Warning: This article contains spoilers for Godzilla x Kong: The New Order and Godzilla vs. Kong.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Order is an objectively bad film, as much as one can objectively call a film bad. When going through a list of things that make a film “good,” the movie checks almost none. The plot is a paper-thin excuse to see monsters fighting, the characters are paper-thin excuses to see monsters fighting, and the direction is based entirely on monsters fighting. The film does a poor job of doing anything but having monsters fight. It doesn’t even play well within the confines of its own cinematic universe, seemingly content to ignore more than a decade of world-building. Yet, Godzilla x Kong works, and it works because it is all about – wait for it – monsters fighting.
This is in stark contrast to the film’s predecessor, Godzilla vs. Kong, which was released three years ago. That film is just a bad film. Heck, it’s a terribly bad film. Some might look at these two movies and wonder what the difference is. How is one movie about a giant lizard and a giant monkey fighting each other with little to no story better than another movie that’s essentially the same thing? The answer is commitment. Commitment to being bad.
The good bad movie is a nearly impossible thing to create intentionally. Just ask Sony, who has been trying to do it again after striking gold with Venom and then failing miserably over and over. This is because part of making a good bad movie is just luck; the bad pieces fit together in such a way that your bad film suddenly becomes enjoyable. With that in mind, however, there are also three key things that good bad movies must commit to: intention, camp, and purpose. With these three things, you can luck out and make a good bad film.
Godzilla vs. Kong has none of these things. Coming off what was a couple of of surprisingly smart, relatively subversive, blockbuster kaiju films, Godzilla vs. Kong is a hard right turn into idiocy, launching the series head first into a franchise that wants monsters to fight rather than to make good movies. The problem is director Adam Wingard, as well as the powers that be behind the movie, seem to still think they are making a good movie full of characters and plots that matter outside of the monsters fighting. The movie features multiple human storylines with a plethora of characters that are hard to keep track of and a host of interpersonal relationships that no one cares about except the filmmakers. There’s no intention to make just a big, dumb movie.
Related: All Godzilla Shōwa Era Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best
Meanwhile, Godzilla x Kong completely abandons all pretense of trying to be anything but monster fights. It almost immediately cuts our human party down to a few key people, eliminates nearly any character development for them, and makes the most prominent human action in the film some weird Mothra birthing session that makes absolutely no sense. Humans are only in this film to espouse exposition and then get the heck out of the way, and the film fully commits to it. Having this clear intention means that there just isn’t enough bad to stop the non-stop fun, allowing the fun to take over.
Camp is about as ephemeral as the idea of a good bad movie, but when a film tilts into camp, you know it. Godzilla vs. Kong never falls into camp despite the fact that it seems so built to do so. With a giant robot kaiju, a secret underground network of shipping tubes, a cast of ridiculous characters, and the concept of the Earth actually being hollow, it sounds like the film should be nothing but camp. Yet it somehow takes itself far too seriously, with none of the actors laying into their roles with any awareness and Wingard directing the movie like the film isn’t just interested in giant monsters fighting. Contrast this with Godzilla x Kong, where Dan Stevens comes in as over-the-top as possible to perform a King Kong dental procedure and never lets up from there on out. That attitude runs through every vein of the film, thanks in part to the aforementioned commitment to monsters fighting.
Finally, we have purpose, which is something that Godzilla vs. Kong seems to have none of. The thesis for Godzilla x Kong is very clear, and it commits to that solely, ignoring everything else in the pursuit of simply putting kaiju in situations where they can do awesome things. Godzilla vs. Kong, on the other hand, is completely lost in its purpose. It seems still somewhat interested in the franchise’s previous attempts to subvert the genre and actually make the human stories matter, but it’s also interested in establishing the Hollow Earth and an evil corporation and cramming Millie Bobby Brown into every scene. There’s no purpose to it until it becomes clear at the end that all it should have been doing is having the monster throw down, thanks to a fantastic closing action sequence.
While it seems ridiculous to pour out this many words over a movie in which King Kong gets a mechanical arm and is suplexed by Godzilla, it’s important to note how Godzilla x Kong: The New Order succeeds over its far lesser predecessor. As we’ve noted, there’s a place for big, fun, dumb kaiju films, but you have to make them right, and Godzilla vs. Kong was not right.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is in theaters now.
