Last weekend I saw 1967’s kiddie-oriented monster movie King Kong Escapes (on Svengoolie’s show) for the first time since I was a kid.  It’s a stupid, nonsensical, goofy Japanese-American monster movie with King Kong and his mechanical doppelgänger, and I quite charitably gave it one star.  Now I’ve finally seen the new Kong movie, Godzilla vs. Kong, and it isn’t much better.  It’s amazing that while the special effects have advanced spectacularly since 1967 the monster movie stories have not, or rather the storytelling has not.

Adam Wingard’s film speculates that only one alpha male monster may rule the Earth, so Godzilla and King Kong are set for a showdown from the beginning.  But then ambitious people in evil corporations make their move, while the people who care about the monsters try to intervene.  This film throws in references or nods to all sorts of its predecessors, from the Pacific Rim movies to the old Tohos, where men in rubber suits stomped on model cities.  I firmly believe that the filmmakers were trying to evoke that 1960s Toho vibe, and they succeeded pretty well in their efforts.  The problem is that those movies were (innocently) silly then; now they just seem ridiculous.

The storytelling is routinely awful: teenagers are able to sneak into top secret areas and are very conveniently transported to Hong Kong (underground!) just when they are needed; top scientists have no idea what’s going on but their kids know intuitively what to do; the evil corporation guy wants not only an infinite power source deep within the planet, but also desires to control the top apex predator, so he invents his own; etc.  The Toho monster movies were full of this type of nonsense and it was grand fun when it worked (watch The Mysterians or Destroy All Monsters to see good examples), but here it is tiresome and ludicrous.  The lack of human characters is a big problem.

I grew up on these films, and I have a special affection for them.  However, this one is much too imaginative for its own good.  For every neat idea — like the two monsters battling on the deck of a tipsy aircraft carrier — there are two or three really over the top or unbelievably stupid ones.  Perhaps worst of all, the film sets up an inevitable battle and showdown, and then still finds a way to sabotage its own premise.  These classic monsters deserve better.  ☆ 1/2.  26 May 2021.