Action-Adventure Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

[AverageMan]

Just out of interest, has anyone seen this in 3D?

 

[The Big G]

Sorry Big G, didn't see that you had the up to date BO numbers in your post.

I think $150m domestic is now a lock - question is how high can it go? Hopefully $175m - $180m is in reach.

I would say odds are were looking at about $145 million going into Friday. So odds are we'll be $150+ a week from now. I'd say $175 by the end of April is doable. Though I do think its odds are its going to run shy of the $200 million haul of G14. But I do see it beating Kong's $168 million domestic haul.

 

[Arachnerd]

Happy birthday btw buddy. Glad you enjoyed the film. I'm hopefully seeing it this week.

Thanks! And hope you enjoy it too.

 

[blueharvest]

 

[Cap2024]

'05 Kong? The same Kong that died to gunfire that MonsterVerse Kong tanked as a teenager?

Oh now we're just being silly.

It is still rightfully the best modern Kong film. In that it actually has a story rather than mostly just two giants punching each other and critics agree.

On second viewing I realized why this film doesn’t really work ergo poor critic rating -

It has far too long of a build up and very little pay off.

Most of the film is kept a mystery to a fault.

The humans are concerned about Godzilla gaining radiation, but what do they think he’ll do with it?

Kong faces evil apes and is curious, but what is his intention about meeting others that is pulling him towards doing so? Why is it important to him? The prior film established that he’s lonely, but there is not even a sense of that here.

There is a big bad out there - Scar King - but his goal isn’t revealed until close to the end.

Dr. Andrews is worried about her daughter’s dreams, but what is the cause for worry? As per stakes.

While all of this eventually gets revealed - it also results in two-thirds of the film having a very flimsy goal, conflict, and stakes.

The fights are almost tacked on. More of the mystery is revealed and then Godzilla fights something. It’s like they’re wary if there aren’t fights throughout audiences will be bored. I can easily see why some reviews have said Godzilla seems like an after-thought.

For all the build up, it cumulates in a relatively short finale action sequence. But it doesn’t reach the heights that it should and could because there are an excess number of close ups making it hard to gauge where everyone is in relation to each other.

For those who say the last film was the same, it wasn’t -

The threat is laid out from the very beginning (albeit a misdirect) - Godzilla is turning against humans ergo they need Kong’s help to stop him from wrecking havoc. Goal, conflict, stakes. Every part of that film is driving towards it which gives it a solid pace.

The action scenes actually meant something. It was Godzilla vs Kong because they were led to seeing each other as an immediate danger and threat. The fights built on top of each other rather than being random monsters thrown into the mix for action as it mainly is here.

Basically the sequel just isn’t structurally sound which is why it drags.

I just hope with this film being a success that there can actually be a solid story next time. They did it before, hopefully can again.

 

[Wildcard]

It is still rightfully the best modern Kong film. In that it actually has a story rather than mostly just two giants punching each other and critics agree.

On second viewing I realized why this film doesn’t really work ergo poor critic rating -

It has far too long of a build up and very little pay off.

Most of the film is kept a mystery to a fault.

The humans are concerned about Godzilla gaining radiation, but what do they think he’ll do with it?

Kong faces evil apes and is curious, but what is his intention about meeting others that is pulling him towards doing so? Why is it important to him? The prior film established that he’s lonely, but there is not even a sense of that here.

There is a big bad out there - Scar King - but his goal isn’t revealed until close to the end.

Dr. Andrews is worried about her daughter’s dreams, but what is the cause for worry? As per stakes.

While all of this eventually gets revealed - it also results in two-thirds of the film having a very flimsy goal, conflict, and stakes.

The fights are almost tacked on. More of the mystery is revealed and then Godzilla fights something. It’s like they’re wary if there aren’t fights throughout audiences will be bored. I can easily see why some reviews have said Godzilla seems like an after-thought.

For all the build up, it cumulates in a relatively short finale action sequence. But it doesn’t reach the heights that it should and could because there are an excess number of close ups making it hard to gauge where everyone is in relation to each other.

For those who say the last film was the same, it wasn’t -

The threat is laid out from the very beginning (albeit a misdirect) - Godzilla is turning against humans ergo they need Kong’s help to stop him from wrecking havoc. Goal, conflict, stakes. Every part of that film is driving towards it which gives it a solid pace.

The action scenes actually meant something. It was Godzilla vs Kong because they were led to seeing each other as an immediate danger and threat. The fights built on top of each other rather than being random monsters thrown into the mix for action as it largely is here.

Basically it just isn’t structurally sound which is why it drags.

I just hope with this film being a success that there can actually be a solid story next time. They did it before, hopefully can again.

While those are all very fair points, the original post I responded to was stating that '05 Kong would stomp MonsterVerse Kong in a fight, which is completely ludicrous considering one is barely 25 feet tall & the other is 340 feet & tosses around other Titans as big or bigger than himself.

As for GxK & it's story, sure, some elements weren't as strong as they needed to be, but it was ultimately a good thing that they didn't try to make Skar King seem like he was the ultimate threat or the most dangerous Titan we've seen thus far. The film served to further the MonsterVerse while adding a bit more to the mythology & introducing some fresh faces.

The human characters are given the right amount to do without ever feeling like they're bloating the overall runtime or slowing down any of the action.

With films like King Kong '05 or Minus One, they're meant to be more story driven, to have a deeper impact that causes you to think about the myriad of nuances & complexities driving the varying issues of the film. And then you have films like GxK that are simply meant to be fun & a bit more straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that and GxK honestly has the best overall tone in terms of giving great Kaiju action & having the humans involved in a fun, realistic yet also very wacky way.

It's Godzilla & Kong, not Batman or the Justice League.

 

[Cap2024]

While those are all very fair points, the original post I responded to was stating that '05 Kong would stomp MonsterVerse Kong in a fight, which is completely ludicrous considering one is barely 25 feet tall & the other is 340 feet & tosses around other Titans as big or bigger than himself.

As for GxK & it's story, sure, some elements weren't as strong as they needed to be, but it was ultimately a good thing that they didn't try to make Skar King seem like he was the ultimate threat or the most dangerous Titan we've seen thus far. The film served to further the MonsterVerse while adding a bit more to the mythology & introducing some fresh faces.

The human characters are given the right amount to do without ever feeling like they're bloating the overall runtime or slowing down any of the action.

With films like King Kong '05 or Minus One, they're meant to be more story driven, to have a deeper impact that causes you to think about the myriad of nuances & complexities driving the varying issues of the film. And then you have films like GxK that are simply meant to be fun & a bit more straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that and GxK honestly has the best overall tone in terms of giving great Kaiju action & having the humans involved in a fun, realistic yet also very wacky way.

It's Godzilla & Kong, not Batman or the Justice League.

Here’s the thing -

There’s fun popcorn films like the previous KvG and then there’s poorly developed and designed ones like KvGx. There’s the first Transformers and then there’s Age of Extinction and those that follow it.

Thus why critics and I both state that this was a poor (and boring) film, whereas the prior wasn’t.

Skar didn’t need to be the most threatening monster ever, but there should have been a higher sense of stakes from the beginning. Being the most dangerous ever isn’t necessarily how one arrives at that (just like it isn’t for every antagonist in every film made).

The human characters - time-wise are given the right amount of time. Unfortunately the way that time is spent is off because it doesn’t spend it by further exploring why their goals are important to them. Since their goals aren’t very pressing for them, it isn’t that way in the film as well - making it feel slow and dragged out (I’m not the first on this page (33) to call the first half to first three-fourths - boring).

If it was objectively a good film, it would have objectively received better marks from critics as the prior one did. The difference between the two - KvG had solid foundations, whereas this film didn’t.

As said, hopefully this was just a slip-up and it can return to form like KvG going forward.

Adding: cinemascore (audiences) also slipped from A to A-, thus it wasn’t just critics who saw a noticeable decrease in quality between the two.

 

[The Big G]

Honestly I found the story of GxK LIGHTYEARS ahead of GvK that it isn't' even funny

 

[Arachnerd]

The only highlight for GvK for me were the fight scenes. Everything else other than Jia just hasn't made me want to revisit it due to how uninteresting it was or due to some wasted potential (*cough* Ren Serizawa and cutting out every scene with Lance Reddick's character minus an extremely minor scene *cough*).

With GxK, I was more throughly entertained even in the human scenes because of the Iwi tribe and especially Dan Stevens' Trapper being a fun as hell character.

 

[Cap2024]

Honestly I found the story of GxK LIGHTYEARS ahead of GvK that it isn't' even funny

Having multiple storylines at once doesn't automatically result in something having more of a "story." It comes down to goal, conflict, and stakes. The film didn't really establish why the character goals were critical for them which hurt the stakes and the conflict was mainly delayed until the second half of the film.

GvK had an extremely simpler story in comparison since there was a lot less going on and was all the better for it. Although more basic (less to no bloat) - it had a solid goal, conflict, and stakes. Thus, a sturdier foundation to stand on. In this way it was almost (but not quite) akin to Transformers vs Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

There is also the nature of theme which further signals Godzilla was an afterthought. Much of thematic topic matter centered on the ideas of colonization - the film even has Trapper point this out to Bernie in the end; however, Godzilla is out there destroying others to favor his own gain and is getting stronger for it. If it's about belonging, Godzilla wasn't shown to be struggling for not being part of a team - he was a loner throughout and at the end went back to his old ways and laid down to stay isolated. Overall, I am pretty sure Godzilla must have been added onto a Kong film after the fact which also would explain why his storyline is so disparate from everything else throughout the film until the end. Thematically, he just doesn't seem to fit into the story and what it's setting out to say in every storyline but Godzilla's. Some may say that doesn't matter, but it impacts a sense of narrative unity.

To each their own, but these are the reasons critics and I (and likely cinemascore) found GxK to be the [far] lesser of the two - the foundations just weren't as refined as they needed to be. These were issues I couldn't pinpoint until second viewing of why it wasn't clicking.

 

[Arachnerd]

I will agree that Skar King, Shimo and his tribe were introduced into the film a bit too late. Skar King especially needed more screentime considering he's the main villain.

 

[AverageMan]

Not seen figures for Thursday but domestic total as of Wednesday was $140m.
Estimates for the weekend are around $15m.

 

[The Big G]

Not seen figures for Thursday but domestic total as of Wednesday was $140m.
Estimates for the weekend are around $15m.

So realistically were looking at $150+ on Monday. Which after three weeks isn't bad. It may catch KP4 for the #2 spot in a few weeks if it keeps going at its current rate, though Im not sure how long it will stay in theatres for. I feel confident it unseating KSI as #2 at the domestic BO, but G14's $200 million seems to be getting further and further away as the numbers slow down.

 

[Ninjablade]

 

[The Big G]

According to Deadline were looking at a $15.4 million haul bringing out domestic BO to $157.9 Mil after three weeks. Which isn't too shabby at all. Its only $11 million short of overtaking KSI's domestic haul. In comparison KFP4 at week six is at $173.6 Million, and GxK is only $16 million behind it its been around half as long. Its got a good chance to surpass both by the 22nd.

While im more than content to give Windgard a break. I do think Legendary might wanna work quickly to keep the Kaiju Fires hot or else by the time the next film comes out...people will have moved onto other things.

 

[blueharvest]

 

[Silvermoth]

I had so much fun with this. It’s an important reminder that stoners, autistics and the queer community need to stand in solidarity with one another. Great day out

 

[AverageMan]

$436.5m global total.

 

[Wildcard]

Is definitely passing the worldwide gross of GvK by a noticeable amount. You love to see it!

 

[Spider-Fan]

Make that money so I can get Gamera

 

[Luigi]

 

[Sithborg]

Make that money so I can get Gamera

I'm going to laugh if Toho lets Legendary do Bagan first.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I'm going to laugh if Toho lets Legendary do Bagan first.

I will continue on this Gamera path until my demands are met and I will die on this hill!!!!

 

[Arachnerd]

I'm going to laugh if Toho lets Legendary do Bagan first.

Considering that Bagan has gotten shafted at every opportunity for a live-action debut, I would not be against this.

 

[Drizzle]

I can't believe it took 70 years for Godzilla to visit Africa, South America and Europe. Dude's getting his share of passport stamps these days.