As of now, I have seen only thirteen movies involving Godzilla and/or King Kong (about 19 percent of them all according to Letterboxd).
I mention this at the outset because I now only realize how all the movies have one key challenge to face: balance the monster scenes with the human character scenes. Of course, a vast majority (if not all) of audiences will be going to these films for the CGI monster mashing, making most of the human stories somewhat forgettable (unless you are Godzilla Minus One, the film that finally won Godzilla an Oscar).
In the case of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which is now ten years after the “monster verse” was recreated (remember when Bryan Cranston was in this universe?), I can’t even begin to tell you what happened. I do remember the character by Rebecca Hall, Dr. Illene Andrews (okay I forgot the name), who has been watching King Kong for some time now in his part of the world underground, as well as her adopted daughter Jia (Katie Hottle), the last of her people who could communicate to the giant ape. The only other person reappearing from the other films is the podcaster played by Brian Tyree Henry. From what I gathered of the plot, these three and others head to see what source of evil is spooking both Godzilla and Kong (while also trying to keep them apart due to the bad blood from the last movie).
While the film does seem to spend a bit more time with Kong than Godzilla this time (he meets an admittedly adorable mini kong), but we spend too much time with the human characters, basically having Hall’s character explaining to the audience the back story we need so we won’t be confused (I still was confused, but I don’t fault Hall).
As for the action scenes, they are not all that bad, but hardly anything new. The two main characters don’t even see each other for sometime, and when they do…well, the one true highlight for me of the film was seeing one actually suplex the other. There was a time when we as a society would say a scene like that is worth the price of admission alone. Nowadays, we just wait for it to go on youtube.
Parents, the PG-13 rating is mainly for the modern violence on creatures (such as Kong ripping them in half and eating them, though their blood is green). I did see at least one family with two kids or so who seemed to be around the age of ten. There is very mild swearing and no sexuality (it should be noted that while the kids seemed somewhat intrigued, the dad looked rather bored.)
As of this writing, the characters of Godzilla and Kong are 70 years and 91 years old respectively. That said, the film does get their “aging” right in a sense: Kong clearly has gray hairs (not to mention some bad dental hygiene) and Godzilla likes to sleep in the coliseum.
It may not have been on purpose, but the filmmakers seem to be showing that these characters may be getting too old for this.
Overall:
Nothing else to say 