Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Not a buddy movie

Cards on the table: I did not go into Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire — a sequel to 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong and the fifth movie to date in the series produced by Legendary Pictures — as a huge fan of either of the big guys. Nothing against them personally. Yes, the original King Kong (1933) was a heartbreaker because that movie’s Kong was just a big old ape who got hauled away from the island where he was venerated as a god and tossed with cuffs and chains into an oversized sideshow pretending to be the educational event of the era. Of course Kong responded by throwing a monster-sized tantrum... who could blame him? But during the golden age of monster movies — which is, of course, less a set of dates than an age, and the age skews young — Kong was King.