Godzilla vs. Kong is a sci-fi/action film directed by Adam Wingard. The movie is the fourth installment in the Monsterverse series of movies created by Legendary Entertainment. The film follows the events of Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, in which Kong and Godzilla are the only remaining alpha monsters, or titans. As Godzilla begins to attack humans unprovoked, it seems as if Kong is the only hope for mankind’s survival. 

   This movie has a lot to love, but almost just as much to dislike. Just the idea of watching these two massive monsters battle is enough to sell tickets, even during a pandemic, but it was not enough to carry an entire movie. It is only 1 hour and 53 minutes long, which is not nearly enough time to develop the story this movie is trying to tell. The film is trying to set up a shared universe similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and many movies like that are known for being very long. It seems to be trying to develop some unexplored ideas in this fairly new universe, but the length of it is not nearly as long as it would need to be for audiences to understand some of the concepts they are presenting on first viewing. 

   Many of the human characters in this movie are also underdeveloped due to the runtime. Many characters’ motivations are rushed, or not even explained at all, which makes the scenes that they are in very boring to watch. Some of the main characters, like Illene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and Dr. Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) are only in the plot to follow Kong around. It almost feels as if some characters could have been cut from the movie entirely, and not much of the plot would have changed. 

   Another problem with the movie is that some things are just not explained; for example in this movie there are spaceship-like crafts that just appear with barely any explanation, even though in previous movies in the series the humans have used modern day technology to fight the monsters. Adding strange sci-fi technology to these movies is not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be explained how it was developed in such a short amount of time.

   The one major thing this movie does fantastically is its portrayal of Godzilla and Kong. Both of them are great to watch on screen, and surprisingly Kong specifically has a ton of character development, which is interesting because in most of these movies the monsters do not have much character. The battles are well choreographed, and have fantastic settings, like Hong Kong and even the ocean. The movie also has great use of color throughout the fight scenes, which makes them really enjoyable to watch. All of the monsters also have great sound effects, especially Godzilla’s roar, which is an altered version of the original sound effect from the 1954 Japanese movie. Godzilla’s theme song is also an altered version of the haunting music that accompanies him in the 1954 movie. Just in general the movie is great to listen to, especially in theaters or with surround sound speakers. Another thing that is great about this movie is that it has a lot of homages to the old Japanese monster movies of the late 20th century. 

   This obviously is not the first time Godzilla and Kong have battled on the big screen, and this movie knows it. This movie borrows some of the more fantastical elements of the old movies and uses them to its fullest in this movie, and fans of these characters will love it. Another thing fans will love is the surprise appearance of a fan favorite monster that adds a lot to the movie’s action scenes.

   Although the movie has quite a few faults, it has just as many, if not more, great things about it, and at the end of the day, most people are not going to this movie for the plot; they just want to see some of their favorite monsters duke it out. Godzilla vs. Kong is now in select theaters, and available to stream for a select amount of time on HBO max.