Godzilla vs. Kong: Is it Worth the Watch?

Recently, I went to the movie theater for the first time in over a year with some friends to see Godzilla vs Kong, and, to my delight (and dismay), nothing has changed since pre-COVID. Beverages are still $7, people gathered in line to get into the theater, and many sat down with little to no social distancing, although when the movie started, everything seemed so much louder than I had remembered. However, given that the movie was about a quarrel between a giant gorilla and a giant lizard, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I am going to try and give away as few spoilers as I can in this review, but if you are planning on watching the movie and want to go into it with no expectations, I recommend that you watch it first and then read this review.

The movie opens up with the obvious main attraction, King Kong. I was happy to see that the gorilla was constantly on screen, and was never really “useless” to the story. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for many other characters in the film, but I will touch more on that later. The movie’s main focus revolved around Kong and two other characters, a mother researching King Kong and her deaf daughter, Jia, who were welcome appearance whenever they got on screen. The actor who played Jia, in my opinion, did a great job, and was crucial to the story at hand, as she was used as the primary communicator who could talk to King Kong through sign language. As the movie progressed the motive for every action did as well, and when transporting King Kong to different locations, the cast of characters would often run into Godzilla, whose fights with King Kong were loud and intense. The only thing that bugged me throughout the A-plot of the movie was how the mother of Jia was so willing to bring her eight-year-old child along as if she could not find a babysitter. So instead, she decided to bring Jia on many life-threatening adventures. Besides that, I think the main plot of the story served its purpose and created an enjoyable story.

The biggest problem with the movie to me and I’m sure many others, was the secondary plot of the movie. It followed a conspiracy theory podcaster and two high schoolers playing detective while adding nothing to the actual movie. If you were to take every scene of that storyline out, you would be able to follow the film with no plot holes left unsettled. While they did produce some laughs on screen, the movie did lose some momentum whenever they were crawling through high-security government vents like it was no big deal. The only thing that this sub-plot added was an introduction to one of the antagonists of the story which I will not spoil in this review, but even then it was information that the viewer could have inferred on their own. 

In the end, I do think that this movie is worth watching, and if you feel comfortable enough to go to the theaters, I would recommend doing so as the blaring noise and big screen adds a lot of enjoyment to the clashing fight scenes between the two beasts.