Godzilla: King Of The Monsters IMAX Review - 7 Ups & 4 Downs

2. The King Kong Conundrum

It's a little mean to criticise a movie based on another movie entirely, but this is a slightly different case. Because of the quirks of the Monsterverse's announcement, we knew that the next step was going to be a Godzilla Versus King Kong movie and that very much looms large here. Kong himself has some presence here, but he's by no means an active participant (which in itself makes little sense), but the issue here is of what Kong is not. He's not Godzilla. He's not even close to being a competitor to him and that's a problem.

Because this movie is an escalation, Godzilla himself is escalated too: he's bigger, more brawny and more powerful. As one character mentions at one point, it's like he's been juicing. This is good for the climax of the movie, but really not so good for what comes next. Because, frankly, there's just absolutely no way King Kong could hope to compete with Godzilla. He's got muscles, but he's just a big monkey. Godzilla could smash him one-handed. How are we supposed to believe any hint of conflict between them?

That might seem a little specific and a little reductive, but there's a broader issue here too with this film's place as a shared universe movie. It destroys Earth massively: the chaos created by the kaiju and their in-fighting is apocalyptic and yet there's supposed to be some way for this to carry on. It's almost like there was no agenda to think of the next step in the franchise.