Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the mess you probably thought it was, with useless human characters, inconsistent special effects, shoddy editing, laughless humor, desperate attempts to be cool, and mostly underwhelming action. But there are moments, even whole segments, that suggest a better movie trapped in the Legendary Monsterverse’s checklist of stupid stuff nobody likes but they refuse to stop doing.
Now residing in the Hollow Earth, the world where the monsters come from, King Kong is lonely and searches for more apes to bond with. On Regular Earth, Godzilla continues to fight other monsters and destroy cities in the process (but only parts of them; he’s not a jerk). But when Monarch discovers a signal being sent from the Hollow Earth, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) enlists...
