Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton - Week of April 1, 2024

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of April 1, 2024

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

Rated PG-13 for creature violence and action

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%

In Theaters

Now that Kong has been sent to live in the world that exists underneath the surface, he is trying to make his home one he can survive in safety and satisfaction.  But when he discovers a new tribe of giant apes led by a real baddie with a secret weapon, the scientists at Monarch devise a plan to have Kong and Godzilla fight the new creature together.  If you didn’t watch Apple TV’s new show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and you can’t really remember what happened in the previous film, don’t worry.  It would be very hard to get confused here.  This film might have set a record for least dialog as the human plot is more of that of a narrator to what the Titans are doing and far less for plot development and actual meaning.  In fact, I would have preferred even less human interaction as almost everything the humans did was annoying and unnecessary.  Most people are coming to see a film like this for watching monster battles, and those are a plenty here.  The action sequences are quite fun, although pretty silly, and fully capable of filling up the time for a theatrically released film.  A lot of this new universe they have set up does’t make much sense, and can be quite tedious on the brain if you try to do the mental gymnastics required to try to figure it out, but when Kong rips a monster in half, or when Godzilla destroys Rome only to fall asleep inside the Coliseum, it proves that turning off your brain every once in a while is a justified thing to do.  And given that the movie was a smash hit on opening weekend, I’m guessing that we will see even more of these films coming our way in years to come.  B-