Let’s Go. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (2024) Review

Like its predecessor, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is not Citizen Kane but also like its predecessor, it could be a contender for the Citizen Kane of monster movies. More so than its predecessor. Lessons have clearly been learnt since Godzilla Vs Kong as all the minor faults in that film are eradicated in The New Empire, resulting in a leaner and funnier film. The only problem is its title.

It’s got Godzilla in it.

Jia (Kaylee Hottle) and her adoptive mother Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) follow Kong deeper into the Hollow Earth as the great ape ventures into uncharted territory. He discovers a tribe of giant apes that are led by an orangutan-like creature called the Scar King. Kong tries to prevent the Scar King from reaching the surface to wreak havoc while Godzilla, in preparation for the Scar King’s arrival, undergoes a physical metamorphosis that will make him more powerful than ever.

The Humans

Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) with her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle) by her side. [Credit: Warner Bros.]

Right off the bat, The New Empire makes a great first move by casting the best characters from Godzilla Vs Kong as the leads. Since the defeat of Mechagodzilla, we see that Jia is attending an academy but she isn’t fitting in or making friends. Being the last of the Iwi, the only people she can really relate to are Ilene and Kong. We get an insight into how Kong saved Jia while Skull Island was sinking, something the last film barely touched upon. It’s nice to see that gap filled.

Concerned about Jia’s loneliness, Ilene contemplates how her daughter is going to live in the modern world. Things get interesting when, as well as the Skar King and his army, Jia and Ilene discover a lost tribe of Iwi in the Hollow Earth.

This puts Ilene in a difficult position because on the one hand, she’d be happy to see Jia in a place where she fits in and is understood. But on the other, she can’t stand to let her daughter go. This is decent drama and feels like a natural progression for the characters from where we left them.

Brian Tyree Henry returns as Bernie, the other best character from Godzilla Vs Kong. He joins Jia and Ilene on their expedition where he is in his element as he sees what he’s only spoken about on his podcast. The comic relief he provides is great, consistently funny and never bordering on annoying.

Dan Stevens plays Trapper, a ‘vet’ for Titans. I’ll be honest, I was worried he was just going to be a stand-in for Alexander Skarsgård’s character from the last film. Fortunately, Trapper is a distinct character with his own unique function. He also becomes a source of comic relief as he interacts with Bernie, which is once again consistently funny and not hard to watch.  

The Monsters

Kong meets Suko [Credit: Warner Bros.]

Kong goes places in The New Empire that he not only hasn’t in the Monsterverse but in history. He finally gets an arch nemesis in the Scar King; the Sherlock to his Moriarty, the Joker to his Batman.

We know that Kong has birthed children in previous incarnations, whether it’s in Son of Kong or King Kong Lives, but we’ve never seen him raise one. While mapping the uncharted region of the Hollow Earth, he encounters a juvenile ape from the Scar King’s tribe. I don’t recall him being named in the film but all the marketing materials call him Suko. The scenes of him and Kong developing their bond are some of the best in the whole film. They’re funny and even tense at times but good cinema with their non-verbal storytelling.

When he’s fighting monsters, Godzilla’s great. As expected. Beyond that, his inclusion is very deserving of scrutiny. With a single rewrite The New Empire could’ve easily been a Kong solo film.

Godzilla’s arc is purely physical. At the beginning, he’s not able to fight the Scar King. By the end he is. That’s it. Godzilla underwent more change in King of the Monsters. Even in the last film he served as a secondary antagonist, here he’s just an extra soldier for the final battle.

There is a good sequel in this film and it should’ve been called Kong: The New Empire.

Or Kong: The New Kingdom, a better title in my opinion (call me Warner Brothers).

Does that let it down? For Godzilla fans it certainly does. I wouldn’t recommend it to them but knowing they’ll watch anything with the G-man in it, I’ll just say be warned.

In all other areas, The New Empire is a great follow-up to Godzilla Vs Kong. It’s a pity it doesn’t give one of its titular creatures much to do. Not the best in the series but not exactly the worst, The New Empire is another well-made romp that still has me hungry for more.

I give Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire a furry, scaly 8 out of 10.

Kame Hame KONG! Skull Island (2023-) Season One Review

When it comes to reviewing TV series, I don’t cover single episodes. I don’t cover entire shows. On the few occasions I have reviewed TV, I’ve found it preferable to review a single season. In this era of overarching storylines, reviewing a season isn’t that different from reviewing a film.

However, if I review the first season of a show then you can be sure that it’s good because if it was bad, I wouldn’t have made it to the last episode but that’s not to say I won’t have any criticisms. Of the few first seasons I’ve reviewed on this blog, Skull Island is definitely one of the worst. By the time you reach the cliffhanger ending, you’ll be curious enough to want a season two but to get there you have to sit through a lot of dull moments and poor animation.

This anime series from Netflix takes place within Legendary’s MonsterVerse, specifically between Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla Vs Kong. It centres on a crew of explorers who get shipwrecked on the coast of Skull Island. They encounter a group of mercenaries who immediately pursue them. The show chronicles the group’s struggle to evade not only the mercenaries but the swarms of abominable wildlife inhabiting the island. 

The Characters

Our crew of explorers consist of two men and their teenage sons; one wants to follow their father’s footsteps and chase monsters, the other just wants to go to college and have a normal life. They rescue a woman adrift in the ocean. When she regains consciousness, she calls herself Annie and claims that she’s fleeing from mercenaries. At that moment the ship is attacked by an unseen creature. When the ship is destroyed, Annie, the men and their sons are swept up onto Skull Island.

The fathers want to find their sons and the sons want to find their fathers. All together they just want to get off the island. That’s the arc of four of our principle characters in a nutshell. They’re not totally boring, just mere vehicles for the monster-laden survival plot.

[Credit: Netflix & Legendary Pictures]

Annie is a lot more engaging. When we meet her we know nothing about her so we’re immediately curious. What’s better is that we don’t stop learning about her at the end of the first episode. Her backstory is shown in a series of flashbacks, which are cleverly scattered throughout the 8 episodes. She has a deep connection to the island and the mercenaries, she is the most active character as everything she does has a genuine consequence, some of them very personal. She’s probably the best thing the series has going for it.

If you’re expecting to see a lot of Kong then you will be disappointed. In the first half of the series, it’s clear that he’s the ruler of the island but not a concern for the mercenaries. Our characters only have a handful of encounters with him, initially he’s no more important than the other monsters.

In the last couple of episodes however, Kong takes centre stage and it’s great. The seventh episode is focused on Kong entirely, showing us what he was like between the events of Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla Vs Kong. He has some of the strength and tactics he displays in Godzilla Vs Kong but he also has the gentleness he expressed in 2017’s Skull Island. The last two episodes absolutely make the series worth watching.

The Animation

Despite Skull Island being the first anime I’ve ever reviewed on this blog, I should explain that while I wouldn’t call myself a fan, I believe I’m familiar enough with the anime medium to give an informed opinion.

[Credit: Netflix & Legendary Pictures]

Like any kid born in the late 90s’, I lived through many Anime-fueled fads whether it was Pokémon, Digimon, Beyblade or Yu-Gi-Oh. I wasn’t in love with those franchises but I got the gist of them. In my late teens I watched more anime features, varying from prestigious family films like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle to more mature films like Akira and Barefoot Gen.

I’d seen enough to recognise what anime looked like on the big screen and what anime looked like on the small screen. Skull Island is blatantly television standard anime and for that, it looks ok. For the most part.

The animation is noticeably unconvincing whenever it’s mixed with 3D animation. This typically occurs when a character is sprinting through an environment. The environment will essentially be a three-dimensional map, which makes the 2D animated character look ever more crooked and lifeless.

Another weakness lies more in the design of the animation rather than in the animation itself. On a few occasions, Kong’s scale changes drastically, even more so than it did in 1933. In some scenes he’s around the size he is in his 2017 MonsterVerse debut but in others he’s as big as he is in Godzilla Vs Kong. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a homage to his fluctuating size in the original film and merely a lack of consistency.

Not the best debut the MonsterVerse could have in TV but for me it gets enough right to stay tuned for another season. Hopefully a few lessons have been learned in this season that can be applied to future ones.

I give Season One of Skull Island a chest-beating 7 out of 10.