Entire Godzilla x Kong: Monsterverse Recapped & Reviewed

Godzilla and Kong two sides of an ancient rivalry once etched in stone now chronicled in a Cinematic Universe going strong after 10 years I just recapped the timeline and now that Godzilla X Kong is here I thought I'd look back and review the monster verse we'll go one at a time briefly recapping each movie or show before reviewing it in depth concluding with my review of Godzilla X Kong the new Empire now just like Bill Randon his crusade to Skull Island I'm going to need some help so joining me on this journey are Tony and Johanna hosts of the Godzilla themed podcast C Zilla versus the Pod monster after each of my reviews they'll give their thoughts so we get a more complete picture from a couple of bonafide experts in the field of giant monsters now let's rewind back to 2014 and remember how the monsterverse got its start this is Gareth Edwards Godzilla in 1999 scientists Dr ishiro sarawa and Dr Vivian Graham are summoned to the Philippines to investigate something strange a mining company found a radiation pocket and brought Machinery to dig for Uranium but the ground collapsed under them and radiation levels Rose as though contact with the outside air catalyzed something in the cavern the scientists find the ancient skeleton of a colossal lizard and next to it two big spores one dormant and one already hatched part of the reaction from exposure to the surface whatever it hatched left a trail leading to the sea in Japan nuclear power plant supervisor Joe Brody has unknowingly been tracking its movements because it emits Tremors which he's been picking up Joe sends someone he trusts to investigate Sandra Brody his wife while she and the team investigate the Tremors arrive and Gravely damage the plant the whole city is at risk of contamination and Joe has no choice but to seal the coridor condemning his wife on the other side of it to die 15 years later their son Ford works for the Navy in explosive ordinance disposal after over a year away he's returning home to San Francisco to L and Sam his wife and son but the reunion is shortlived because when he finds out his dad's been arrested again he's off to Japan to bail him out since losing his wife Joe has never stopped his Crusade for the truth they say it was a natural disaster but he knows there was something else at that plant so he's been sneaking into the quarantine Zone around the old plant the Tremors recently started again whatever killed his wife is talking again and he can prove they're the same as the ones from 15 years ago if they get his old research from the quarantine Zone seeing his father's desperation Ford joined joins him on another trip into the zone and they're both taken into custody at the plant where the thing that hatched in 99 has been cocooning as the lights flicker Joe warns this thing could take them back to the Stone Age it can absorb radiation then release it as an EMP and soon a colossal insect hatches from the Cocoon Ford survives the attack while his father is mortally wounded but sarawa and Graham heard Joe's ravings before his death he knew what he was talking about so they recruit Ford to find out what else his father knew first they fill Ford in millions of years ago Earth was populated by Massive creatures who feed off radiation as radiation on the surface subsided they went deep underwater to feed off radiation from the core but in 1954 the first time a nuclear sub reached the lower depths they awakened one of them Godzilla the one at the top of the primordial ecos system their organization Monarch was formed to research these creatures and in 1999 they discovered two more parasitic spores which once killed a creature like Godzilla the one that hatched went looking for food I.E radiation and found some at the plant it spent 15 years feeding and finally hatched today they asked Ford what else is father said and he remembers Joe described the Tremors as talking which raises the question who was it talking to Meanwhile the Navy starts tracking the massive unidentified terrestrial organism or M they find it in Hawaii feeding on a nuclear subit nabbed until Godzilla Rises off the coast and fights it off the next day they realize who the m is talking to the Other M and if they're talking the other Muto has likely finally hatched sure enough they find it trampling through Vegas they quick realize what's going on the first m is male and it's talking was a mating call his way of telling the female he's reached maturity and is ready to mate so she emerged now both are on their way to San Francisco and so is Godzilla sarawa believes he is hunting them and he thinks Humanity's best bet is to let him fight this battle but trusting nature is not a plan the Navy can get behind instead they decide to wait for the monsters to meet then drop a nuke on them as an explosives expert Ford offers to help and if they're heading to San Francisco it'll get him back to his family too but on the way the female m is attracted by the nuclear material and eats most of their bombs despite the setback they continue on toward San Francisco where L has put their son on a bus to evacuate the city while she waits behind for Ford's return that bus ends up up on the Golden Gate Bridge directly in Godzilla's path the Navy fires their missiles and he stands to absorb the barrage shielding the civilians on the bridge but as the missiles keep flying Godzilla eventually Kines through the bridge just as Sam's bus speeds past the Carnage to safety when Joe and the Navy reach the city with their one remaining bomb the male M sets off an EMP then grabs the nuke and brings it to the middle of the city a nuke that's already set to detonate in 90 minutes with an analog timer immune from the EMP it can't be stopped remotely so Ford and the team parachute into the city they work on the bomb while Godzilla fights the MOs working together Ford gets the bomb off the bay and away from civilization while Godzilla claims victory over the MOs before the bomb detonates Ford is picked up by a rescue helicopter and when the Sun rises he reunites with his family while Godzilla roars to the sky before returning to the Sea crowned by the public as Savior of their city and king of the monsters I got to say it's weird watching this movie today because tonally it's so different from the monsterverse of 2024 with Godzilla director Gareth Edwards aimed for something that felt grounded now if I were to list words describing Godzilla versus Kong or Godzilla X Kong that word probably wouldn't make the list no matter how far down you went but either approach can work and in the case of this movie I think staying grounded was the right choice because we've seen plenty of monster movies and plenty of Godzilla movies by this point so a unique approach is necessary to make them special again in this movie we don't get many of the typical sweeping shots from high up to get the best angle on the action instead the camera is mostly en locked step with people similar to a found footage movie where we can only see what characters see and like a found footage movie it does make the proceedings feel a little more real at the plant when Joe and Ford are taken into custody and the M hatches we see it in the distance or from the ground craning our necks to look up because in reality if you're getting attacked by a giant bug the last thing on your mind would be finding the best spot for a good view this approach helps you feel the scale of Godzilla and the MOs and after years of CGI rendering every insane thing we can imagine finding a way to reground us in reality before introducing us to monsters goes a long way to returning the awe these images should Inspire the best example has to be when Ford and the team parachute into the middle of San Francisco where Godzilla and the MOs are already fighting as they fall through the storm clouds this Coral almost religious sounding music plays and you can feel that these people are falling into a world they have no place in a world of Gods and Monsters they catch glimpses of the battle in progress and instead of wow that looks cool the usual reaction to a scene like this the thought is wow that looks terrifying the grounded nature of this movie isn't just in the camera work but also in the way it doesn't sugarcoat collateral damage God Godzilla simply stepping onto the shore sets off tsunamis that wreak havoc in Honolulu on the other hand sometimes the movie straddles the line of concealing the action because we're following characters or concealing the action because it's saving it all for the climax the most egregious example is in Honolulu Ford is on a train to the airport so he can get back home to San Francisco Godzilla meets the MOs in battle and Ford's train gets derailed at it hangs off the tracks and he holds on for dear life while saving a child we cut to San Francisco where you can see the battle on TV for a second then cut to the next day Ford has safely gotten off the derailed train and the kid he saved is efficiently reunited with his parents nothing motivates the cut other than we don't want you to see too much monster action yet it almost comes off as a wink to the audience like we know what you want to see but you're going to have to wait but for a movie that generally feels like it's trying to stay grounded such a blatant wink at the audience can be distracting it's an odd disjointed moment and honestly the whole movie feels oddly disjointed in fact it feels like two movies stuck together each with their own strengths and weaknesses the first is a Sci-Fi mystery thriller where Brian cranston's character fights to uncover the truth in the wake of losing his wife and the second is the disaster movie you expect from Godzilla the first movie starts strong it's something we've seen before you have to shut the door but they're still trapped inside it's a familiar and cliche tragedy but the sequence works it's elevated by strong performances from Brian Cranston and Juliet benos and it's staged effectively where it's such a long Corridor in front of Joe it does a great job emphasizing just how far away she is and how unlikely it is she'll be able to reach in you can really feel the distance after that opener we skip ahead 15 years and cranston's character devolves a bit into the standard crackpot complete with a crazy wall he's still fun to watch because he's Brian Cranston then he's killed off on the one hand this raises the stakes because it tells you no one is safe on the other hand once you enter the second movie you find out none of the other characters are as fun or as interesting to watch so no one is safe but you don't care about anyone all that much once you enter the disaster movie it also makes you wonder what was the point of the mystery aspect it all builds up to a reveal no one is surprised by you ready for this you might want to sit down there are big monsters out there and one of them is named Godzilla of course there are details we learn the monsters eat radiation the MOs are spores who look like bugs and have killed Godzilla's kind for but that explanation is not satisfying enough to Warrant this mystery story so what purpose does that first part of the movie serve from a character standpoint Joe's death motivates Brody to an extent before dying his father tells him to get home to his family it's a moment of regret because Joe left his family on the Crusade to figure out what happened to his wife but there isn't much motivation there for Ford whether or not his father died this way or left those parting words I can't imagine Ford would have done a whole lot differently either way with a giant lizard in San Francisco where his family lives I think he would have tried to get there and do what he could to save them maybe if Ford felt pressure to carry on his father's Crusade or prove it was not in vain there'd be more connective tissue but in the end what we're left with is that Joe had some insights into the monsters which helped Sarah zawa and Graham kind of Ford remembers that his father described the Tremors as talking which gives them the idea the m is talking to the Other M and they realize she's hatched but they realize it too late even without Joe's Insight a giant bug trampling through Vegas is hard to miss ultimately the Joe Brody story arc thanks to Cranston elevates moments of this movie but never justifies itself as necessary to the overall story instead I'm left asking why didn't we just follow Sarah zawa and Graham who are intimately involved in the Godzilla Story the whole time why did we instead take a detour to this other character on the outside of everything I suspect it's because following scientists trying to stop the disaster in a disaster movie is too typical and I like trying something different but it doesn't quite work here now we have to of course talk about Godzilla himself he's an interesting character in this movie because it isn't obvious where he stands does he care about Humanity or are we just in the way between him and his prey Sarah zawa is our main insight into these questions and the one who most highlights the movie's themes in Edward's depiction Godzilla and the MOs are a way of reminding us that nature is powerful we have much more control over it than we used to we have much more capacity to survive natural disasters than ever before for example perhaps that's led to some arrogance as Sarah zawa says the arrogance of man is thinking nature is an our control and not the other way around but we also aren't necessarily destined for extinction because Nature has a balance and Godzilla will enforce it but it's never clear just how intentional that is yes Godzilla wants to kill the mutos but does he care about us there's a great scene on the Golden Gate Bridge where for and L's son is on an evacuation bus that bridge ends up in Godzilla's path when the Navy launches missiles Godzilla stands in their way it almost seems like he's shielding the civilians but we can't say for sure it's intentional and when he Corin through the bridge it's only after taking a barrage of missiles so the movie hints at the possibility he cares about protecting people without outright saying it that helps to keep him a mysterious figure and helps to sell him as a terrible force of nature beyond our control and it's definitely beyond the control of these characters because not only are they Bland they're also kind of inept opposite sarawa and Graham is the US Navy despite the knowledge that Godzilla and the MOs eat nuclear material and radiation despite the knowledge that the nuclear bomb tests in the ' 50s were actually attempts at killing Godzilla and they all failed the US Navy's plan is to wait for God Zilla and the MOs to converge lure them off the coast and then drop a nuke on them on the face of it it's a plan destined to fail I think the theme of nature versus control would be more interesting if there was a stronger Counterpoint to sarawa but instead the Counterpoint is nonsense and the plan doesn't just fail it fails spectacularly on their way to San Francisco the female M eats most of the nukes they continue on with the plan in the next day the MOs take their other nuke so now they've made the same blunder twice in a row not to mention the nuke is already armed to detonate with an analog timer and the MOs have brought it to the middle of the city now soldiers need to risk their lives to get it out before it wipes out a chunk of San Francisco the plan could not have gone worse the challenge of Let Them Fight is where do humans fit into that story and I wish they found something better than coming up with terrible plans screwing them up and then having to fix their own mistakes especially when it feels so telegraphed by the fact that Ford Brody is a bomb expert so of course they have to manipulate events so that in the end it all comes down to a bomb on a more positive note even if it took some plot contrivances to get there it's cool that Ford and Godzilla find a way to help each other out in the fight Ford torches the MOs eggs which distracts the MOs giving Godzilla a chance to recover and though it's a bit repetitive both times Amo menacingly approaches Ford Godzilla comes to his Aid then there's the nice moment at the end of the battle where both of them collapse from exhaustion like we were in this together so in the end I'm pretty mixed on this movie as far as spectacle goes Gareth Edwards found a unique way to Showcase it that definitely makes the movie worthwhile but as is often the case with movies like this the human characters fall short I think if given more opportunity Ken watsab could have brought more to his role Sarah zawa has a graveness to him but also a faith in Godzilla that makes him interesting but he doesn't get much to do other than push back on Navy Officer William Sten and educate forward on Monarch history but maybe I'm being too hard on this movie let's hear from Catzilla and see what real Godzilla fans have to say about all this thanks Gil we'll give our opinions right now Godzilla 2014 it's okay yeah it's all right um Brian Cranston definitely was amazing in the beginning uh that actually was pretty sad yeah with the whole white thing I was like oh was not expecting that but then all the humans after that kind of exist and they're yeah there the human Story the human characters are pretty weak I thought the advertisements were were a little misleading I thought this was going to be like a serious Godzilla movie in tone with the original one it's serious but not like that no it turned out to turned out to be a monster fight which I'm like oh this is too serious of a tone fight this is too serious of a tone for a monster fighting Godzilla movie um but I thought it was overall decent um my one main issue which has been fixed thank God uh was how dark it was I couldn't see anything yes it uh it was fine in the theaters the initial home release and the version that streams is still way too dark but the new 4k release from a few years back specifically the 4K disc version fixes the brightness issue uh but yeah overall it told us everything we needed to know about the monster verse it set you like his design I thought the design was really good I like the chunky design I like the design I like the gills uh he felt like Godzilla and did Godzilla things and honestly he actually has more screen time than he does in a lot of the Japanese movies I know that's a complaint he's not in it enough but I feel like maybe the old that one scene which such like oh yeah there were some let Downs it could have been a lot better it felt like they didn't know what if they wanted to be more subtle or more action pack the one where everybody goes to hide and they're about to fight and then the thing closes I was like come on yes but the final battle made up for it again if you watch a version of the movie where you can see it yes but overall we give it a okay thank you C Zilla versus the Pod monster great review the lighting issue is definitely something I noticed by the way when reviewing the recap before publishing it I'd hear myself narrating what's happening but on screen I just don't see anything so I'm like is that what's happening so in some parts I turned the brightness way up so you can actually see it it also brings up a good point that these movies are definitely best enjoyed on the big screen or in prep for this video I re-watched all of them in a virtual theater on my Pro and that came pretty close to recapturing the magic I'm not sure I've Justified the price tag on that thing yet but used it for this video so it's officially a business expense anyway we've met Godzilla now let's meet the other guy who actually came first the original Godzilla came out in 1954 King Kong beat him by over 20 years releasing in 1933 though technically he was first introduced in the 1932 novel written as a way to mark at the upcoming film a novel that's now in the public domain but it's complicated because the movie is still under copyright but only until 2029 so get ready for Winnie the Pooh versus King Kong in just a few years until then this is 2017's Kong Skull Island the year is 1973 41 years before the public will meet Godzilla and learn that monsters are real but Bill Randa believes in in them already because one of them destroyed his ship in World War II the USS Latin and the attack was covered up ever since as the sole survivor bill has been on a crusade to prove monsters exist it's his belief that they come from a hidden world beneath our own the hollow Earth an idea that's been substantiated by scientist Houston Brooks and they believe there is an entrance to this world on a place called Skull Island Monarch approves an expedition they're joined by a military escort led by Colonel Packard an ex- British SAS Captain with expertise in Uncharted jungle terrain James Conrad and anti-war photographer Mason Weaver when they arrive on the island they drop bombs to test the Island's seismic response that's when they learn the island is protected by a giant ape who doesn't appreciate the explosions he knocks them out of the sky kills half of Packard's men and separates the groups Randa and Packard in one Conrad and Weaver in the other both quickly learn the island is teaming with monsters but Conrad's group also finds Natives and they're surprised to find someone among them who can translate an American World War II pilot Hank Marlo he tells his story in 1944 he and a Japanese pilot gpe iari were fighting until both crashed here in order to survive the enemies became friends until gunpei was killed by a big lizard one of the creatures Hank calls skull crawlers these creatures terrorize the ewe natives for thousands of years until giant Apes began protecting them most of the Apes have been killed off except one who remains kong king of the island and to these people God Conrad and Weaver tell him that in three days a refueling team will be coming to the north of the island if they make it in time they can all go home and Hank has a boat which can get them there something he and gunpei built from the scraps of their planes they work on getting the boat ready while Weaver has a look around she finds a giant buffalo trapped under one of the downed copters and tries to free it Kong spots her and helps lift it soon they reconvene with Packard's group and get some bad news the colonel has no intention of heading north to the extraction point he wants to go back to find one of his men who got separated Chapman the rest begrudgingly follow which means a trip through the Boneyard skull crawler hunting grounds filled with the remains of Kong's family Hank warns against it but Colonel Packard is insistent and sure enough they're attacked Bill Randa is killed but most of them survive thanks to Marlo and Conrad wielding gun's sword and Weaver's Ingenuity using a lighter to ignite a gas pocket in the midst of it all the crawler also spits out a skull and and the dog tag of the man it belonged to Chapman the man Packard's been searching for is dead but that won't stop him because this was never about finding Chapman in truth Packard wants to go back to grab their weapons and Munitions so they can kill Kong and avenge his Fallen Soldiers Hank warns that Kong is the Island's protector if he dies the big skull crawler the one that's been hiding will emerge so Packard and s they'll kill it too the group splits again Conrad Weaver and Brooks focus on Escape while the soldiers carry on their insane Colonel's Mission but soon Conrad and Weaver run into Kong and in his eyes they see a thinking being he looks at Weaver and seems to recall her good deed trying to help that Buffalo Kong approaches peacefully and she puts her hand on him after the encounter Weaver and Conrad both know they can't let him die so when Packer draws the Beast with Napal Conrad and Weaver follow by the time they arrive Kong already lies unconscious after a bombardment of hidden napom in the lake the soldiers placed more explosives on him until Conrad Marlo and Weaver draw their own weapons there's no reasoning with Packard but when his men realize he's lost it they abandon the insane Mission and instead choose Escape once Packard is alone he tries to detonate the bombs but Kong's fist kills him first as the rest of them make their way North Kong is left to contend with the big skull crawler who emerged while he was unconscious it's a close fight but with some extra help from the Island's visitors in the World War II gun mounted on Hank's boat Kong emerges Victorious then he watches as those visitors leave his Island in finally Lieutenant Hank Marlo of the 45th Pursuit Squadron of the 15th ends his three decade tour in 1973 he returns home to a wife and son in the aftermath Conrad and Weaver are taken into Monarch custody where Brooks debriefs them they learn Kong isn't the only monster around there's also Godzilla and judging by the cave paintings there are many others too after watching Godzilla full of bland characters without much personality Kong Skull Island is immediately a breath the fresh air the movie itself is full of Personality thanks to the period piece aspect it's set at the end of the Vietnam War the movie's monster has more personality too as an ape Kong gets to be a bit more expressive than Godzilla and the characters are a lot more fun the same way Cranston brought gravitas to the Joe Brody role John Goodman does the same for Bill Randa he sets the stage for the adventure to Skull Island by injecting the scense of a man on a crusade for the truth even before we know exactly why he wants to go we can feel his urgency in those early scenes before they take off as the movie's quasi villain Samuel L Jackson does a great job these movies often depend on human characters doing something for lack of a better word stupid like delivering nukes to monsters who feed on nuclear material but Jackson does a great job selling Packard's Apocalypse Now inspired obsession with finding an enemy where there is none his Vendetta against Kong while irrational is easy to understand and makes for a more compelling impediment to coexistence with Titans than Admiral Sten though the Highlight has to be John C Riley as Hank Marlo I love his backstory crash landing on the island with a Japanese soldier then having to put their differences aside to become brothers once the others find him in 73 Hank is delightful he has a slight insane Edge to him to be expected after nearly 30 years on the island counterbalanced by confidence in survival a great sense of humor and a real warmth you see that warmth in the way he talks about the natives and their relationship with Kong you see it when he eulogizes gune before attempting one last Escape off Skull Island and there's humor in the man out of time element we get to see him here David Bowie for the first time he argues with one of the young soldiers over the Cubs and tigers and there's also also his self-awareness where he knows how crazy everyone sees him as and he plays with that I can't tell when I'm talking or when I'm not talking you're talking Emma yes I'm talking yes your mouth is moving what I'm going to stab you by the end of the night and there's just a generally fun way he delivers lines like this one we can't go west that's where the skull things live we have a old saying here East is Best West is worst that's why we say it you know Southwest we could talk about that but you're going to need a lot more guns if you're going to go west and I just love his positive attitude he tells the others how he got married before shipping off and he learned the day before his crash that she gave birth to a baby boy he recognizes that after almost three decades it's unlikely they're waiting around for him but listen to how he handles it ah truth is I don't expect him to be waiting thatd be fine either way I just want one last chance to see him let me good enough for me there are so many other moments I can point out and I'm going to include one more because it's one of my favorite moments of the movie ants big ones there's one sounds like a bird but it's a [ __ ] ant he's so likable you really want to see him get home so it adds Stakes to this movie which don't really exist in Godzilla which mostly jettison character for spectacle this movie gives you some something to hope for aside from seeing cool monster fights but you might have already noticed a potential issue I've talked about Bill Packard and Hank but there are so many other characters in this movie I haven't even mentioned the two who basically become the main characters Conrad and Weaver played by Tom Heston and Brie Larsson this is where the movie starts to give me Deja Vu because like Godzilla it starts to feel disjointed it's not quite as egregious but Skull Island also feels like two movies because we start with Bill Randa his Crusade for the truth is the impetus of the movie but once they're on the island he's demoted from protagonist to minor supporting character given all this was his idea you'd think we'd see more of him on the island you'd think the movie would celebrate his finally confronting monsters again and this time having Witnesses but he barely has any lines and like Joe Brody before him dies unceremoniously Conrad and Weaver then step into the protagonist roles but don't have nearly as much to offer as Hank or Packard both of whom have personal motivations that drive the story they each want something more than simply survival Heston and larsson's characters on the other hand the actor and actress have natural charm which makes the characters fun to watch but beyond that there's nothing there Heston is just a hired mercenary and Larson is the same except she carries a camera instead of a gun I think there's one sentence of dialogue each that alludes to their motivations but it's mostly absent screenwriter Dan Gilroy who wrote Nightcrawler and a few episodes of Andor worked on an earlier draft of the script and revealed there were more backstories and character moments which were removed in the final product here's what he said Bree's character was somebody who was really War weary and had taken photographs for far too long she didn't believe in anything so the first time she saw Kong it was like an Awakening she comes back to life Tom Hon's character was a guy whose unit had been attacked by a big monster out of Vietnam so he was in search of this thing none of that made it into the movie and nothing really replaced it and by the way at this point we still haven't named all the characters and for some of the others there are little character moments hinted at but nothing fleshed out there's kind of some flirtation between Houston Brooks and San Lin some of the soldiers have backstories there is an ongoing motif of Chapman writing letters to his son Billy ultimately this movie almost has the opposite problem of Godzilla in that movie where all the characters were Bland here they all have personality but there are too many of them it is fun to bring them all together and see how they play off each other but the movie would have benefited from focusing on a smaller number of them or honestly making the movie an hour longer maybe after after Peter Jackson's 3 hours and 21 minute epic they were a little gunshy31 we'd get to watch Marlo and iari overcome their differences to survive learn about Kong and figure out how to communicate with the natives I don't know why but for some some reason at least with these first two entries the monsterverse tends to focus on the wrong people and either kill off the more interesting ones or just sideline them and once again I've made it pretty far into the review without talking much about the main attractions Skull Island Kong and all the other monsters so another aspect of this movie I love is the sense of Discovery you never know what bizarre creature you're going to meet next on the island or what sites you'll see like this moment where you see what Kong is up to when he doesn't know he's being watched he checks his wound takes a drink of water and eats an octopus slurping it up like a noodle the action is also pretty great and creative throughout the initial attack like Godzilla is shot in a way that mostly sticks to a human perspective it accurately captures the chaos of suddenly getting attacked by an ape so large your eyes can't take in the entire thing if you're up close instead instead you'll suddenly see a tree flying into your window or maybe you catch a glimpse of an impossibly large hand and if you're truly unlucky maybe you'll get a close look at some big teeth these little glimpses sell not only the chaos but the sheer scale of the Beast and the absurdity of humans thinking they have a place in this world then there are some great shots like Kong in front of the Sun as some of the surviving helicopters approach and there's creativity in the way he fights he takes takes down one helicopter by throwing a body at it crashes helicopters into each other or just spikes them out of the sky I also love the repeated shots of Packard's Angry Eyes watching Kong Slaughter his men like I said earlier you can feel and empathize with his Fury and unlike the Navy in Godzilla Packard's plan to take down Kong isn't entirely absurd in fact he comes pretty close to completing his mission he's only stopped by Conrad Hank and the others aside from Kong there are those other dangers on the island which are equally creative and terrifying the one I don't think I'll ever get out of my head is this one at first glance it would seem this man has been impaled by a tree but no that's the leg of a giant spider going through his mouth the initial attack and the horrifying ones that follow all do a great job selling the dangers of Skull Island and the creativity makes them hard to look away from another sequence worth shouting out is when they're in the Boneyard they accidentally detonate some poison gas grenades as a bunch of leaf Wings attack and you get this great shot of Conrad slicing him up with a sword borrowed from Hank which he inherited from gunpei the bottom line for me while this movie is flawed the sense of Discovery on Skull Island the more fleshed out villain the more logical role humans played in the story and the sometimes underdeveloped but fun characters gives this movie a lot of personality and possibly makes it my favorite of the franchise you're probably getting an idea by now what I'm looking for out of these movies I enjoy the monster fighting spectacle and Titan lore but for me character has to come first and I think these movies are at their best when strong characters collide with the world of Titans and now let's see what Cilla has to say about all [Applause] this enough Monkey Business Johanna we have to talk about Kong Skull Island I'm a Big King Kong fan uh I didn't know what this movie was going into it other than it was in continuity with Godzilla uh it turns out it's more of a homage to the too King Kong not necessarily the classic Kong where he's fighting goofy monsters he's walking upright um yeah we saw this one together in theaters and I think we thought it was just okay but I think we both warmed up on it what do you how do you feel about it um I don't even know where to begin um I it it felt like it was setting up because it had the blonde lady Brie Larson yeah I know who Brie Larson is I'm just talking in Captain Marvel oh my gosh from the Marvels the force is female um so anyway uh I thought it was going to be another type you know King Kong stereotype you know we got this um Tom hson is Loki from Thor Ragnarok yeah this is they were trying to like cash in on the Marvel thing they were trying to make Monarch basically they do it more in the next one but they were kind of set they were TR this is where they really tried to make Monarch feel like Shield yeah uh look I like some of the characters in this like Samuel Jackson John C Riley and John Goodman John C Riley probably probably the best one John Riley is the best character in this the problem is this movie has 10,000 characters and even though they're played by good actors yeah I don't remember anybody's names I just I really don't remember most of them to be honest that's one good thing about this movie every time you turn it on it'll feel like you're watching it the first time because you forget like a new movie you you can only remember for the the the Kong fighting scenes yeah the little skeleton dudes skull crawlers yeah like that that I specifically remember being awesome like it really is a movie that there's a guy who tries to throw the grenade thing that was hilarious that was hilarious everything else you put it on and you're just like oh is that Toby keville I didn't know he was in this film and it's like I've seen this film five times and I had no idea uh yeah it uh it improved but it came to action it really shines compared to Godzilla 2014 they really embraced the action did it in the daytime it was a fun setting I could see yeah it was a fun setting for Kong like in the 70s which I mean they did before with the 70s remake of King Kong but this is like the whole Vietnam thing was a fun aspect to it um no it's a fun schlocky time yes it's very schlocky I didn't know going in that it was supposed to be like that yeah we were just kind of like I'm like does he get to the Empire State Building this this is a thing uh but overall it's inoffensive I guess yeah I don't hate it it's definitely lower in my list of like the uh just monster verse stuff in general it's the one I've watched yeah I've probably maybe seen this like three times in my life it's it's if I want to put on some nonsense where I really don't have to pay attention and just kind of turn my brain off I would throw this on it% CU you don't have to care about anything and it's not the worst King Kong movie that's King Kong Lives so overall it's another it's okay we promise we're fans huh the Vietnam War was fun the whole Vietnam thing was a fun aspect to it that's uh an interesting take I think uh you know a lot of good insights there though glad we mentioned the Marvels that was good this is a great collaboration so far let's um let's get into Godzilla king of the monsters 2019 you'll see this is where the tone of the franchise really starts to change and we already had an idea that would happen before it came out because they hired Michael Doty and Zack Shields to write it previously they worked together on a Krampus the Christmas horror comedy which I reviewed in my Christmas horror special last year before that dhy made the Halloween Anthology movie trick-or treat and in addition to writing he also directed king of the monsters he usually gravit Ates toward a more fun comedic tone and he definitely brought that to king of the monsters so let's check it out it's been 5 years since Kong fought the MOs a day when many were lost including Mark and Emma Russell's son Andrew Mark coped by leaving Monarch and drinking which estranged him from Emma and their daughter Madison Emma coped by staying at Monarch with a renewed commitment to changing the world in Andrew's honor she she did this by dusting off an old prototype she built with Mark the Orca a device which communicates with animals through sonar but she's since reworked it to communicate with Titans she soon gets the chance to prove it works when a Titan named Mathra is born and nearly escapes her containment field Emma activates an alpha frequency and suddenly mothra's Cal but the Orca is powerful and there are those who want to get their hands on it including ex- British army colonel Alan Jonah and his band of ECOT terrorists they kill anyone in their way take the Orca kidnapping Emma and her daughter Madison along with it sarawa and Graham know their best chance at finding them is tracking the Orca so they recruit the man who helped build it Mark Russell a man who despises Godzilla and wants nothing more than to see him dead when he learns there are 17 more Titans out there mostly in hibernation he hopes to see them dead too but of course to find his daughter he cooperates soon they find Godzilla leaving his hunting grounds he probably feels threatened Mark suggests he's looking for something maybe the Orca so they follow him to Antarctica where there is a Titan in hibernation monster zero an apex predator who once rivaled Godzilla there mark learns the truth Emma is not a hostage she is working with Jonah and Mark watches her set off explosives to free monster zero a three-headed dragon that spits lightning Godzilla Rises to fight the Beast giving the team a chance to escape Mark gets Tangled in the wires of a downed craft until Dr Vivian Graham runs back to free him at the cost of her life she's swallowed by one of gora's three heads while the rest Escape afterward Emma explains herself in ancient times there was a natural order where humans and Titans coexisted and and she's seen that where Titans Go nature flourishes she intends to free every Titan it'll kill many but those who survive will do so in a better world with the natural order restored she next wakes Rodan out of a volcano near the village of Isa delara Mark and the team save the nearby villagers by drawing Rodan away and into a fight with Monster Zero then Godzilla shows up while the two apex predators fight the the military tells Monarch to clear the area they have a new weapon they think can take out Monster Zero and if it kills Godzilla 2o so be it the oxygen Destroyer they set it off Godzilla Falls but Monster Zero Rises it lost one of its heads in the explosion but quickly grows it back and makes a call heard around the world simultaneously waking all other Titans the chaos results in the greatest disaster in human history dubbed The Rise of the Titans how did Monster Zero survive without oxygen the Monarch team looks to ancient folklore of a dragon who fell from the stars named gadora they realize that's who they're up against Monster Zero is gadora an alien not of this planet not part of Earth's natural order but soon there is hope a bright light appears in the sky from another Titan Mathra Queen of the monsters after escaping the facility during Jonah's attack she cocooned for a time and only now emerged she sends a signal to her King and they realize Godzilla is still barely alive but resting Mark suggests they can speed up his rest by setting off a nuke and feeding him the radiation following Math's signal takes them to a Vortex which takes them to a place that until now was only theoretical the hollow Earth inside they find an ancient sunken city and in it Godzilla but the unexpected trip to another world fried their circuits so they can't launch the bomb someone will have to carry it which means exposure to fatal heat and radiation sarawa volunteers he takes the bomb to Godzilla and says goodbye to his old friend just before it detonates and above ground Madison buys Humanity a temporary reprieve by stealing the Orca running running to Fenway Park and using the speakers to send out a calming frequency Titans around the world cease their aggression as Godzilla Rises gadora and Godzilla follow the orca's signal to Boston and meet in battle while Humanity lends a hand with their own Firepower on the ground Mark finds his daughter with Emma's help she had hoped to wake each Titan one at a time methodically but gadora decided to wake them all at once as as a result they're looking at full extinction of the human race okay with Jonah and his Eco terrorists but not her so she finally broke from them meanwhile Godzilla is nearly defeated until Mathra sacrifices herself and lets her life energy flow into her King but he still needs time to recover so Emma offers her own sacrifice she runs with the Orca leading gadora away from the Battle of course Emma is killed but her sacrifice gives Godzilla the chance to rise again and claim victory in the battle's aftermath the other Titans arrive and bow before their King but elsewhere Jonah retrieves something gadora left behind which may be useful in his Crusade a severed head the one lost thanks to the oxygen Destroyer like I said before this movie takes a very different approach than Godzilla king of the monsters is closer to what you expect from a typical big budget Disaster Movie it no longer restrains the camera to human points of view it's filled with cartoonish characters and Wise Cracks gidora what gar H gidora Dr there's little attention paid to collateral damage or the human cost of all the monster Carnage and the villains are more cartoonish they would fit in a run-of-the-mill superhero movie complete with plan revealing monologues but all this is used as a springboard for the thing fans were clamoring for lots and lots of Titan action and it looks great as a kid I would have loved this but even today there's a part of me that will always want to see what it looks like when a giant lizard fights a three-headed dragon who spits lightning and that's what this movie is all about spectacle so how much you enjoy it will depend on your appetite for really well- rendered CGI action that's especially true because a lot of the Titan battles happen in somewhat Barren places without much sense of scale like the initial battle in the empty snowy Landscapes of Antarctica or gadora versus Rodan inside tropical storm clouds the movie also plays a lot with color especially since gadora is perpetually surrounded by a tropical storm so the environment is often unnaturally chaotic making it feel like these fights are happening in a cloud of CGI rather than a real physical place all that made it hard for me to get a ton of mileage out of the action though playing with colors did occasionally result in some pretty damn cool images like gadora on top of the volcano with this cross in the foreground this image leans into something Emma says in her monologue about why she's doing all this she wants to return to a natural order a forgotten order where we coex existed in balance with the Titans the first gods and there are some moments where you really feel that more than Godzilla 2014 this movie leans a little further into Titan lore and that's one of my favorite parts of the movie I love sci-fi less as a springboard for action adventure and more as an Avenue to imagine possibilities potential futures or in this case alternate histories it was really cool to finally reveal a glimpse of the hall Earth and show that ancient civilizations once existed there in harmony with Titans Godzilla finds his resting place in an old Temple and the Engravings give hints at what that symbiotic relationship looked like proving what Emma said true that Titans were worshiped as Gods during ancient times the credits at the end of the movie give further hints with redacted research notes except instead of the usual black bars redacting the text it's redacted by the actual credits one interesting part is that the ancient civilization is described as advanced giving Atlantis Vibes in my absolute favorite part evidence shows redacted may have even developed telepathic communication with creatures how cool is that and on top of that there's the Revelation that gadora is an extraterrestrial which raises so many other questions where is gadora from exactly and are there other door is out there what is that planet like this stuff isn't explored much in the movie but it gets your imagination running and opens the doors for further exploration and sequels now if you can't tell I'm trying to say some nice things about this movie despite the fact that overall I didn't like it a whole lot as you can probably tell spectacle and action for me are usually secondary to character and story unless you're really seeing something unique or impressive and hey based on the reaction to minus one I don't think I'm alone in that but yeah character and story are where this movie is at its worst there is some good stuff with Mark Russell Kyle Chandler's character he's probably the one who gets the most range he's lost his family to drinking and holds a very understandable grudge against Titans but he has to put those feelings aside and by the end he's actually fighting alongside Godzilla I felt like he sold that AR pretty well on the estranged from his family front there isn't much transformation because he was already talking to his daughter again before the movie starts her mom catches her exchanging emails with him by the end it's less that he want his daughter back and more she was scared off by her mother turning into Thanos the whole Emma plot bugged me normally you can handwave a villain's motivation and you don't question it too much because you typically only see the villain doing villainous things your mind just accepts oh they're evil but when you meet a character like Emma a mother and scientist who seems pretty normal and it's a Twist that she's actually an insane person who's decided to co the human race hand waving no longer works because now your mind naturally wonders about the psychology of this villain and shocking as it may be Godzilla king of the monsters isn't really equipped for a deep dive into the psychology of a mass murderer it also just feels like the movie gives her such a pass like we're supposed to feel she's Redeemed by the end of it but I'm okay with executing most of the human race but total Extinction is where I draw the line isn't much of a Redemption and even if you subscribe to # Thanos was right getting to the point where you are actually ready to push the button and condemn billions to die means overcoming a biological survival imperative to see Humanity thrive stripping that away and stripping away all empathy for your fellow humans means a total transformation into a cold calculated killer something I just don't see in this performance I think the movie would have been better off with a more conventional villain rather than trying to manufacture this twist then they could have spent more time focusing on something simpler when it comes to character development the struggles of a family that's Fallen apart after losing a son or hey you landed Sally Hawkins and Ken watsab for the second time with three Academy Award nominations between them maybe give them something to do in the movie both characters sacrificed their lives Vivien Graham to save Mark and ishiro sarawa to save Godzilla and by extension Humanity if either character were more developed rather than sidelined in both movies as supporting characters their sacrifices probably would have landed with more impact to be fair Watson by sheer force of will overcomes it to sell that final line Goodbye old friend but imagine how much more meaningful it could have been if we actually felt the degree of life and time Sarah zawa sank into studying Godzilla I don't have much else to say about this movie there's definitely some fun to be had depending on your mileage for Non-Stop monster carage for me it would have been improved with better characters or if it just totally let loose and lean harder into having fun go fullon Atlantis and show the ancient city had bizarre advanced technology gadora is an alien show something else that makes him weird other than being able to survive without oxygen or bring in the showby Jin the tiny telepathic fairies who communicate with their God Mathra through song anyway maybe I'm being hard on the movie maybe to truly appreciate it you've got to be a real DieHard Godzilla fan so let's see what Tony and Johanna have to say about all this that was an interesting take from Gil but that's just one take wink let's talk about Godzilla king of the monsters um love it I don't care you really love this one I love it it's a fun time they definitely uh listen to the fans after the complaints from the last one they're like okay Godzilla's going to be fighting a lot uh there's going to be even more monsters and it's going to be all the ones you know we're going to spend a lot of money on getting the ones that you know and they're going to get a lot of screen time except for the second most popular one she will get the least amount of screen time every time she was on screen Domin dominating presence this this felt like a course correction they're like all right let's not take it so seriously they're like Godzilla made more money but Kong probably got a better recep from people so this is trying to marry it uh it really feels like a big budget too film they work in a lot of references from the old films they bear McCreary score oh I want that's the one thing I want to talk about oh my God how they did not spend the money and bring him back to do every single one after this what is wrong with you it's perfect I mean it ends with like a hardcore redo of the Godzilla song by Blue Oyster Cult I mean whatever but also just the scene where MO when she finally hatches and she's coming out of the waterfall and then you hear her theme mixed in with it chills as a big fan of King gadora he finally looks the way I've always really wanted him to look I still so like I love his design in this I love his like Roar yeah I can't unsee that one meme where he's like super mad and just like then there's the one who's like also the same but he's like looking over and then there's the one who's all like Derpy with his like tongue sticking out every time I look at him I'm just like yeah yeah no cuz they're always picking on the one yeah notice like the two heads always go for the other head and spoiler for the next one that one ends up becoming Mecha Godzilla so funny the one they really that middle one should have been Mecha Godzilla movie would have ended probably differently like oh no we got the stupid one yeah um however it still has some issues I don't mind uh the monsters changing the environment but the wind and rain effect with gadora was a little overboard they try to counter it with them like glowing but I don't feel like especially the night scenes Godzilla and gdor like gdor is like bright and gold he should stand out from the background he kind of Blends it with the background a little too much uh the Rodan scene's probably the best because it's the most visible um and again too many characters and the Monarch characters so whatever with the Monarch people like they they serve their purpose I still don't get the whole uh was it Vera Fara how Vera farig however you say her last name from Hawkeye she's a babe but um I don't understand the whole point of her character like she was there to like she was like part of Monarch and then she was like wait no we should unlease like all these monsters with this terrorist group because like it's the way of life or whatever but then like it takes two seconds for her to like completely change her mind on it yeah a little her daughter's just there 11 uh Bobby Brown the the family didn't bother me so much Sarah zawa didn't bother me so much oh I like that scene when he died though that was sad uh no it's all the wacky Monarch characters like uh the the what youall it ice cube son oh yeah the W the wise crack he comes back in the second the the Godzilla versus Kong right who's the one guy we'll talk about it when we get to it then um um I hated the wise Kraken white-haired scientist he was the wacky one oh but then yeah that guy but then there was also Thomas middleditch who was also the wacky one um so yeah for every like step it made in the right direction completely ignored that yeah uh and again really cashing in on Marvel now they have like a big flying ship like the Helicarrier okay here's another issue like probably the only time they bring back another character or at least the two characters or whatever is the Millie Bobby Brown character and then the dad right in this in the next one no they brought back some characters from 2014 in this Sarah zawa his assistant no no no just like I'm talking about like from this giant cast they bring them back again right yeah from this movie they only bring back the point of doing this Marvel thing and just not keeping them I guess maybe they thought they were going to do more spin-offs with all these individual characters but the series doesn't have really one character that we're following they should have had it should have been Brian Cranston probably should have been saraha but they killed him I mean um yeah but I kind of it it served its purpose it's a fun movie this is another background movie you can tune out when the characters are trying to be and failing at being funny and whenever a monster's on the screen pay attention yeah that's um and this is another one you want to watch in 4k if you can adjust the settings because then it counters out the uh the wind effect like you're able to see it a little bit better um I was going to ask what did you think of the Rodan and Mathra designs I thought they were good oh Mathra I thought her head was too small she's the most redesigned out of all of them I feel Rodan is shockingly accurate to his original design she's adorable and like poofy and fuzzy and like her original form and then you going to take fuzzy and adorable and put it into this it doesn't work so they had like they could have tried they had to make her edgy somehow um but no Godzilla still looks great they changed his fins to look like they normally do uh it's got a fun final battle that goes on for a while uh yeah it's still flawed but I give this one a good what do you give it I give it a great great and good h no mention of the show beIN I guess I know a little more about Godzilla than people think but hey this isn't a contest but our next movie is a contest because in 2021 the monster verse finally culminated in the battle we were all waiting for Godzilla versus Kong these characters first met in 1962's King Kong versus Godzilla and it has an interesting Genesis originally Willis O'Brien the animator behind the original King Kong wanted to do a Kong versus Frankenstein movie where he'd square off against a giant Frankenstein monster he didn't have any luck getting the movie made in the US and when he took it to International markets too bought the script because they wanted to make a King Kong movie then they re wrote it pitting him against Godzilla instead of Frankenstein's monster I'm still holding out hope for that movie One Day hey maybe in 2029 over the years there were a few attempts at another matchup between Kong and Godzilla But ultimately it took six decades before they'd finally meet again so let's check it out 5 years after gadora something odd happens Godzilla seemingly turns on Humanity attacking unprovoked Ed but Apex cybernetics is working on something to fight back to Power it up though they need a powerful energy source and CTO rener zawa ishiro son has found one some kind of energy source which Powers the hollow Earth just like the sun sustains Earth's surface to get a hold of it they turn to the world's foremost Hollow Earth expert Dr Nathan Lind he warns that getting inside means crossing the gra vitational inversion boundary between worlds his brother tried and it got him killed crushed under the weight of an entire planet's gravity but Apex assures him they've built powerful crafts that can handle it all they need is help finding the vortex and the energy source for that Lind has a crazy idea there's a theory that Titans are naturally drawn to their place of origin if they could put a Titan near a Vortex it may lead the way n Nathan heads to Skull Island to see Dr eileene Andrews who watches over Kong he asks if they can take Kong to Antarctica near a hollow Earth entry point and let him be their guide but she fears it'll be dangerous e folklore tells of an ancient rivalry between Kong and Godzilla if Kong leaves the island Godzilla May sense his presence and attack but Lind points out Kong is getting too big for captivity Maybe the hollow Earth they could find him a real home Andrews reluctantly agrees and they load Kong onto a ship Andrews also brings Gia along she is an ew native who was saved by Kong in a recent storm that wiped out the rest then Andrews adopted her the girl is deaf and helps calm Kong by communicating with him through sign language just as Andrews feared Godzilla detects his rival and attacks in water where he has the advantage Godzilla wins the fight but leaves Kong alive they travel the rest of the way by air and sure enough once they reach Antarctica Kong leads them to the hollow Earth where Titans were born the Apex crafts survive the gravitational inversion boundary and Kong leads them to his ancestor's throne room he picks up an axe which begins to glow and touches It To The Ground drawing energy from that Source the C CEO's daughter and fellow executive Maya Simmons wastes no time extracting the powerful material and uploading the analysis to Apex eileene shouts that it's the discovery of the Millennium she can't just strip it for parts the arguing makes Kong angry which makes him loud which draws the attention of some hell Hawks Kong helps eileene Gia and Nathan Escape but crushes Simmons ship in his hand meanwhile Madison Russell has been on a journey of her own she doesn't believe Godzilla's attacks are unprovoked they never have been before and all the attacks have been at Apex facilities so they are likely the ones provoking him podcaster conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes agrees so he got himself employed by Apex to investigate them from within with help from Madison and her sidekick friend Jonah they find the truth at an apex cybernetics facility in H Kong the secret weapon they are developing which needs the hollow Earth's power is Mecca Godzilla and that's not all they also got a hold of gora's severed head which contains great power the creature had three very long necks so the heads had to communicate telepathically Apex has tapped into that power allowing rener zawa to telepathically control Mecca Godzilla the Rival machine activated by by gora's head is what provoked Godzilla now it provokes him again and brings him to Hong Kong which happens to sit above Kong's throne room in the hollow Earth detecting his rival's presence Godzilla fires his Atomic breath through the ground drawing Kong back to the surface for battle the battle ends with Kong half dead on the ground but Godzilla has another battle ahead because using Maya's analysis of the Hollow Earth Energy Apex has synthesized some of their own enough to fully activate Mecha Godzilla but what little of Gora remains in that severed head wrestles control from sarawa it kills the CEO then goes after Godzilla himself the robot is powerful and alone Godzilla might lose he needs Kong's help but the ape's heart is slowing down they need something powerful to restart it and they realize they have it the Apex craft is powerful enough to reach the hollow Earth and once they land on Kong's chest they prove it's powerful enough to restart his heart Kong Rises and fights alongside Godzilla Jonah even lends a hand spilling Whiskey on a control panel at Apex momentarily disorienting the robot soon the two Rivals are victorious over the mechanical imitation then they face each other until Kong drops his axe for today the fight is over soon Kong has returned to his new home in the hollow Earth where he's watched over by a monarch Outpost the first of its kind in the hollow Earth with a movie titled Godzilla versus Kong there's no longer any doubt over what the franchise is trying to accomplish Godzilla aimed for something a little more serious Kong Skull Island did the same but also tried to have a little fun but by now the movie have crossed fully into spectacle territory and this movie puts it right in the title it knows that you are here to see who wins in a fight Godzilla or King Kong the question is how fun and satisfying is that fight and how well does the movie entertain you while you wait for it on the question of the fighting I'd say this movie is pretty successful before the final bout they managed to squeeze in around one pretty early in the movie when they try to ship Kong to Antarctica it's a bit of a silly setup because after Godzilla attacks they switch to transport by air which begs the question if that was an option why not go for that option from the start water is Godzilla's domain and yes you avoided his usual hunting routes but you know he leaves those routes when he senses a threat he did that for the Orca last movie and that's a little machine that makes noise this is a 335 ft tall ape who happens to be an ancient rival to Godzilla's species of course he'll come looking for a fight but the fight itself is pretty great without the gadora storm turning battles into CGI clouds this one feels a bit more like it takes place in a real physical space plus it's just easier to see what's going on and the setting makes for some interesting choreography Kong fighting his chains while the boat flips upside down jumping from one boat to another or my favorite when he tosses an airplane at Godzilla like a paper airplane in general I find Titan combat a lot more satisfying when Kong is involved because with Godzilla there's a lot of zapping grappling exploding and tail whipping but with Kong you get good oldfashioned punching and that's something I can relate to that's something I can really feel I feel it more on an emotional level too because in this situation Kong is definitely the underdog you feel bad for him don't want to see him get killed and want to see how or if he succeeds their final battle also lives up to the promise they fight in Hong Kong which makes for an amazing Battleground first it's a visual Feast of a city especially at night filled with neon lights the buildings give a sense of scale and something for the Titans to interact with well to destroy and the camera work is creative you get top down bottom up and my favorite these awesome POV shots there's also a real progression to the fight you see Godzilla and Kong each getting hurt as the battle rages rather than just punch or claw back and forth until one inexplicably wins that last point is important there are a couple of things you want from a matchup like this other than a visual Thrill Ride you want a clear winner rather than a tie or some other ambiguous copout like the original and you want the winner to be a logical Choice something that comes organically out of the story in round one of course Kong lost because he was at a clear disadvantage they were fighting in the middle of an ocean where Godzilla is way more equipped for Battle Before Godzilla unambiguously wins there's a quick round two where it seems Kong is triumphant and again in that moment he had the advantage because he surprised Godzilla with a hollow Earth Energy powered axe then round three there's no HomeField advantage or secret weapons just who's stronger you can see Kong tries to be strategic using the environment to avoid Godzilla's Atomic breath and get on his back but ultimately Godzilla is the king of the monsters and he's stronger maybe in a rematch where Kong knew the fight was coming and had time to prepare he could win kind of like Batman versus anyone of course you knew the two would have to team up after their fight and I love the common enemy they chose Mecca got Godzilla with his more flexible arms compared to Godzilla's more like little T-Rex arms he can do some of that punching I love which makes him almost a combination of Godzilla and Kong's strengths making him the perfect enemy for both as a machine there's also just so much detail to take in like the thrusters which let him throw punches with more Force the Titan battles in this movie are great the best this Series has to offer so far we'll see how Godzilla X Kong Compares toward the end of this video but what about the rest of the stuff in this movie before the final battle in Hong Kong how well does this movie entertain you while you wait I'd give it a c minus and that's mathematically derived because before Hong Kong Madison Bernie or Jonah are on camera for 25 minutes and 29 seconds so the other part of the story Lind Andrews Gia and King Kong makes up 69.0 2% of the screen time and that part of the story is way more compelling versus Madison's 3.98% which Falls almost completely flat so 69% of pre Hong Kong is good but we can bump it up to a c minus because Madison's part does include the gdor head and Mecha Godzilla reveals which were cool let's start with the good Lind Andrews and Gia story The main thing which makes it stand out against Madison's part of the story is that it has has a ton of momentum from the start You Know You're Building toward a couple of things you want to see one they want to make the first true Voyage into the hollow Earth so we look forward to getting a real look at what's down there two we're warned that when Kong leaves the island Godzilla will come for him so we look forward to seeing their Smackdown and while you wait for both you aren't just left twiddling your thumbs because the story is paced with a steady stream of intrigue when we first see Kong he angrily throws a tree branch into the false Sky revealing he's being held in captivity and isn't too happy about it when we're introduced to Nathan Lind we get something I was hoping to see more of in king of the monsters the filmmakers running wild with some of these sci-fi Concepts here we find out about the gravitational barrier between the Surface world and Hollow Earth and we find out about essentially an internal Sun soon we learned Gia communicates to Kong through sign language and on the way to Antarctica we find out that not only does he understand her but he actually signs back which is one of our most concrete Windows into his level of intelligence then there's the first Godzilla brawl and finally the hollow Earth to be honest I wasn't too Blown Away by it I was kind of hoping it would be a little more bizarre and different from the surface world but to be fair it was already established that skull island is a decent example of what's in the hollow Earth so it wasn't going to look that different and after seeing so many CGI creatures over the years my mind is kind of just numb to it it's got to be really creative and unique to move the needle but the way gravity reverses between the floor and ceiling of the hollow Earth is a cool idea it reminds me of one of my favorite Platformers on the NES Metal Storm it has this awesome gravity reversal mechanic it's also fun watching Kong's Behavior here because this is all new to him too he realizes how the gravity here works and when he leaps from floor to ceiling there's this big hand statue there to greet him that's your first hint that Kong species built things then we see the throne room and the axe inside it this is more of the running wild I want to see the idea that these giant Apes built weapons structures and had some form of culture is really cool it's something I look forward to seeing more of in Godzilla X Kong it's around this time they realize they're in Hong Kong and the final battle begins this is a spectacle movie and from a pure spectacle standpoint this plot has plenty to offer and it hands it out at a pace which keeps your eyes on the screen from a character standpoint the standouts are Kong himself and his little friend Gia as with Skull Island Kong is pretty expressive but gets a little more to do in this movie and shows a little more range we see his frustration at captivity his sadness wanting to find a home and his pride in reconnecting with his ancestors I love this moment where he finds the axe proudly pounds his chest and then takes a seat on the throne Gia also has a few powerful moments when Kong struggles against his chains on the boat she holds out a finger and Kong meets it helping to calm him down and he nearly drowns in a fight with Godzilla she thanks him and calls him friend there are a few heartwarming and heartbreaking moments like this in the movie which elevated it slightly but it's also frustrating because it shows that this movie could have been more than just spectacle if they push things further instead of just giving us a few crumbs for example once everyone else learns Kong signs back to Gia and she's the only one he'll communicate with it sets up a dilemma because now suddenly Gia has a lot of power there's one moment which hints at the conflict this could create once they reach Antarctica Kong is hesitant so they need Gia to convince him to go Lind asks Andrews to ask Gia to tell Kong that maybe he'll find family down there Lind might be stretching the truth and selling false hope something Gia may not want to do so there's an opportunity for dramatic tension between what Lind and others want and what Gia is willing to say to Kong and what he himself is willing to do but the moment is brief Gia tells him he might find family and Kong goes otherwise their two-way communication is hardly used even though it's one of the most fascinating reveals in the movie and a great source for dramatic tension the other main characters Nathan Lind and eileene Andrews are played by talented actors Alexander Skarsgard and Rebecca Hall but they really aren't given anything to do other than provide the necessary Exposition and move the plot forward but there's no real emotional arcs or character development even though they set up an opportunity for it Lynn's brother was killed trying to get to the hollow Earth so you imagine it's pretty emotional for him to finally get there he's seeing this new world for himself and his brother completing the journey he never could but if you cut out the one line toward the start of the movie where Lind mentions his brother you'd have no idea he existed because he's a total non-factor after that by the way if you want to know the story of Nathan's brother the storm which overtook Skull Island and a bunch of other details you may want to check out my monsterverse timeline video where the Recaps are a lot more detailed and pull in the tie-in comics which explore backstory left out of the movies one character I have to mention is Maya Simmons the CEO's daughter she represents a pet peeve I have with big Blockbuster disaster movies The Jerk character who is only there to get killed by the monster the most egregious example is probably the babysitter in Jurassic world who commits the sin of caring more about her upcoming wedding than a couple of Brats she has to babysit and for that she gets a brutally drawn out execution by dinosaur in this movie Maya is definitely a jerk she shows very little care for King Kong but in this movie's reality remember most of the world's exposure to Titans is that they all want to kill you except maybe Godzilla so I don't think you can hold it against someone for taking some time to warm up the giant monsters her other big sin is doing exactly what they agreed to Nathan explained up front to Eileen they're heading to the hollow Earth to get a sample of that energy source when they find it Maya takes a sample and Eileen freaks out it's an amazing Discovery you can't strip it for parts that is the dis discovery of the Millennium you can't strip it for parts hold it she isn't stripping it for parts she's just taking a little sample and by the way it's already done it took 2 seconds she just needed a little piece of it and by the way you're in a strange Place filled with monsters maybe it's best to relax get home and then debate this instead Eileen starts screaming and admittedly Maya jumps the gun a bit telling her men to draw their guns but hey it's a tense situation and anyway for that Maya and all the people working for her just trying to do their jobs get crushed in Kong's fist these scenes where movies execute annoying people always make me feel a little gross but hey I admit it's probably just a me problem as for the Madison part of this movie it's not good the characters are generic there's only one hamfisted attempt at some emotion and development when Jonah notices Bernie wearing a holster and Bernie is like oh this thing yeah this is a flask of some whiskey my wife left me before she died she was my rock I also found Madison pretty irritating this movie tries to endear you to her using a cliche that's become popular where the protagonist has a loser friend they make fun of incessantly he steals his brother's car for her and she's completely ungrateful my mission my wheels my mission my wheel and when they meet with Bernie it doesn't stop I bet you drink tap water Jonah I drink tap water yeah I kind of figured that you sheep you loser maybe I'm just taking it personally because she tries driving off when he only has one foot in the car and that's happened to me in real life twice anyway all that aside there just isn't much going on in their story generic characters bumbling around trying to uncover what's going on at Apex cybernetics but unlike the Kong half of the story where there's a steady stream of reveals to keep you engaged this one just Treads water until finally the Mecca Godzilla and gadora reveal which like I said is cool the idea that gora's heads communicated telepathically is an interesting idea and exactly the sort of pushing the boundaries of imagination I want to see more of but until that point there just isn't enough to keep your interest actually this whole part of the story feels tacked on something I noticed while writing the recap recounting the plot I was completely focused on Kong and everything around him then I got to the climax and realized I had to point out oh and by the way here is some stuff these other characters were up to but in truth they do not push the plot forward at all for example yes they discover Mecca Godzilla but the rest of the world was going to do that anyway once he challenged Godzilla to a brawl in the middle of Hong Kong the only moment where they interact with the main story is is when Jonah spills Bernie's grief Whiskey on the control panel and somehow that disorients Mecha Godzilla for a second which itself feels pretty absurd it would be like spilling something on my Bluetooth keyboard and somehow that affects whatever the computer itself was doing at the time my guess is that they felt pressure to include the Madison character to maintain a connection to the previous movie and because she's the girl from stranger things if they couldn't find an organic way to keep Madison in the movie and give her something to do I think they would have been better off dropping the b-plot and expanding more on the a plot maybe that way they could have done more focusing on Kong and Gia's relationship if you wanted to show some of the Apex side of the story anyway how about this guy Ren sarawa as an ishiro son he's probably in a pretty interesting situation his dad sacrificed himself for Godzilla and now Ren is kind of provoking Godzilla I want to know what's going on with him but instead the fact that he's Ichiro's son comes off as basically an Easter egg for people who listen closely so am I being hard on this movie yes but only because I liked it a lot more than king of the monsters so I see the potential and I want them to realize that potential also I just realized once again this movie feels like two disjointed movies stuck together why does the monsterverse keep doing that c Zilla am I crazy here what what do you think about all this I can't believe you put your money on gam he wasn't even in the movie Gil anyway all roads led to this Godzilla versus Kong uh this movie is awesome I love this movie so much I oh my God sometimes I have to rewind the scenes because I just want to watch them again also I was right yes I was right had we had if you listen to our podcast go back in our back catalog we had a whole contest where the whoever predicted the outcome wrong had to read an apology written by the winner I wrote an entire like what whole full page and you only wrote like a tiny paragraph I wrote like a paragraph um yes uh they were smart to build up to this one the movie the movie really I feel like it has less characters it's only focused on like two team there's like Kong team and God team Kong team Godzilla yeah and there's only a few characters in the team that you have to they don't bother me no no nobody bothers me in this movie no and um oh and then I guess later they do have like the the bad guys technically yeah but they like they're barely there they're they're there as an excuse for oh I lie there is that one dude that really annoys me uh he's he's a fun and quirky guy on a team Godzilla I believe oh the podcaster yeah now that guy was annoying he's coming back from the new one um kill myself no the bad guys kind of exist just for a reason to have Mecha Godzilla uh but no this one they had a lot of fun with uh Adam Wingard took the Reigns on this one he knew to make it like a tight 2hour movie uh I guess the flaw on that is some of the movie feels discon jointed uh because they cut out a lot like Lance reck is oh is really high up on the list of the cast and he has one scene they cut out the twins from Monarch uh from the previous film the mothur twins they cut them out um yeah there's just awkward editing like Sara's son is in this movie I don't know if you know this maybe I think did they even say it I think Gil might have pointed out yeah they say his name is saravo and we got confused and like apparently you have to read the novelization cuz they cut out I'm not do I'm any type of thing like that I'm not doing it sorry um so yeah there's weird stuff like that but they knew they're like hey let's just focus on the story enough to be an excuse for them to have three fights and then fight a monster together uh and I think they did pretty much everything right uh I love every single fight the fights are great you can see them clear yeah but just the whole Godzilla's just like I I just want to be in charge um I did all that work in the previous movie uh just just bow but he was messing with him the whole time yeah and then only the uh what was it the battle in um where were they um uh Hong Kong was it Hong Kong yeah uh all of a sudden it got super serious and G was like all right well activate alligator mode and start ripping the crap at it yeah uh the most satisfying thing about this even though I lost was there was a clear winner which a lot of versus films when it's two big characters meeting versus films they kind of always have like a weird ending where it's like they kind of both one well yeah that's like the um first two fights technically whatever cuz uh the there's the boat fight and then kind of like oh okay there's two Hong Kong fights yeah so there's the night yeah yeah um yeah so there was a clear winner it's fun it's action-packed it's it's really stupid they've really devolved into like as if you listen to our podcast plugging again every time they reboot Godzilla it starts off serious and then devolves into sci-fi fantasy wackiness and here now there's a magic tunnel that'll take you to Hong Kong and now there's a planet inside the plan godilla can also shoot through it all the way godilla and King Kong can look at each other from like the Earth's cross basically in the very top they're flying spaceships in the portals uh it's really ridiculous what did you think of Mecha Godzilla Mecha Godzilla was cool yeah yeah it's basically gadora reborn they mix they mix all the origins of meca Godzilla into one so he's technically an alien he's technically built off of the back of a dead monster and I used to a robot yeah um yeah highly enjoyable I give this one I mean on a technical level like the script level it's clunky whatever but I give it a great I give it an awesome What's the diff better than great great and awesome and the movie introduced us to Doug he's the best remember when we thought he was Manila we thought he was Manila that's Godzilla's son in the showa era subscribe to our podcast to learn more facts about this not to be confused with Godzilla Jr Tony did you say gamra I can't believe you put your money on gam he wasn't even even in the movie Gil it's pronounced Gamora and she's part of Marvel not the monsterverse I would know I did the MCU timeline and the monsterverse timeline anyway sometimes these movies feel a little cartoonish well let's check out an actual cartoon the Skull Island Netflix series which takes place after Kong Skull Island but before Godzilla this is 2023 is Skull Island in the early 90s a few more visitors find their way to Skull Island it starts with a ship called the Once Upon a maritime Captain by a man who goes by cap he once spotted a monster in the water and ever since it's been his life's mission to find another he's joined by his son Charlie along with hero Hero's son Mike and their crew one day Charlie spots a girl overboard and rescues her she's slow to trust him or his dad but they only want to help which draws them into a mess because apparently there are mercenaries after her who promptly board the ship she escaped them in a small boat which got taken out by a sea monster and it's not long before that same monster a giant squid takes down their ship as thanks for the help he gave Annie rescues cap from drowning but most of the others including Mike's father die Mike and Charlie wash ashore what they soon learn is Skull Island they struggle at first but get help from unexpected places like the giant ape which eats the killer crocodile before it can eat them and Annie who is strangely Adept at killing monsters not to mention the large killer dog who accompanies her soon Charlie gets to know her and learns her story she and her father Shipwrecked on a nearby Island 10 years ago like this one it was teaming with monsters when they were attacked he fought one of them monsters and killed it but died himself in the process then Annie learned her father wasn't the only one protecting someone the monster left a puppy behind both orphaned the two became fast friends she named him dog and they grew up protecting each other everything was great until now a woman showed up with a bunch of men with guns and captured her as Charlie spends time with Annie he finds himself falling for her Elsewhere on the island Charlie's dad D bumps into that woman Irene and they strike a deal he'll help find the girl if she helps find his son getting the girl however is not as easy as finding her they also have to contend with her killer dog when a giant bird carries off one of Irene's men they figure out how they lure Annie and her dog into the bird's hunting ground then they tranquilize her while the bird carries off the dog all this happens while Mike and Charlie watch from behind some tall grass when they spot Charlie's dad with Irene and her mercenaries they assume he's a captive so Mike gives himself up as a distraction giving Charlie a chance to escape and figure out a way to help why was Mike so ready to give himself up it might be because he's dying when the sea monster attacked their ship it wounded him badly something he's kept to himself to keep his friend from worrying but once he finds out Charlie's dad is okay he rests while Irene provides whatever medical attention she can Charlie meanwhile bumps into a native who chases him into the bird's hunting grounds then he gets picked up and brought to the same place as dog the top of a tower where there stands a temple in honor of the giant ape they scale down the side of the Tower and notice some carvings of the ape protecting the island when they reach the bottom they see the ape himself staring sadly at an old Medallion back at camp Annie wakes up and isn't too happy about getting shot which makes Irene's confession even more difficult she is Annie's mother she tells Annie about burying an empty coffin 10 years ago and about how Fisher spotted the wreckage of her ship once Irene had an idea where Annie might be she hired The Mercenaries and came looking for her the only reason they took her by force is because they were attacked by a man eating dog who ate some of her Men when Charlie returns with dog the creature pounces on Irene but after her mother apologizes for shooting at Annie and for taking a decade to find her Annie calls him off their relationship is far from repaired but Annie does decide to stay and that's progress now all that's left is to leave the island and they have to move fast because Mike needs real medical attention soon but anyone who tries to leave will get killed by that giant squid they have to somehow kill it first for that Charlie has an idea the carvings gave him the idea that the ape is this Island's protector what if they steal The Medallion he seems to care so much about and use it to bait him into the sea where he'll bump into the squid then hopefully win the inevitable fight Charlie and Annie steal The Medallion and it works they don't know it but that Medallion belonged to an E native Kong was close with a native who was killed along with others by that giant squid as they rush back to the coast Charlie realizes dog is too slow with two people on his back so he tells Annie she's the coolest girl he ever met then he lets himself fall off dog's back leaving Annie to go back alone that gives them the speed they need and sure enough Kong ends up in a fight with the squid Charlie meanwhile falls into a trap and a native promises to make him pay for what he did to Kong back in the water Kong struggles but is ultimately Victorious when he rips the squid in half and tosses its remains he inadvertently causes a large wave causing Annie to hit her head on a rock 2 weeks later she wakes up in a hospital looks out the window at the city and asks her mom where am I huh that was a fun and kind of weird show fun because it's a class family adventure that sometimes hearkens back to Saturday morning cartoons you've got kids fighting monsters on a mysterious island along with their giant dog sidekick but it's weird because it also leans in a more adult Direction sometimes meaning people die left and right which adds Stakes that even as a child I recognized were missing in some of the animation I watched so this felt like it hit a long neglected sweet spot of course there are plenty of animated shows with plenty of death and in America recently they're becoming more mainstream things like Invincible or countless anime series we've imported but this show has those Stakes while retaining the childlike Whimsy of a Saturday morning cartoon definitely not the first show to do it but I think it's rare and it was a pleasant surprise one place the monster verse has struggled is with its characters in rewatching it all that's an aspect where Skull Island stands out the characters are not especially complex or unique but before you even worry about that the first step is to make sure we want to watch the characters Kong Skull Island did that and so does Skull Island huh those are kind of confusing titles has that ever happened before where there are two entries in a franchise one has a subtitle and then a follow-up is just that subtitle that'd be like Harry Potter in the prisoner of askaban having a sequel that's just called The Prisoner of aaban anyway these characters are likable and relatable Charlie has been working for his father on his ship but wants to go to school and meet people cap understands that but also likes how things are now he doesn't say no but he doesn't exactly say yes either I'm sure everyone can relate to that friction with parents Charlie's friend Mike is also caught between supporting his buddy and not wanting to stop going on adventures with him and there's my favorite character Annie in some ways she reminds me of Hank Marlo probably because she's had a similar experience but she got stranded as a child so while Hank was a man out of time she is a girl out of time who also missed a childhood which means she's still learning a lot of the basics of human interaction and social cues for example Mike partly blames himself for his father's death and all of them getting stranded because apparently he and his dad heard about Irene hiring people to search for this island and they took the money without telling cap in one scene Mike freaks out about this he grabs his head and yells Annie's response is what's he doing to his hair not now Annie It's a kind of dark humor that again you wouldn't normally expect from this sort of show because she's basically indifferent to his grief but she does also show empathy and there's a heartwarming moment where she relates over how both of them have L fathers hey I'm sorry about your dad I'm sorry about your dad too thanks he hey now we're friends we got stuff in common also like Hank she's made the best out of her situation and retains an enthusiasm that makes her likable even dog though he can't speak is a fun character I like how people assume he's her pet but they really treat each other more like friends sometimes to Charlie's detriment at one point he Falls in a giant ant hole ants he wants dog's help to get out but dog doesn't want to help and Annie can't make him there's also something inherently satisfying about watching people overcome differences and come together this show is full of that cap and Irene form a tenuous Alliance then Bond further once he realizes the obvious truth that the girl she's searching for is her daughter Charlie and Annie get close though it's hard to discern how much Annie realiz realizes how much he likes her not surprising considering he's the first boy she's spoken to other than dog in about a decade just look at her response to his heroic sacrifice I want you to know I I think you're the coolest girl I've ever met okay I'll see you on the beach even Charlie and dog have to put aside their differences he refuses to let Charlie ride on his back earlier in the series but once they're both trapped on that Tower they agree to work together which of course isn't easy since dog can't talk but his ears perk up whenever Charlie says Annie's name so he works with that and teaches dog how to scale the tower this show isn't doing anything groundbreaking or new but it's repackaging stuff that's universally enjoyable and delivering it through the monsterverse a boy and an animal learning to communicate so they can overcome an obstacle it never gets old then of course there's Irene and Annie beginning the process of reuniting as mother and daughter to some extent I think I'm going easy on this show because it doesn't set its sights too high but in the end it achieves its goals it's a fun story that appealed to my inner child though I was curious what others had to say about it and the worst review comes from CNN where they say the series that washes ashore via Netflix is mostly aimed at adults just not particularly well that might be some of the disconnect because this did not feel aimed at adults to me it does have death and adds some Stakes often missing in Children's shows but I thought it was pretty clearly aimed at teens maybe occupying a similar Young Adult Space as something like Hunger Games though the storytelling in this show is simpler and like I said does have Saturday morning cartoon Vibes so it almost feels like it's aiming for an even younger audience it skirts a weird line but never did I think it was aimed at adult maybe it's one of those shows that's good for a kid who you think is mature enough to handle it if I have any complaints about the show it'd mostly be on two fronts one it hints at some interpersonal conflicts I mentioned which never really go anywhere satisfying Charlie wanting to go to college and stop these Adventures doesn't play much of a role especially since he's separated from his dad most of the time and Mike's admission that he and his father took money from Irene just feels weird like how does cap think they funded the voyage why was hero so desperate for the Money Mike makes it seem like it was partly because they wanted a fun trip with Charlie before he abandons them for school which just feels really childish and even if cap is against taking private money it also just doesn't feel like that big a deal because it put them in danger but their whole mission is looking for giant monsters so danger kind of comes with the territory it also just doesn't really go anywhere because who can hold it against Mike after he lost his father obviously one issue overrides the other on that front it also felt like the character was never properly grieved especially by cap if it were a more adult show that's definitely something I'd have needed to see more of and of course there is the fact that the story ends with so little resolution I get they're setting up for a potential season 2 already written but not officially renewed or canceled yet but so much is left open is Mike okay where's dog how's Charlie doing did cap stay behind to keep looking for Charlie or did he come home some amount of Cliffhangers can be good but for me this went a little too far all right let's turn it over to Tony and Johanna maybe this is one where I went a little too easy on the show let's find out wow Gil that was a very informative review of so detailed of the Netflix Skull Island we wish we could give you our review of Skull Island but we forgot to watch it for this video oops so we'll just take your word for it Gil subscribe to our show we'll get to it eventually we'll get to it eventually we promise to review it we drop the ball on this one oops I Blame You yeah that's fair what no no we can't can't not have your review that would make the video incomplete it would lose all credibility maybe I can maybe I can just make something [Applause] up hello Johanna hello Tony so Skull Island I did not watch this show because cartoons are for children what about you Johanna are you a child who watched a silly cartoon you're such an idiot Tony wow even in my imagination Tony fails me well it's not my imagination that next up we're talking about the first ever liveaction TV series to feature Godzilla well technically not the first too made Zone fighter in 1973 an Ultram man style show where Godzilla occasionally showed up and his appearances were apparently considered in continuity with the movies at the time anyway this is the first American TV series to feature Godzilla and it fills a lot of the gaps between movies partly taking place in the 50s at the start of Monarch and partly in 2015 shortly after Godzilla let's check it out in 2014 Godzilla emerged in San Francisco and inadvertently destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge Ford and L's son was lucky to survive but some weren't one teacher Kate Randa had to watch a busload of her students fall into San Francisco Bay a week later her father heroi abandoned her and her mother saying there's something he needs to do and a week after that his bush plane disappeared in Alaska after the string of heartbreaks she and her mother find something strange in hiroshi's drawer a key and Lease to an apartment in Tokyo she heads to that apartment and inside it finds a second family a mother and her son kentaro Kate and her apparent half brother head to hiroshi's office and find more strange things inside a hidden safe a bag with a symbol on it which Kate recognizes people wearing it were on the bridge after Godzilla they'll soon learn it's the symbol for Monarch a company their father works for and the bag is filled with research from Bill Randa something he tossed off the edge of Skull Island before his death which was retrieved by fishermen only last year the research is all on Old Tech so they recruit someone who knows old Tech kentaro's Ex may she cracks the encrypted research to reveal redacted documents a map and some photos including one of their grandmother Koo standing in Godzilla's footprint it could be the beginning of a globe trotting Adventure but Kate isn't interested especially after learning her father was cheating on her mother for years for Kate the journey is over she prepares to head home until she's intercepted by Tim and Michelle agents of Monarch alerted by them cracking the encryption Kate escapes their grasp and by the time she gets to May's Place finds the agents are already there so may and Kate sneak off together at karo's home the boy asks his mother about a photo he found in his father's things it's someone Hiroshi called Uncle Lee when the monarch agents arrive demanding canaro hand over Bill's research his mother quietly hands him the photo of Lee a silent message to go find him he'll know what to do canaro pretends he's going to grab Bill's research but instead escapes he reconvenes with Kate and may then the three of them find Lee Shaw at a retirement home but the ankle bracelet and cameras make it clear he is Monarch's prisoner Lee tells them he doesn't believe hoshia is dead and he'd like to find him they escaped together and with help from Lee's pilot friend doho they head to Alaska where they find hoshi's bush plane destroyed but it didn't crash something destroyed it after it landed and that something soon appears killing doho while freezing him and their plane solid with a cold breath stranded Kate May canaro and Lee have little time to find a way out either the cold will kill them or that Titan will soon the group splinters when they can't decide what to do canaro spotted a man-made structure on the way in but no one else saw it and they can't know if he's mistaken or not so he heads off on his own while the others head for a bright light in the distance canaro does find a structure and in it pencil shavings left behind by Hiroshi he was here and canaro finds a radio which he uses to call for rescue just in time because the rescue copter finds Kate May and Lee running from the cold breathing Titan on the way out they spot the source of that bright light a glowing hole in the ground the helicopter takes them to a monarch Outpost where each of them is interrogated Michelle offers May a deal Michelle found a bunch of passports with different identities and May's things clearly she is on the run from something if May helps Michelle Michelle can pull some strength rings to get her a clean slate for now may refuses and soon Tim convinces his Superior Verdugo to let the kids go Kate and karo's father is Hiroshi Randa son of ko and Bill Randa who were there at the founding of Monarch just like Lee Shaw perhaps Kate and canaro could carry on the Randa Legacy so they let them go but will keep monitoring them from a distance the three kids kids head to hiroshi's other office where overlaying one map on another points where he's going next the Sahara Desert Lee meanwhile is still under interrogation by Verdugo but all she gets from him is a lecture about how useless Monarch has been since its founding they had 60 years to prepare for Godzilla and the M's emergence but the best plan they could come up with was Let them fight it's time for Monarch to be proactive against monsters Verdugo is unmoved by his words but outside the interrogation room they seem to resonate with Michelle for her it's personal she lost her sister Sandra Brody when the Japanese plant collapsed in 99 so when Lee is taken for transport Michelle breaks him free and she knows where the kids are going next because May told her in exchange for that clean slate they find them at Kate's mom's house and at Le's insistence Michelle is on their side they all head to the Sahara Desert together where they spot Hiroshi in the distance with a strange machine on his pickup truck he frantically waves for them to leave just before Godzilla shows up they all barely survive the encounter and before the Titan leaves he looks at Kate with something in his eyes intelligence and recognition afterward Hiroshi is gone and Kate disagrees with Lee on what to do next Lee insists on following Godzilla why Kate asks they can't stop the Titan but that isn't what Lee wants to do he wants to help Godzilla they can come with him and he'll explain everything or they can go their separate ways Kate opts for the ladder but when they get back home May goes missing when Tim finds Kate and canaro they agree to help him figure out what Lee Shaw is up to if he helps them find May and they do at a company called applied experimental Technologies it seems her past has finally caught up with her back when may went by her real name Kora she worked for AET but soon discovered they were performing unethical experiments on animals to develop neural interface units so she erased their research and went on the run now they're making her an offer either they call the police and have her arrested or may continues working with monarch but as their spy because they would love to upgrade from animal research to Titan research May refuses which means she'll have to face the authorities but Kate and canaro strike a deal of their own Verdugo agrees to pull some strings and have may set free in exchange for Kate and Cano's help finding Lee and how did Verdugo get AET to let may go she struck a deal providing AET access to data on Titans data that in the next 7 years will help them build Mecca Godzilla under a new name Apex cybernetics Lee and Michelle meanwhile have begun their Crusade it turns out hiroshi's map points to various passageways to the hollow Earth Lee would like to close them all starting with the one in Alaska the source of that bright light so he and Michelle blow it up Kate and the others begin their search for Lee at an old Monarch field office where some files give her the idea that Lee may have loved her grandmother Koo so the next place he'll go on hoshi's map is probably the place where he lost her Kazakhstan a place where he feels there's a chance for Redemption how did he lose her there it's a long story which begins in 1952 when Lee was an Army lieutenant which would make him about 90 in 2014 yet he seems more like 70 how could that be that's also part of the long story he's assigned to escort Dr Koo mura on a mission in the Philippines where they bump into Billy Randa who is looking for the same thing as her the truth for her it's scientific research to find the source of some strange radiation readings but for him it's a crusade because he knows where the radiation is likely coming from a dragon the same one which sank the USS Latin despite official reports it was taken down by an enemy attack in World War II Billy intends on proving the truth and soon they find the ship along with the ion Dragon who sank it with Lee's help they survived the encounter in 1954 Lee asks the military for more funding to expand their monster searching operations they lend him 150 lbs of uranium to lure another Titan but the military has less interest in learning about monsters and more interest in killing them so when the uranium attracts a Titan named Godzilla they blow him up but only a year later Lee KO and Billy discover that he's still alive in Japan they find a man who's built a gamma radiation simulator which attracts Titan a Titan phone just like the one Hiroshi will have on his pickup truck a few decades later and when he turns the Titan phone on God Zilla shows up but for Lee it's a disappointing trip he skipped an important meeting to be there because he wanted to be with KO they've been falling for each other but she rejects his advances she knows their work is too important and if they fall in love it'll make it hard to prioritize it today is proof of that Lee skipped an important meeting for romance and in his absence Monarch was handed off to someone else who seems intent on shutting it down after all the military believes they killed Godzilla a couple years ago and since then Monarch hasn't produced any hard evidence of other Titans out there they could reveal Godzilla is still alive but KO and Billy worry the military will just try to kill him again so Billy and KO get to work trying to find something that will prove Monarch's worth they map out every Titan sighting and Billy gets an idea how they so quickly move around the Globe that's when he comes up with a theory of a hollow Earth and that isn't the only development working closely the two are also falling in love and Billy learns that KO is a widow with a son named hirosi she's been raising him alone but Billy assures her that now she doesn't have to Meanwhile Lee saves Monarch by playing that card they've been keeping close to the chest he reveals to General Pucket that Godzilla is alive so of course Monarch has to remain active over the next 5 years Billy becomes a father to Hiroshi and soon a single father in Kazakhstan Billy Koo and Lee study some Titan eggs when the ground becomes unstable and the eggs hatch Koo falls into the swarm of insectoids 3 years after that in 1962 Lee Joins a small team on the first attempted trip into Billy's theorized Hollow Earth only Titans can get through the vortex so they build a small craft use the Titan phone to call a Titan it comes to the surface and then the craft follows it back in it all goes as planned at first but after the craft disappears The Vortex implodes and Lee is seemingly Lost In Truth he finds himself in axis Munday a place that connects the surface and the hollow Earth between their crash landing and a Titan attack Lee is the only Survivor after a week there he gets sucked into a Vortex and dropped in the woods only to wake in a hospital in 1982 it seems the gravitational Distortion in Access Mundy causes time to pass differently for him it's been a week but on the surface it's been 20 years a grown Hiroshi greets him in the hospital and after losing both his parents Bill and KO to Titans he's grown bitter to keep Monarch and Lee's experience secret he has him thrown into that retirement home which doubles as a prison Lee grew old in that retirement home and now in 2014 finally returns to Kazakhstan to blow up the hollow Earth entryway there until Kate Tim and the others show up to stop him he explains to Kate why he's doing all this and what he meant by helping Godzilla Godzilla is a thinking creature Kate saw it when she looked in his eyes and Godzilla knows that Titans and humans have to remain separate Titans in the hollow Earth humans on the surface so Lee is helping him out by shutting all the passageways between them when he sets the bombs to detonate chaos ensues May falls into the Vortex then Kate and Lee goes with her to protect her once again Lee finds himself in axis Munday and soon gets his chance at Redemption because koranda is still there she's been alive all this time to KO it's been 57 days but on the surface 56 years in that time her husband died driven to Obsession in the wake of her apparent death Lee grew old and her son grew up without a mother together they find a way out the gamma radiation simulator and the vessel Lee took in 1962 are both here so they decide to leave the way he came in they call for a Titan and the ion Dragon comes they prepare to follow it home until a wire comes loose for Lee that's the moment of redemption he leaps from The Vessel to fix that wire as the dragon approaches he's going to run out of time until Godzilla shows up and buys him the time he needs Lee connects the wire as the vessel leaves he jumps after it and KO grabs his hand but Lee knows he's too much weight he thanks her for everything and let's go Lee B Shaw does not make it home but he does find Absolution because Kate May and KO get through that portal and they do make it home though things have changed little time has passed for them but on the surface it's been 2 years in that time Hiroshi Tim and canaro had few options for the help they needed when Monarch refused to help find their friends in their desperation they turned to May's old company AET which now goes by Apex cybernetics that's where they are now one of their research centers on Skull Island and King Kong is nearby his proximity sets off an alarm and the group runs inside for cover like I mentioned in the recap that is the same Apex cybernetics which goes on to build Mecca Godzilla 7 years later Monarch ends in 2017 and Godzilla versus Kong happens in 2024 this Apex cybernetics reveal speaks to to a challenge faced by this show in the new era of franchisees spanning mediums yet remaining connected in a Cinematic Universe writers have to find a way to make compelling shows which aren't required viewing for the relevant film series Star Wars and the MCU have been facing this Challenge and now the monster verse does too often the challenge is handled through one-way references TV shows can feel connected to movies by referencing them or elaborating on them like providing backstory on the origins of Apex cybernetics but usually the reverse doesn't happen where something is introduced on TV and carried over into movies this poses a challenge because especially in a franchise that emphasizes spectacle over character what keeps you watching is amazing and thrilling visuals something limited on a TV budget though impressively done in Monarch when it's sparingly used or the another thing which holds our attention is a sense of Discovery the monsterverse is a world teeming with mystery what's in the hollow Earth how did humans coexist with titans in ancient times how intelligent is Kong can he defeat Godzilla what other Titans are out there this sense of Discovery is also Limited in a TV series because we know the biggest reveals have to be saved for the movies so what do you do the Skull Island animated series handles the issue by separating itself from the movies it could easily be an independent story involving a reimagining of Kong with no connections to a broader monsterverse it wasn't about big reveals or spectacle instead it was a simple Adventure Survival Story and it told the story with a tried and true formula give us a handful of likable characters who must overcome differences and work together in a life-threatening situation Monarch Legacy of monsters does a bit of this but also leans pretty heavily on mystery like the First Act of 2014's Godzilla it takes what is known to us and makes it unknown to the characters to Kate May and canaro Monarch is a mysterious organization to us it's not we know who they are and what they do to Billy Lee and Koo the hollow Earth is a mysterious and new Theory to us it's not we've already seen Skull Island which we're told as similar to The Hollow Earth we saw Godzilla's Temple and king of the monsters and 3 years ago when Godzilla versus Kong came out we saw the hollow Earth itself the show does also try to craft a few of its own Mysteries what is Hiroshi up to what is Lee's plan and why is Lee 20 years younger than he should be the last question is the one which gets the most satisfying answer the idea of gravitational Distortion causing time to work differently and access Monday is an interesting one a satisfying resolution to the question and more importantly it has great emotional payoff Lee's reunion with KO is probably my favorite scene in the whole series and we'll talk about it more in a bit the first question what is Hiroshi up to is less satisfying and overall less captivating the leag question is almost automatically interesting because it poses something impossible why is he the wrong age so naturally we're curious but regarding hirosi the show doesn't give us enough reason to get invested in that question our first introduction to the guy is that he's kind of a scumbag he has two families he's kept secret from each other so that's a knock against him and in the flashback from episode one we learned that he abandoned his daughter at the lowest point of her life it's hard to wrap your head around how incredibly awful it must be as a teacher to watch a bunch of your students die and not be able to do anything about it it's days after this tragedy that Hiroshi chooses to run away with no indication he'll ever come back and no hint as to why he has to go and he doesn't even have the courage to look his wife in the eyes to tell her he sends his daughter to do his dirty work instead forgetting about his other wife who he doesn't send any kind of word to from the start I hated this character so on a personal level I found it hard to care why he ran off because he strikes me as the dad who leaves for a pack of cigarettes and never comes back anyway to get me interested the show would need to provide a hint that when I find out why he's on the run the answer will be satisfying but it doesn't really do that either other than revealing he works for Monarch which isn't inherently compelling since we've already been on the inside of Monarch for a few movies and in the end once his motivations are revealed sure enough they aren't that interesting he was just trying to prove a theory we've already seen proven several times over the hollow Earth it's also not clear why proving the hollow Earth real necessitates never seeing his family again why not spare them the Heartbreak and say hey I have to take a work trip for the next couple of months I mean how long does it take to fly to Alaska and take a photo of the obvious portal in the ground even if Verdugo dismisses it like we study monsters not vortexes you show that photo to enough people at Monarch someone will say yeah we should probably look into that and with all the data they've collected I'm sure he could correlate the location of the portals with Titan appearances and there's pretty compelling evidence to prove his father's Theory his whole Crusade hinges on this absurd conceit the hollow Earth theory it's such heresy at Monarch that there is absolutely no way Hiroshi can study it from within the organization when General Pucket saw the impression of Godzilla's footprint in the 50s his first question was how can something this big walk around without being seen that mystery is what led Billy to the hollow Earth theory yet we have to believe that Monarch lets that question stand as a mystery for decades and never investigates the only credible Theory to explain it why because this crazy talk who would believe such a thing a hollow Earth Billy was nuts that's the explanation they give repeatedly it's considered a crackpot Theory and is not ever to be considered despite the fact that Lee Shaw has been there and even if you think he's crazy or his testimony flawed there's no question he went somewhere strange considering he disappeared for 20 years and came back the same age plus they have a Titan phone there is zero chance Monarch in the military would just let that lie there if not for scientific research then for its potential as a weapon just imagine activating it in an enemy country then when Titans trample you have plausible deniability who would believe you have control over Godzilla and when they experiment with that Titan phone they'll naturally ask when we turn it on and Titans show up where are they coming from and of course that would point to the Rifts you can keep poking holes but the broader point is that Billy and KO gained so much insight into Titans in the span of a few years with limited resources I just can't get myself to a place where I believe Monarch has done a entially nothing since then I think the conflict between Lee and Monarch makes sense there is a debate to be had over taking a more proactive or reactive approach to Titans but when Monarch isn't just reactive or somewhat passive but literally doing nothing really more than doing nothing actively discouraging Research into an incredibly important topic that takes what could be a real interesting conflict and turns it into a cartoon where Monarch is obviously and unrealistically incorrect in their approach there's one part that captures it perfectly and it's almost comical while Koo is trapped in Access Monday she gets a hold of the Titan phone and reverse Engineers it to send out a distress call at Monarch they pick it up and Tim takes it to Verdugo but she doesn't care what about the signal it is not our priority right now the possibility of a survivor in the hollow Earth is not a priority because they're seeing gamma spikes around the world similar to ones that appeared before gday so there could be another emergence around the corner I don't think anyone would disagree with the order of priorities but to claim that she literally cannot spare a single resource on exploring that incredibly important Avenue is insane especially when we have not seen Monarch accomplish anything of value and there's no hint they're doing anything to prepare for that possible emergence other than staring at computers that's Lee point they do nothing but where his point of view should be an exaggeration it seems to be literal which like I said makes the world feel more cartoon than real all that to say this show does not do a great job as a mystery story but how about as a drama and adventure to answer that we have to split the show in two there's the past story line following a young Lee Koo and Billy then there's the 2015 story line following Kate May and Hiroshi both are quite different and succeed to varying degrees before fully colliding in the final episodes of the show personally I really enjoyed the past storyline like I said when mystery is off the table we're more dependent on getting invested in the characters usually that comes down to either liking the characters finding them interesting or some combination of the two if you're talking about an anti-hero or Villain Like a joker you might depend more on interesting I might not like Arthur Fleck or Walter White but they're intriguing and hard to look away from and then comes empathy if we understand and feel someone's desires goals or plight we can feel their Journey but if we don't want to spend time with that character at all it's harder to reach the point of empathy and I liked KO Billy and Lee I wanted to spend time with them koo's passion for discovering and understanding nature is infectuous her ability to take control and assert herself in the face of adversity thanks to being a woman and Japanese at that in the 50s is admirable Billy shares a similar passion and doubly so because for him it's personal he needs to prove what really killed his friends on the lon but he doesn't wear it like a crucible he isn't miserably going along on a self-imposed mission he also enjoys the journey and that too is admirable and then Lee he's good at his job and dedicated to it he's loyal to the Army but not blindly so he sees the importance of what Billy and Koo are doing and it's endearing to watch the lengths he goes to protect them the characters are sometimes at odds with each other especially when Lee is caught between loyalty to the Army and loyalty to these Eggheads but the conflict never turns bitter and it's satisfying to watch the three of them build a strong friendship strong enough to withstand heartbreak when KO chooses Billy over Lee I cared about these characters and enjoyed their entire Journey even if I knew where it was going to some extent we know how Billy dies and we know the results of their love triangle but the strength of the characters and the fun of watching them create Monarch overcame that forn knowledge on the other hand the 2015 storyline they chose to go a different way with that one there is little work done by the story to make us like Kate May or kentaro we start the first episode with Kate we know she lost her father and she's in Japan to settle some Affairs so we don't know much yet then she gets on the phone with her mom and it's pretty mean to her you said you call when you landed H and I just landed yeah two hours ago Kate I've been waiting I have to get their immigrations and Customs get a cab oh God so what you're there now I'm here and and what Mom you think he'll just be sitting here waiting for someone to bring him home then she finds her second family and we meet canaro who is quite upset at the Revelation but especially upset at the implication their dad might not be a great guy and inexplicably he thinks he can convince Kate otherwise by bringing her to their dad's office you think our father was so bad I want to show you something I can't even follow the logic here kentaro has no idea what his father did for work than software for satellites why in the world does he think showing Kate some maps will make her believe he was a good man and why does he assume that she doesn't already know the little he does about what Hiroshi did for work so our introduction to these characters is that they're bitter and not the brightest then we get an introduction to the sort of Adventure they'll be going on because we get their first puzzle unlocking hiroshi's safe and it's one of those cliche moments where a character is able to guess the password her birth month my day your mother's month my mom's day contrast that to Billy and KO in 1952 episode 2 their puzzle is finding the source of strange radiation she approaches it scientifically while he looks to Folklore you know the people of these mountains they have an oral tradition about a dragon that carves a path of fire across the sky or maybe a path of ionizing radiation combining the two approaches gives them an answers that's cool and it shows how two mentalities can bring something different to the table for a more complete picture or you can watch a couple of miserable kids combine random elements from different birthdays to open a safe it may seem unfair to complain about their bitterness because of course it's entirely understandable and justifiable but like I said earlier in my view that understanding is secondary to the first question do you even want to spend time with these characters to begin with for me the answer was no especially in comparison to the flashbacks which were a lot more enjoyable now you can tell a story about unhappy characters but it's challenging and it's usually balanced by other traits that make the character interesting or entertaining think of Dr house he was miserable but we loved spending time with him because he was intelligent and funny saw Goodman scumbag lawyer but also hilarious Arthur Fleck horrible but also fascinating in an ensemble cast you have some leeway because while Kate is suffering the aftermath of a tragedy the other characters can be a counterbalance but instead they Double Down by making kentaro just as bitter as her then we're introduced to a third character May who is also miserable and Cano's ex so the two feed off each other's negativity to multiply the bitterness with these characters the present started to feel claustrophobic and I just wanted to get back to the past then came the crushing disappointment of episode 4 when you realize not every episode will show you that past this episode instead flashed back to May and karo's meeting and guess what they were both miserable back then too May because she's on the run after trying to take down AET and canaro because he's an artist but upset that the people paying for his art only like some of his art and they don't pay for the other art that he's really passionate about some of my animus might be personal because I remember back before YouTube when I was under a lot of stress 16-hour days if I saw a kid getting paid to make art complaining that he doesn't get paid for all the art he makes I you know that I mean that'd be pretty annoying imagine if you heard me complaining like oh God I got to watch all the Godzilla movies next week and get paid for it these flashbacks were also disappointing because they answer questions that I I think most of us didn't have by this point the show has done little to endear us to kentaro and may or get us interested in them and there's nothing inherently compelling about a couple of people in their 20s who broke up if I meet two people who broke up and are forced together by circumstance if they're bitter about it my first inclination is to walk away not sit down and listen to their whole backstory because it's unsurprising and familiar no one's thinking whoa whoa two damaged people in the their 20s went out a few times and broke up what tell me everything episode 4 is kind of the Pinnacle that shows just how unpleasant these characters are because as soon as things get tough they're at each other's throats trading barbs or insults can be fun here's an example of that in the past storyline when Lee gets them funding from the military Billy almost embarrasses them by sharing his theory of Titans teleporting around the world how does something this big walk around without being seen well I'm leaning towards teleportation we have a number of working theories sir afterward he proclaims that he's not going to bite his tongue just to get support from a bunch of gun toing neanderthals this is a voyage of Discovery so I'm not going to bite my tongue just to get support from a bunch of gun toing neanderthals afterward KO and Lee talk you know how he is I do if it wasn't for you neither of us would be here and that is not a theory that's a fact so you are saying that there is a place for gun toing neanderthals thank you see there's some conflict a bit of a fight but Lee can be playful with it and call himself a neanderthal or you can have this canaro shoots a flare to try and hit the Titan and and save everyone but he misses I shooting at least I tried you could have got killed you idiot it's a great example of the two different approaches Lee tries to be a little playful and at least calls him text meanwhile may just goes go with a classic you idiot then she steps in a puddle and things get worse hey are you good am I good I'm going to die of hypothermia you happy we came you still think it's out there hell I know what you what happened to your centuries of experience it's a Titan May is it cuz you're pissed at me no this has nothing to do with you this is about me freezing to death I'm trying aome an [ __ ] oh what you want to die to prove a point do you stop no stop please stop and as hypothermia sets in May tells Kate she might have to leave her behind it's self-sacrifice not wanting to slow your friend down and I'm empathetic to that but then she goes a step further yes and if the time comes you ditch him to ditch the one guy with any real field experience who at least has some idea of what they should do and is trying to be proactive not to mention he's the most and maybe only likable character in the present timeline so hearing a main character casually tell another to leave him behind for basically no reason doesn't help with likability this show seems to think that insulting people is supremely entertaining because it does it constantly like I said it can be entertaining if it's done cleverly in a mutual busting chop sort of way in the 50s storyline that's exactly how it's done but in the present it always seems bitter and mean-spirited you need friends I have friends not internet friends [Music] when Kurt Russell's character the older Lee Shaw first showed up in episode 2 he was such a bright spot after two episodes of these miserable characters wandering around finally watching someone crack a smile was a relief Russell brings such a natural Charisma that helps to warm up the present storyline and bring it closer in tone to the Past story but as a singular character he can only do so much it's worth mentioning here the brilliant choice of Caston Kurt and his real life son Wyatt Russell in the same role both do a great job with the character and like I said earlier it does enable some great moments in the story having an aged character that truly feels like an aged character anyway I feel like I should move on from complaining about Kate may canaro but I just have to point out a couple more things episode five is when Kate and kentaro finally start getting along but they do it at the worst possible moment to get to hiroshi's other office in San Francisco they have to sneak into a quarantine Zone inside the quarantine Zone they have to keep quiet and avoid getting seen were you not listening they shoot looters at one point they almost get spotted but manage to trick the guards and Escape literally 40 seconds later this happens anyone know a good song we in the volume p p and I'm not being paranoid because less than 60 seconds after that we see there were actually guards right around the corner sometimes the flashbacks are also so underdeveloped it feels a lot more like telling rather than showing this same episode reveals through flashback that Kate was in a relationship but had hard time committing to her girlfriend who wanted them to move in together a few issues with these flashbacks one it's impossible to get invested in the relationship because her girlfriend Dany has literally 2.5 minutes of screen time the flashback also reveals that Kate was cheating sleeping with another girl when she was supposed to meet up with Dany for a character I'm already having a hard time connecting with revealing that she betrayed someone in a similar way that her father betrayed both his wife wives and kids really didn't help especially when in both cases there's so little exploration of what drove them to that behavior so there isn't even a shot at empathy Hiroshi just gets annoyed when kintaro asks him why he did it and admits there's no answer the flashbacks are meant to connect us more with the characters but they often had the opposite effect for me take May for instance in episode 7 we find out why she's on the run she found out the company she works for was doing unethical experiments on chimps her solution delete their research what exactly did that accomplish AET is still experimenting on those chimps and if anything they'll probably start torturing more of them to try and catch up after May's setback just like Hiroshi everyone seems to go from 0 to 11 without trying anything in between or sensible first we find out Hiroshi was exiled from Monarch after trying to repurpose satellites to track gamma rays on Earth rather than space did he try anything else to convince them of the hollow Earth theory before commandeering satellites and going on the run like pointing at Lee for example and saying hey isn't it weird this guy didn't age for 20 years or or maybe this was all an excuse to abandon his families because he was just sick of leading the double life he went to his boss and asked hey can we talk about Hollow Earth H not right now fine I'm abandoning my families huh just like May whatever they were doing to those chimps was probably illegal so why not try being a whistleblower if the proper authorities don't work maybe leak the info publicly all of that might fail but you definitely try that before doing something that accomplishes nothing other than forcing you to go on the run and abandon your family for 2 years unless she was also looking for an excuse hey what kind of research do we do here oh we're working on neural interface with chimps what I'm abandoning my family huh the show also sometimes suffers from resolving conflicts way too quick and easily the same way sitcoms fix everything by the end of an episode at one point May betrays her friends by giving up their location hoping Michelle will get her a clean slate and when Kate finds out May betrayed them she's pissed so by the end of episode seven you have these open threats May is on the Run May hasn't seen her family in a couple years may had a falling out with Kate and canaro oh and on top of that Tim tries to help get May out of A's clutches by setting off a false Titan Alarm sending the public into a panic so now the public wants answers in the span of literally 5 minutes the following things happen to wrap up the episode in a neat bow May gives herself up and agrees to be arrested for her actions Kate and canaro ask Verdugo to pull strings to get her freed May is released without consequences after a monologue about taking responsibility for her actions then she reunites with her family then she reunites with Kate and canaro who forgive her then Tim suggests to Verdugo that rather than do some PR to cover up the false Titan Alarm she go public with Monarch and by the way if Monarch wants to be secret why do they wear the symbol when they're out in front of the public Verdugo agrees with Tim and gives a press conference telling the world all about Monarch all that in five minutes it feels really contrived like so much of the present storyline going all the way back to episode one with cracking that safe or episode two when three kids are allowed to stroll into a prison disguised as a retirement home it's even more bizarre when there's a comment about Lee having made various Escape attempts over the years you're telling me these three are allowed to wander in and make a grand Escape by walking into their van and basically driving off yet Lee couldn't make it out on his own I'm not buying it all right I'm starting to feel a little hypocritical because I complained about how bitter these characters are and now listen to me hopefully Tony and Johanna have good things to say about this show and hey I do too I loved all the stuff in the past KO Billy and Lee were great characters actually it kind of makes Kong Skull Island a bummer in retrospect the way Bill disappears as a background character and then meets a pretty unsatisfying end in the present I thought Kurt Russell was great Not only was he a fun character but his motivations made sense sealing the Gateway between our world and the Titans is both a need to be proactive and protect Humanity but also a need for Redemption after losing KO I also love his dedication to being proactive anytime there's indecision or hesitation he just barrels ahead kentaro thinks he saw a structure and wants to check it out okay go ahead but we're going to head toward the bright light Kate doesn't want to follow Godzilla okay that's the way towards civilization we're heading out or when she isn't sure closing the Gateway in Kazakhstan is The Right Move seconds later he arms the bombs it backfires on on him but you can understand emotionally why he is this way his friends began Monarch as a proactive organization trying to understand our world since then he's watched Monarch tarnish their Legacy by turning into desk jockeys with their heads in the sand I already mentioned his and koo's reunion which I thought was genuinely heartbreaking the way Lee doesn't want to show himself right away and his voice breaks while he explains why that was 33 33 years ago and the emotion in her voice when she realizes all she's missed and lost my heart also broke when Hiroshi reunites with canaro it happens while Kate is lost in Access Monday so everyone thinks she's dead and when her dad finds out she's gone thanks to him he breaks down and I felt it though it was a bit undermined by how much I dislike the character and of course I also felt it when Lee had to let go rather than come home though fingers crossed if there's a season two we get to see more of him ultimately I didn't hate this show because there were parts of it I really enjoyed but sometimes it was a bit of a slog to get through the present storyline I also appreciated the more serious tone showing that just because the movies are leaning into more silly spectacle territory there's still room for something closer to Godzilla the movie which started the franchise well I think that's a good place to wrap this one up Tony Johanna please say some good things about this show hm that's one way to review Monarch and now we're going to talk about it how did you like monarch I liked it um The Bouncing Around in the different timelines got a little like uh but I know why they did it like makes sense now um Kate's great uh Kurt Russell's great uh I did not expect as much Godzilla as we got yeah people were complaining that he wasn't in enough I'm like I didn't expect him to be in it as much as he was yeah like I thought it was going to be a show about Monarch I thought this is where they're going to mainly focus on like all the people but then I got an little surprised with every other episod um I was also pleasantly surprised um we talked about it more in our like full review but like for a series a franchise where people have been complaining that the characters aren't that good and we have to spend so much time with these characters we don't like I I we personally liked the characters in this yes they are kind of awful but like in an entertaining interesting way not like it's an annoying character it's like wow that a Char is kind of a piece of [ __ ] let's see let's see if there's a Redemption for him um I didn't mind the bouncing around I thought that was fun uh the the craziest thing about this is um the best way I described it was like it feels like a comic that has to explain what happens between movies cuz we talked about how like the first one's so serious and then it like if you're just watching the movies they kind of devolve into crazy campiness and this show is kind of like filling in the Gap so like they're showing all the stuff that leads to meca Godzilla really early uh so I like that I kind of want to see more of it I want to see what it leads into it kind of ends on an awesome Cliffhanger with Skull Island uh but yeah overall it's a good time I think more people need to give it a chance and uh yeah I I give it a great same you do the okay that was more positive than my review but suspiciously brief for a 10 episode series kind of seems like you ran out of good things to say about it pretty fast also I I we personally liked the characters in this I don't know if I believe you let me dig into that full review you did on Catzilla like Kate and them are fine like a lot of people like hate them for whatever reason but I'm sorry I'm sorry did you say Kate was fine wait a minute what kind of podcast is this Kate is pretty fine speaking of fine oh hi what the oh oh I put them on top of the refrigerator so my neew what is going on here yeah a lot of people hate the younger characters and I hate that I pick the most low poly picture ever for this here's the thing and I said in the previous episode they actually are kind of unlikable but I think they're interesting compared to a lot of the other characters we've gotten in the mon monsterverse yeah because I like that he's like an artist and he has de D issues and then I like that she hates her dad for cheating and then you find out that she was cheating on her girlfriend so she's kind of projecting a little bit okay fair enough see one take is balanced you get to hear both sides of the debate you get the objective analysis and uh all the other stuff now we come to the main event the latest team up of Godzilla and Kong the most recent entry in the monsterverse Godzilla X Kong the new Empire this movie represents Uncharted Territory for the franchise because for a few years it was all about building up to Godzilla versus Kong that movie's success is what told legendary pictures the audience wants more and given the early box office success of this movie it's clear the demand is still there but what do audiences know let's check it out for ourselves and see if this movie is any good this is 2024's God Godzilla X Kong Frozen Empire sorry I mean Godzilla X Kong the new Empire 3 years after defeating Mecca Godzilla Kong enjoys his home in the hollow Earth but he is lonely and spends his days searching for others of his kind on the surface Godzilla regularly protects Humanity when other Titans get out of hand and as long as things stay that way Godzilla above and Kong below there should be no risk of another flare up in their ancient rivalry but soon Monarch picks up a strange signal from the hollow Earth and so does Gia she wakes from frantic dreams scribbling a pattern which Andrews notices is a perfect match for that signal the idea her daughter could telepathically receive these signals is crazy so she finds someone who knows crazy Titan truther Bernie Hayes and of course he'll help especially Dr Andrews can sign him up for a trip to the hollow Earth their meeting is cut short when she receives an alert that Godzilla is on the Move meaning he detects some kind of threat and another alert Kong has come to the surface they quickly realize why he's in pain and knows that he needs help the Titan vet Trapper identifies the infected tooth rips it out and replaces it with a new one with one crisis solved Bernie arrives with another with help from his Discord he realized that the signal is a psychic energy distress call historically it's been observed just before Godzilla responds to a threat meaning something dangerous is coming and they won't wait to find out what it is instead they take a trip into the hollow Earth with Kong to search out the source of that SOS call once inside Kong head's home and they head for the Monarch Outpost which they find destroyed next to a giant handprint this was done by a giant ape but not Kong and for the first time since his parents were killed Kong meets others of his species he inadvertently breaks open a passage to the Subterranean realm where he finds a small child and a few adults who don't take kindly to this Intruder they attack but find their no match for King Kong one ends up dead and the other is Retreat Kong wants to know where they've gone and after seeing his power the child acquiesces he shows him the way but lures Kong into a trap when he sees opportunity grabbing a drink in waters he knows are occupied by a snake like Titan when that Titan's head is promptly separated from his body the child gets an idea just how strong Kong really is as they make a meal of the Titan fear and distrust are replaced with respect and friendship meanwhile I lean Bernie and Trapper discover that Gia is not the last of the ewi after all hidden in the hollow Earth is an advanced tribe who communicate telepathically and use large crystals to manipulate gravity they are the ones who sent out the SOS for Godzilla using one of those crystals as a beacon they bring their visitors to a room covered in ewi script which tells a story in the beginning Hollow Earth lived in harmony with the surface world the Titans were the Guardians of Nature and the great apes became the Protectors of humanity but a great evil threatened the peace a powerful and ruthless ape desperate to conquer the surface World LED his tribe into war against Godzilla they nearly destroyed him but Godzilla won the battle and imprisoned the Apes deep within the hollow Earth their false King remains obsessed with reaching the surface the E call him the scar King he harnesses a terrible power the ancient Titan shimo who he controls with pain her icy breath is so powerful it previously covered the Earth in its last ice age with Kong searching for more of his kind that ewi knew it would only be a matter of time before he inadvertently reached the false king that's why they called for Godzilla's help soon Kong and the child reach the prison where Kong is witnessed to an army of Apes laboring under the false King's rule the scar King challenges Kong between his bone Whip and Kong's axe it's a close and bloody fight until the king uses his Crystal to call on shimo before long Kong is retreating with an arm covered in frostbite and Eileen continues reading the ewi script revealing how at the end of the world one of their own will return to awaken Mothra they believe their savior will be a native from Skull Island of course they're talking about Gia soon Kong arrives with help from his new little friend then gets help from his human friends Trapper treats the frostbite and gives him a prototype they'd been working on the Beast glove not only does it return use of Kong's arm but also augments its strength but even Kong knows that won't be enough to face the scar King and shimo he knows that he needs to call once again on that unlikely Ally Godzilla who has been on a journey of his own receiving that distress call Godzilla knew he would need to power up so he swallowed the radiation of a nuclear plant in France then slayed the Titan tiit whose layer is the largest Stockade of energy on earth once Kong reaches the surface in Cairo and attracts Godzilla's attention he finds his old rival more powerful than ever Kong tries to show Godzilla he comes in peace but the lizzard only sees an enemy the rivals and once allies fight until the prophecy is fulfilled Gia awakens Mathra and the queen of the monsters gets her King to stand down and finally the two Rivals become allies once again to face the scar King in the hollow Earth but soon their fight takes them through a Vortex and the battle continues on the surface in Rio de Janeiro Godzilla and Kong versus the scar King and shimo with crowds of bystanders caught in between the tide of The Battle Turns decisively when Godzilla rips the crystal off the scar King's Whip and the child destroys it Kong picks up the false King and with shimo freed of his rule she treats him to her icy breath Kong looks into the Frozen scar King's eyes then shatters him to pieces with their Victory claimed the R's part ways and Bernie Eileen Gia and the ewi tribe celebrate as Kong returns to the Subterranean realm with shimo and the child at his side they raised their arms victoriously as the Apes below them cheer at their new found Freedom hm that that was a really fun movie since king of the monsters when the franchise transitioned from slightly more serious efforts to Pure monster Carnage AG I felt that it was still trapped between two worlds kind of like aess Monday Godzilla versus Kong had a lot of fun stuff but it was still bogged down to some extent By Boring characters and lame Side Stories in my view the franchise would be better served by picking a direction and running with it if you don't want to tell character-driven stories embrace the silliness and Insanity then go further with it Godzilla X Kong for me took a big step in that direction the movie is filled with more interesting Concepts than the rest of the movies combined we see giant machines used to perform Titan surgery after the introduction of telepathy in the credits of king of the monsters then some actual use of it in Godzilla versus Kong this movie makes it a major component of a plot we find out there's a hidden e tribe who uses it as their primary means of communication we find out they control big crystals to manipulate gravity and their home is protected by a bioelectric organic membrane I love discovering this new area of the hollow Earth and unveiling this civilization like the Kong plot in Godzilla versus Kong it carried a lot of momentum thanks to the steady stream of Revelations tapping into that fun sense of Discovery in that previous movie though we were also cutting back and forth to a b-plot following Madison and Bernie which often halted that momentum thankfully that is much less of a problem in this movie because the other story is Kong himself meeting that mini Kong apparently named suo according to some toy packaging and discovering the scar King's Lair this portion of the movie is by far my favorite and maybe even my favorite of the franchise part of that is because it Taps into subject matter I always find addictive I've gone down so many rabbit holes watching videos or reading about animal intelligence did you know dolphins have signature whistles which basically function as names they call each other by did you know chimps have political minations just like you'd see in Game of Thrones if not do yourself a favor and watch chimp Empire on Netflix throughout these movies I have loved watching Kong's expressions and behavior to better understand his intelligence so watching him meet these other Kongs seeing how they communicate nonverbally was fascinating honestly I would have loved a 2-hour film without dialogue just watching these giant apes and observing more of their culture these sequences were not only fascinating but also pretty funny it's kind of cheating because animals activate a part of our brain that just makes us more open to feeling like it's impossible not to smile at Godzilla turning the Coliseum into his resting spot he curls up to sleep there early in the movie and then does it again at the end and that Happ had my theater laughing I laughed out loud a few times when Kong meets suko and holds out his hand only for the kid to bite his finger then a couple minutes later when Kong picks him up and uses him as a club on the adult Apes attacking him or when suko lures Kong into a fight with that snake the way he's drinking water while very obviously eyeing Kong waiting for the inevitable attack jumping ahead my absolute favorite moment possibly of the entire franchise had has to be when Kong reaches the surface in Cairo Godzilla starts running at him and Kong signals wait come with me into the Vortex but Godzilla ignores him and just keeps running so Kong holds up his hands like no no no no but there's no reasoning with Godzilla and it's hilarious the human side of the story also has humor that worked better for me than the previous movies Bernie for example I didn't find him that funny in versus Kong but here I thought he was pretty entertaining I think the difference is that he's a little crazy but in the last movie didn't have anyone to play off of because Madison was also a little crazy it's like sketch comedy that's missing the straight man but in this movie he's hanging out with Dr eileene Andrews then the E tribe so there's plenty of ju deposition to his Antics though sometimes I found myself laughing and wasn't sure if it was with the movie or at the movie because it sometimes comes off as self- parody the biggest example is the gun toing Monarch guard who goes with them into the hollow Earth out of nowhere he just starts yelling and getting angry which gets him eaten by a plant he was the only no-name character among them so you know he was just there to die but it was done so blatantly and over the top it felt like parody or the Trapper character in general the yelling guy calls him Ace Ventura and it's spot on because he does feel like a character from another movie who just wandered in speaking of Ace Ventura the movie also has a retro feel which I enjoyed but I'm not sure why it's here the soundtrack is filled with music from the 70s and 80s including kiss and bad finger the newest song on the soundtrack is hardwired by Jordan F from just a couple of years ago but even that song is done in an 80s style actually funny story behind that track this and the last movie are directed by Adam Wingard and earlier in his career back in 2013 he had just impressed Peter Jackson with his movie your next a movie I remember enjoying and he was in talks to direct Skull Island a sequel to Jackson's King Kong that movie got abandoned and instead winguard focused on a movie called the guest starring Dan Stevens who plays trapper in this movie anyway there were talks of a sequel which never materialized but wiard decided to produce an album called the guest 2 basically a soundtrack for a non-existent movie and on that soundtrack was hardwired the track featured in this movie I really enjoyed the soundtrack and the Retro Vibe again not sure why it's here maybe Wingard just enjoys that Vibe or maybe it fits the demographic of this movie either way I liked it thought it added some fun like I said for Godzilla versus Kong for a spectacle movie The key is momentum keeping things exciting and entertaining enough so that you don't notice the thin characters and sometimes ridiculous plot overall I thought the movie was pretty successful at it though there is still a sort of B plot in the movie which sometimes slows things down both movies treat Kong as more of a protagonist in Godzilla which makes sense he's more expressive and easier for us human viewers to relate to but neither movie quite figures out what to do with Godzilla in the meantime in this one he's Gathering Power and preparing for the battle ahead anytime we cut to him I found it kind of boring oh he's sucking up a bunch of radiation at a nuclear plant okay he's killing tiam it which was really easy plus there are a bunch of Nothing characters commenting on all of it anytime we cut to Godzilla I just wanted to get back to Kong and actually once Eileen and Gia reached the room filled with ewi script I felt the same way with the Kong story I was wondering how they would communicate the plot with silent animals Kong knows sign language so I wondered if maybe the other Apes had developed their own form of communication it turns out they don't seem to have complex language but instead do a lot of pointing and gesturing but it's not like we get subtitles or anything like that and I was impressed they stuck to that except that room with ewi script is pure Exposition that's where everything gets spelled out and it kind of brings things to a halt I think the filmmakers knew it too because we cut from Eileen reading that script back to Kong's fight a couple of times to break up the scene but overall it's just a pure Exposition dump and includes a weird deex Machina a prophecy that an ewe native from Skull Island will come to awaken Mathra a couple of weird things there one I get that it's a prophecy and maybe that's reason enough for Gia to be special but it doesn't manifest in any satisfying way what exactly does Gia do to fulfill that prophecy she walks up some steps and holds up her hand and that's it then mro wakes up watching it it just feels like any one of them could have done that but there's just some random magic which says no it has to be Gia but why by what mechanism for everything else there's some pseudo science telepathy crystals that affect gravity but here what is it something Reading her DNA and again just why why her and why not make it a challenge where she has to do something to free Mathra or or make her sing like the showby Jin the other weird thing is that if I remember correctly in king of the monsters Mathra died so how was she back in this movie now Tony actually explained this to me offline first off the reason she feels a little random in this movie is they weren't sure they'd get the rights to use math again so they made up a new Titan named phosphor but late last year they got the rights to Mathra and inserted her into the movie that's why you don't actually see anyone say mothra's name on screen it's all added in ADR meaning lines they recorded after filming and how is she alive apparently the king of the monsters credits reveal there was another egg so this could be a new Mathra or it could just be an older one who's been living in the hollow Earth either way I found it weird no one would question it especially Bernie the Bernie I know would not have been able to stop himself from explaining to everyone just how Mothra is alive again but if when they filmed the movie it was phosphora not Mathra that would explain why no one said anything in general I think Kaylee hodle the actress who plays Gia does a great job with the role and I'd love to see more I've kind of accepted by this point if both Godzilla and Kong are in the title of the movie you're not getting a lot of character development I only get a little frustrated because the potential is there and it's mostly unrealized this movie starts with Gia in school and we're told she's having a hard time fitting in which is unsurprising considering her circumstances but we're only told it we don't actually see it at all except that she looks sad while walking to class I think it would have been good to show more because part of the movie's emotional core is eileene trying to figure out how to best take care of her once they meet the ewi tribe Eileen is torn because it seems the best way to help Gia might be to let her go and stay with her people but in the end Gia reminds eileene that her home is with her that moment would have been a lot more impactful if the movie did more to draw that juxtaposition between Gia in the surface world and Gia in the hollow Earth where she feels more accepted in that way we could truly feel why she might choose to stay over returning with her adoptive mother but like I said I've accepted that these movies are more about the sense of Discovery and the action and the action here is pretty great the only thing missing for a bit was the sense of scale because when you're underground and everyone is giant it may as well be that no one is giant once they're on the beach though there's one moment where the scar King is looking down at all the scattering people and they just look like ants in the sand it was one of the few times where these monsters are genuinely terrifying I realized that in previous movies we either see the Titans in cities where people are mostly in cars or buildings or they're in places like Antarctica where there aren't many people around but to see a Titan looking down at a crowd in the sand it has the effect of making us look even more puny which I thought was really effective and the final battle seeing Kong and Godzilla working together The Clash of fighting styles between two apes and two lizards was a lot of fun my only gripe is that I think the movie could have built up the scar King more I needed them to convince me he is a match for Godzilla who is already quite powerful and spends the movie getting even more powerful of course they tried to accomplish this with shimo but it didn't quite get there for me yes they say she caused the last ice age but it goes back to show don't tell they tell us she caused an ice age but the only thing they show is that she gives Kong some frostbite I was never really convinced the scar King even with shim's help could stand up to Godzilla and his Atomic breath but bottom line I had a lot of fun with this movie I think it embraced Titan Insanity more than the previous movies and did a better job of just letting loose now if you want to know what Tony and Johanna thought you're going to want to head over to their YouTube channel or subscribe to their podcast feed where they have a full episode on the movie and they can put it into context with Decades of Godzilla and Kong history better than I can because I know the monsterverse pretty well and I've seen a few of the movies outside that but they are much deeper into the catalog than I am I'm going to let them say goodbye now then we'll wrap up our journey and if you want to hear more of us talking about Godzilla if this was such a good sampling and you're like I need to know more you can go to Cilla versus the Pod monster on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast you can go to casts zilla.com because I added an S when I made the URL and I didn't realize it and now we're stuck with it uh so go there that'll take you to the podcast feed uh yeah we're every other Wednesday is we don't have the most consistent schedule because we have other shows and we're very busy but uh yeah it's a fun time we do a live show every time and uh you can join in on it leave a Super Chat and what not and uh yeah we're in the hyay series right now yeah and I'm excited at the time of this recording what's been your favorite one that we've reviewed in the hyay series Mathra the rebirth or Godzilla versus Mathra Mathra just just the character M you looked just a picture of Matha as your favorite okay yep okay M with so much great Insight like that on the no it's rebirth rebirth really huhh um yeah yeah so we're making our way through that eventually we're going to get to the Millennium series and we will be talking we do uh first impressions for the new releases so we did one for Godzilla minus one and we will be doing one for Godzilla xcong the new Empire we've also done little videos where we unbox all these toys uh so subscribe for all that and Gil thanks again for having us you're welcome thank you and thank you Johanna for sharing your thoughts and helping to get more points of view into the video and giving me a chance to rest my voice between Recaps and reviews especially after that timeline my voice is getting a little bit tired and Planet of the Apes is coming up so I'm going to need it anyway so here we are at the end of the journey and what a journey it's been lots of UPS lots of downs to me the monsterverse is a strange franchise because the tone has shifted so much from one movie to another and one show to another in a way I like that because it helps to keep things fresh rather than every thing feeling like the same thing going forward I definitely want them to keep having fun with the Godzilla Kong mashups but I would love if they took a page out of minus one or Godzilla 2014's book and did more serious takes on the characters too maybe if they do more solo movies those ones can be a little deeper and then for the mashups they can just go nuts thankfully like I said this movie is doing well so I have no doubt there is more monsterverse on the way and I'll be here for it if you haven't checked out my timeline I'll link to it it goes into a lot more detail than the Recaps here plus it pulls in the comics which fill in some of the gaps and provide more backstory with that if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe and hit the Bell icon for more thank you for watching and see you on the next one take cheing his hand okay all right that was it that was good

Channel: OneTake

Views: 33,528

Keywords: monsterverse, monsterverse retrospective, godzilla retrospective, kong retrospective, king kong retrospective, monsterverse timelines, monsterverse recap, monsterverse explained, monsterverse review, monsterverse reviews, godzilla review, kong review, king kong review, godzilla x kong review, godzilla x kong recap, godzilla x kong the new empire, godzilla x kong new empire, godzilla x kong ending explained, godzilla x kong the new empire ending explained

Id: teMUmcGzkLo

Length: 183min 17sec (10997 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2024