We're five days away from the release of Godzilla vs. Kong (Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros.) to the U.S., provided that your state's governor allows movie theaters to open for business. Unfortunately, New Mexico is one that still has its theaters shuttered thanks to Gov. "Malevolent Michelle" Lujan Grisham. I will have to go to the nearest theater showing to me, in Show Low, Arizona.
But I digress.
ABC News (the Australia one, not the U.S. one) has posted a review of Godzilla vs. Kong. For those who are concerned, there's no spoilers to ruin your future screening.
They start it with:
It's a rumble for the ages — or at least the last 60 years, ever since Japan's most famous radioactive reptile first squared off against Hollywood's 'Eighth Wonder of the World', the Empire State Building-scaling simian with a bad temper but a big heart.
Complete with an actor in a wonderfully ropey ape suit, Ishiro Honda's King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) jumpstarted Toho Studios' classic Shōwa era of kaiju (or: "monster") showdowns — films that drew as much on professional wrestling as they did the studio's original, dark vision of an apex predator born of man's atomic folly.
Curiously, these two titans would never face off again — until now.
Godzilla vs Kong, directed by American horror filmmaker Adam Wingard (The Guest; You're Next), is the third in Legendary Pictures' iteration of the franchise, which has stomped an uneasy path from sombre blockbuster spectacle (Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla) to unsuccessfully tangling with the Japanese films' more outlandish monster-verse (2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters).
Wingard's film follows both those movies and Legendary's Kong: Skull Island (2017), an agreeably pulpy smash-up that gestured toward the less tasteful, and more rewarding, terrain of B-movie mayhem.
And after what seems like an eternity away from big, noisy Hollywood cinema, the new film — with its widescreen cityscape destruction, stock characters, and splashes of neon — already feels like a throwback to another time at the cinema.
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| Above, a U.S. poster of the 59 year old King Kong vs. Godzilla. |
To read the rest of the review, go here.
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