Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review: More Monsters, and Bearable Humans.

I quite enjoyed Godzilla vs Kong.
Although it did have its problems, the film made me feel like a kid again watching the original King Kong vs Godzilla for the first time.
Going into the sequel, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, I was hoping the film could recapture that feeling for me.
Directed once more by Adam Wingard, the film follows Kong in Hollow Earth, where he discovers he is not the last of his species, exposing the world to another threat which he cannot face alone.

Kong and Godzilla must team up to defeat the latest monster.

The New Empire is primarily a King Kong film, with Godzilla’s role feeling a little tacked on at times.
He is absent for most of the movie until the final fight where he is needed to team up with Kong.
Thankfully, Kong more than makes up for Godzilla’s lack of screentime, with The New Empire feeling like it focuses more on the monsters than any previous film in the Monsterverse, which is what I wanted.

I’m glad to see the monsters taking a much more central role than the humans this time around.

Another thing I wanted was more screentime for Jia (Kaylee Hottle).
In my review for Godzilla vs Kong, I stated that I wished she had more screentime because she was pretty much the only interesting human character in the entire thing.
Well, I got my wish in The New Empire, with the human storyline focusing on her.
This resulted in the humans being much more bearable than in previous Monsterverse films, with the cast of Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, and Dan Stevens standing out more.

Jia’s storyline is the most interesting human one in the Monsterverse, although that is not saying much.

The monster and human storylines both converge by the third act in a massive CGI battle between monsters which, while visually fun, had me a little uneasy.
This final fight was supposed to be a big, crowd-pleasing moment, yet I found myself kind of wincing because of the sheer amount of human casualties which are never acknowledged.
It felt kind of weird that the movie was trying to entertain me with the spectacle of a big monster battle, when said battle was clearly resulting in hundreds of thousands of fatalities at the very least.
The fact that the movie does not acknowledge such losses felt a little off to me.

The final battle had a bit of a strange tone because of this.

Another issue was that, well, this film came after Godzilla: Minus One.
Granted this issue is through no fault of the movie, but it did feel like a step down going from one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever made to a big dumb action movie.
Still, this only dulled my experience with the film slightly.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a solid entry in the Monsterverse.
The Kong storyline is great, the humans are much more bearable, and, though the final fight does feel a bit off-putting by the unacknowledged casualties, it is still fun.
I look forward to seeing what the Monsterverse does next.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Review: Part One of an Animation Spectacle.

I loved Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to the point that it was my favourite movie of 2018.
It has brilliant animation and so many standout moments, like The Leap of Faith scene, which I consider to be one of the most inspirational movie scenes of all time.
So, like many others, I was excited to watch the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse.
I went into the theatre with high expectations and those expectations were certainly met, and then some.
Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thomas, the film once again follows Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) who, after the events of the first movie, has become New York’s new Spider-Man.
After encountering a villain known as the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), Miles is reunited with Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and eventually brought into a society of spider-people from across the Sider-Verse, lead by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac).

Conflict quickly arises between Miles and Miguel over the multiverse and the fate of the people in it.

When I say “across the Sider-Verse” I really do mean that because this is a movie that lives up to its title.
Take Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, for example.
It was a good movie but in only dived deep in a couple of alternate universes, not really living up to its title’s promise of a “multiverse of madness.”
Across the Spider-Verse, however, delivers on its title’s promise perfectly, showcasing multiple different universes with multiple different spider-people in absolutely stunning animation.
After watching this movie it is absolutely clear why it took five years to make this film because it is an animation marvel, with jaw dropping details in practically every scene.

The multiple easter eggs in every shot will make rewatches fun.

The time and effort it must have taken to animate all of these different universes and spider-people is honestly staggering to think about it and the animators deserve all the praise in the world for it.
Speaking of the spider-people, this film introduces many interesting new ones.
Miguel is both sympathetic and intimidating, and Pavitr Prabhakar (Karen Soni) is both charasmatic and gets a lot of laughs.
Hobie (Daniel Kaluuya) or “Spider-Punk” was probably my favourite of the new Spider-Men, though, for not only being likeable and funny, but also someone who stands by what they preach.

Hobie is a lot of fun from the moment he shows up.

As for the returning characters, they are also excellent.
Miles’ emotional journey throughout the movie is plenty compelling.
His relationship with his parents, Rio (Luna Lauren Vélez) and Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry), takes up a lot of screen time in the movie, yet it was so interesting that I was completely fine with that, especially with how this builds into Miles’ conflict with Miguel later on in the movie.
As for Gwen, she gets a big bump-up in screen time in this movie and it is absolutely deserved.
Across the Spider-Verse feels like her movie, just as much as it does Miles, with her relationship with her father (Shea Whigman) also being central.

I was not expecting Gwen to be a co-protaganist in this movie but this is actually what she is, and to *Across the Spider-Verse’s* benefit.

And then there is Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), with his daughter Mayday.
Unfortunately, his screentime is nowhere near as significant as the first movie but this is okay because he will have plenty of time to shine in the sequel.
Yes, I said sequel because Across the Spider-Verse is actually a part one, with the rest of the story being told in Beyond the Spider-Verse, which will release in March of 2024.
I had no idea about this going into the movie and, from the sound of my theatre, no one else did either.
As soon as the movie cut to a “To Be Continued” there was a collective cry of “Are you kidding me?”
If anything, though, this disappointment at having to wait does show how excellent this movie is.
I honestly would not have minded if the movie had just continued for another few hours to tell the rest of the story, and Across the Spider-Verse is 140 minutes long.

It is a testament to how great *Across the Spider-Verse* is that we were all disappointed that we would have to wait to see how this story ends.

As for criticisms, I really only have one significant critique and that is the sound mixing.
Sometimes, it is hard to hear what the characters are saying when the music is so loud compared to the voices, and the characters are speaking so fast.
It was not a constant issue but it was noticeable in a couple of scenes.
Overall, though, Into the Spider-Verse is a fantastic sequel, with stellar animation and storytelling.
I would still say that I prefer the first movie, but that might be because the story of Across the Spider-Verse is incomplete.
When Beyond the Spider-Verse releases next year this may change.
One thing is for sure, though.
If they nail Beyond the Spider-Verse as well, then the Spider-Verse movies will be considered among the greatest trilogies of all time.

Eternals Review: This Should Have Been a Series.

A common criticism I have heard of the latest film in the MCU, Eternals, is that it would have worked better as a series.
Well, after watching the film, I can wholeheartedly say that I agree with this sentiment.
Directed by Chloé Zhao, the film follows the titular Eternals, immortal superpowered beings, created by the Celestial Arishem to defend earth from monsters known as the Deviants.
They consist of Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Thena (Angelena Jolie), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Makarri (Lauren Ridloff), and Ajak (Salma Hayak).
Yes, that is 10 Eternals you have to keep track of.

*Eternals* has way too many characters for a single movie where they are all introduced.

This would not be a problem if Eternals was like an Avengers movie, with each of the Eternals having their own solo film, so you knew who they were when they came together for this film.
It would also not be a problem if, as much of the criticism has stated, Eternals was a show instead.
But Eternals is neither of these things.
This is a two and half hour movie that introduces ten super heroes in quick succession and expects us to care about all of them, even when some of them have zero character development.
The worst example of this is Ridloff’s Makkari.
We know exactly three things about her character, she’s deaf, she has super speed, and sort of has a thing going on with Druig.
That’s it.
There is nothing else to her as a character because the film just does not focus on her because it spends time trying to make you care about the other Eternals, most of which do not have the proper screen time to make us care about them either.

Many characters in the *Eternals* suffer from a lack of development but Makkari suffers the most by far.

To be fair, there are a few of the Eternals I did come to care about, like Phastos, Druig and Thena.
However, even though I did like them, this was nowhere near the amount of care that it could have been because, again, there were too many characters to focus on.
If they were so deadset on Eternals being a movie then they should have cut back on the characters, so they could get enough development that we as the audience would care about all of them.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the characters that suffer in this movie but also the plot, with numerous side stories just not fitting in.
The biggest of these is the Deviant storyline, which starts off important but, by the end, I wondered why it was still even a part of the narrative.
Then there’s Kit Harrington’s role, which is more of a teaser for future MCU films than anything else.
My final criticism is that there’s parts of this movie that were unintentionally funny.
I remember one point in the film when a background character said something so deadpan, only to die immediately after saying it, and this made me burst into laughter, which was certainly not the reaction Zhao wanted.
Although, I will say that while there are some bits that are unintentionally funny, there’s also some bits of good intentional humor as well, mostly with Kugo and his valet, Karun (Harish Patel).
Along with this, I did like some of the twists and turns the story took.
The acting across the board was also pretty good.

I did like where the story took Ikaris’ character.

There was a lot of potential with Eternals.
It’s just that this potential was crushed under the weight of what felt like a street performer juggling too many characters and plot points.
Eternals would have been better as a series.
If it had been one, it would have given enough time for all of the characters to be properly developed, side stories could be fleshed out without feeling pointless, and it might have just worked out into a cohesive narrative.
Instead, what we got was easily one of the MCU’s weakest films.
Hopefully, future Eternals films will improve on this.

Godzilla Vs. Kong Review: Pleasing My Inner Child.

Growing up, I always loved giant monster movies.
Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake was the film that got me interested in movies in the first place.
However, my favourite giant monster as a kid was not Kong but Godzilla.
I watched many of his films and even now still own a lot of them.
I’ve always been a fan of Kaiju movies, which has honestly made me disappointed in the whole monster cinematic universe so far.
I loved the first of these films, Godzilla, when it came out in 2014.
However, this was mainly because I was excited to finally see an accurate blockbuster representation of the big G on the big screen.
As time went on, I realized the film’s flaws more, like that it gets rid of the only interesting human character way too early and leaves us with only bland and generic ones, not focusing enough on Godzilla himself.

Killing off Bryan Cranston’s character and focusing on the rest of the bland human characters, instead of Godzilla, were the 2014 film’s biggest mistakes.

Then there’s it sequel and spinoff, King of the Monsters and Kong: Skull Island, which were even more disappointing to me.
King of the Monsters just could not live up to its trailers, delivering an even worse cast of characters than the first, and Kong: Skull Island also focused on a mostly uninteresting cast, while I felt that one characters’ backstory should have been the entire plot of the movie.
So, taking all of this into account, I came into Godzilla vs. Kong excited to see these epic monsters have their first cinematic showdown since 1962, yet I was slightly skeptical.
You know what, though?
I came out of the theater actually very pleased with Godzilla vs. Kong.
It’s a fun, cheer inducing film that pleased the inner child in me, who so loved Kaiju movies growing up.
Directed by Adam Wingard, the movie justifies its big fight between the two monsters by having a group of mostly uninteresting scientists using Kong to search for a power source inside the earth, with Kong’s presence drawing Godzilla out to fight.
Given how I just described the human characters, you can obviously see that I once again find them to be the biggest problem with the movie.
With a talented cast among the likes of Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, and Julian Dennison, I’d hoped they would at least be more interesting than the ones in the previous movies.
Alas, it was note to be, with many of them being incredibly one dimensional.
Not only this but I found that the storyline centering around Brown, Henry and Dennison’s characters could have been removed entirely from the film.
However, there is one interesting human character in the movie, Jia, a deaf girl played by Kaylee Hottle who has a connection with Kong, leading to a moment that gave me chills in the theater.

The bond between Jia and Kong is fantastic. This is how the relationship between humans and monsters should be portrayed in these movies.

I just wish that instead of the pointless conspiracy theory plotline we got more time with Jia and the characters surrounding her because this could have also made them way more interesting.
I think in the next monster movie they make whoever’s writing it should cut down on the number of characters, so they actually have time to develop some of them to the point that we can actually care about what happens to them and their arcs.
These flawed characters had me concerned for the first quarter of the movie, since it mainly focused on them.
I was worried this was going to be another movie where everything focused on the humans instead of the monsters fights, which were what we all actually wanted to see.
I am so glad that I was wrong and the film actually focused on the monsters.
After this first quarter, the movie picks up, delivering epic fight scene after epic fight scene, as Godzilla and Kong duke it out numerous times.
The way that these fights were shot, edited and given a sense of scale really amazed me.
It was something I’d been wanting from this monster cinematic universe since the very first one.
And that final fight.
That. Final. Fight.
What an incredible climax it was, gifting us with epic scenes that made me grin so hard I was sure my mouth was going to fall off.

The final battle between Godzilla and Kong gave me an experience that I have been waiting to see in theaters for a while.

These fight scenes saved the film for me, making up for the many uniteresting characters, unfunny jokes and pointless conspiracy subplot.
I came to see the two most famous monsters of all time engage in a battle and that’s what I got, in sometimes spectacular fashion.
This makes the film worth the price of admission for me.
I am sure that it pleased every single Kaiju fan’s inner child.