- Dir: Adam Wingard. Interpretation: Rebecca Hall, Alexander Skarsgård, Kaylee Hottle, Brian Tyree Henry, Millie Bobby Brown, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Shun Oguri, Eiza Gonzalez. 12A cert, 113 minutes
Forget Oscar and Bafta contenders. No movie has hurt me more when theaters reopen in May than this sublime, visual effects-focused blare-a-thon trash, in which a large gorilla and a radioactive lizard settle their differences over the smoldering remains. of a town or two.
For those of us who have spent much of the past 13 months dreaming of a bit of a big screen show, this latest installment in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse franchise arrives as a naughty WhatsApp message from an old flame. You remember it?, it purrs, while timidly flattening a skyscraper or sending a spaceship through a rainbow-colored wormhole. Not much longer to wait now, he adds, with a kissing emoji.
It’s hard when watching Godzilla vs Kong not to wish you could see it screened in massive proportions (in countries where cinemas are currently open, including China, the film has already cost £ 90million). But on a big enough TV, it still delivers the kind of basic, mind-boggling pleasures the average best-case scenario contender couldn’t hope to match.
As the fourth installment in an ongoing series, there’s no standing ceremony or stomping here: no fleeting, partial glimpses of the film’s main characters before full-scale chaos ensues. The film opens with Kong himself, trying to break free from a Truman Show-style complex, and then briefs us on his scaly rival, who is ravaging the Florida coast.
In previous MonsterVerse episodes, Godzilla was sort of a heroic figure, fending off an assortment of giant wing and claw threats. But this latest spontaneous attack signals an apparent change in loyalty, so an operation is underway to put the creature down. This is orchestrated by Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir), the CEO of a deeply sinister cybernetics company, and it involves a Jules Verne-style journey to a hidden underground realm, where the only source of energy on the planet is. able to subdue the beast. .
The expedition is led by geologist Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), but his huge sherpa is Kong himself – brought to the service by doe-eyed primatologist Rebecca Hall and her deaf adopted daughter (Kaylee Hottle), who has managed to teach some basic sign language.
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