Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

If nothing else, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire really highlights the disconnect experienced when viewing extended sequences of animation that are no longer designed to be purely gestural. When it finally gets going, Adam Wingard's latest computer generated monster mash takes a photorealistic, simulation style approach when describing the collapsing, human component in enormously scaled fights that batter into, then over, our fragile dwellings. Action, when it escapes the confines of an otherworldly, subterranean paradise, hops from continent to continent, smearing everything in sight. Cities and ancient monuments alike are pulverised as these mountainous beasts grapple for supremacy. Obviously blocked and styled to prickle a sense of awe in its audience, The New Empire delights in the minutiae of demolition, filling the screen with enough sparks and embers to frustrate the bitrate of any streaming service. 

The (presumably) unintended consequences of all this mathematically plotted carnage is an acute revulsion though. One that, in June 2024, is informed by months and months and months of social media images detailing the systematic extermination of Palestinian children. That New Empire works so hard to avoid a sense of horror taking hold unfortunately tallies with a real-world permissiveness when considering Arab babies buried beneath rubble. Wingard's film then, although keen to depict bridges packed with family sedans as fleeting points of interest in Godzilla's oblivious churn, never engages with any human perspective other than the passive delight of a removed and appreciative crowd: one that cheers on the cataclysm from the safety of a green screen set and, apparently, feels no connection to the trampled citizens of Egypt or Brazil. King Kong taking on a scarlet slave master who, in a 2001: A Space Odyssey-style conceptual leap, has styled a bleached spinal column into a lash may be an exciting flight of fancy but there's precious little entertainment to be extracted from the relentless, reference-level reproduction of imploding apartment buildings.