city colors where it seemed that all of the giant towers and businesses all got together and designed a candy-colored metropolis…just to prepare for an eventual battle involving massive monsters.

Thankfully GODZILLA VS KONG does it ALL in an amazingly quick 114 minutes (almost ten of those minutes are credits, so it’s shorter than you think); it is immensely satisfying for fans of the genre and Adam Wingard clearly knows his stuff. It’s also accessible to a wide audience even if you don’t know how the hairs stand on my arms when I hear the words Monster Mash. If you are one of these people and are not converted after seeing this big, loud fun-fest, then I don’t know what to do with you. 

GODZILLA VS KONG is in available theatres (not anywhere near my part of the world), drive-ins and anyone bold enough to show this in a cinema. If you can go safely, do it! In Canada you can also rent it from anywhere on PVOD services and we strongly recommend Apple TV for full 4k/HDR/Dolby Vision support. In the United States it is streaming on HBO Max in addition to available theatres.